TIME EXPOSURES?

[Greg Crawford]

ALEX,

Your the master of time laps cinematography so hear goes. I am looking to shoot some time laps laps stuff.

Sunrise/sunset on farmland.

Barns and farm houses in the morning fog.

Later when the snow fly ..shooting snow accumulations.

What duration (frames per min. hour )? Should you use the auto exposure ? -

Do you happen to know what the shutter speed would be on my Nizo 801 Macro. I got the camera ....without the manual.

P.S. I'm sure there are others qualified to drop an answer or idea .my way, so thanks.

[Alex]

The biggest factor in determining time-lapse is whether you are shooting wide angle, medium, or close-up.

On wide shots, I think 1 frame every 10-20 seconds produces interesting results.

The fog shots you want to do could go eery if you shoot actual time-exposure. ND the heck out of your camera and shoot 2-6 second exposures during the morning time, it should look surreal.

Actually, you may not need that much ND if it is an early morning shot. I think Ektachrome might create an interesting feel.

When in doubt figure that the normal shutter angle starts out around 150-180 degrees and shutter speeds of around 1/60th of second.

Then as you decrease your shutter time in halfs, stop down by approximately one stop. (you probably already know this)

Some cameras will use a slower shutter speed when doing time-lapse if the frame speed is set to a slower speed. For instance, if you are at 9 frames per second, your shutter speed may only be 1/24th of a second.

So if you were to shoot a one second exposure, you
would go from 1/24 to 1/12, then 1/6, then 1/3, then around 1 second, so, you need to stop down by four f-stops to do a one second exposure versus shooting at real time 9FPS... (add approximately another stop if you are shooting at 18 or 24 FPS).

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ November 30, 2002 08:13 PM: Message edited by: Super8 Filmmaking in the DigitalAge ]</font>

[Alex]

I forget you asked about Snow accumulations...sheesh, good luck on that one.

I couldn't see myself or my camera staying in the cold that long. A good work around is to figure out a way to repeat the exact same angle and frame sizing and go out periodically and just shoot in real team, then do dissolves when you edit, assuming that you are editing non-linear.

[Greg Crawford]

I was thinking of making an electric barney...like a electric blanket...to keep the camera worm.

[BolexPlusx]

What if you just stay inside, press the camera up against a window, start the fireplace, set the intervalometer and lay on the couch with a cup of coffee?

[Greg Crawford]

Sounds good....If only I lived in a more established area with more trees and homes.

[cameraguy]

A big March or April Snowfall can have decent light during the day because of the much higher sun angle even with the cloud cover. I would set the camera indoors and use Ektachrome or Tri-X

Another way to do snow is to time lapse a big snow melt. I've seen 5-6 inches of snow melt away in a matter of hours in the spring. That should also look cool.

[BolexPlusx]

I really like this idea of filming snow accumulation, it's got some real challenges built into it. For example, it would be the most impressive in a really huge snow storm (rapid accumulation) unfortunately that would mean a lot of cloud cover (poor exposure). It also has built in unpredictability to keep things interesting. It would be awesome if it worked though.

I've had the idea of setting up a camera in my porch and rigging it to snap a frame every day at noon for a year. This is a 20 second year at 18 FPS. Unfortunately I've never had a camera that was both expendable enough to let sit with it's optics exposed to sunlight for a year (can't be good) and reliable enough to finish the year.

[Alex]

Anybody ever try shooting a rainbow via time-lapse or time-exposure?