Just for fun over the Christmas holiday, I shot a time-lapse video composed of 800 photographs.  I tried to publish this earlier, but YouTube kept kicking off

my video because of the song in the background; they instead want you to use a swap-audio feature with advertising.  Then I failed at embedding my own HD player,  I eventually gave up and never shared my first time-lapse video with anyone.  About 6 weeks later, I discovered Vimeo, which is much nicer to people like me, and gets rid of the advertising and cheesy viral videos.

In the fall, I was inspired by Reuters photographer Jason Reed, who constructed a time-lapse video at the White House.  For years I’ve wanted to to experiment with time-lapse, but I never got motivated until now.  While what I’m attempting is far less elaborate, I wanted to do some trial and error so I’d know what I’m doing when it counts.

My first trial was to capture an action sequence, my favorite part of the White House video.  Major hurdles include running out the buffer, taking too many or to little photos, focus delay, and using the right software.

Since videos don’t need nearly the same resolution as a photo, I set the camera set to small JPEG, which also prevents the camera buffer from running out.  I left the camera in full P automatic mode, with continuous shooting mode, and AL Servo autofocus.   Last comes in iMovie: not as slick as Final Cut Pro, but its free, easy, and gets the job done.  At this point, I really don’t want to learn any new software, either.

At 4 frames per second, I moved the camera around, fast and slow, turning and steady to test tolerances to movement.   I cut out a few frames here and there where I may have moved the camera too much.  I set the delay to .2 seconds, so it ended up to show the video at about the same rate as real life.

For this process, creating the video was a seamless experience in iMovie, although I had to learn a few quirks in how the program works.  I laced in the track Axel F. From Beverly Hills Cop to give a nice, quirky feel to the video.  Enjoy!

Next: I’ll post part II: Sunset time lapse, using a remote timer trigger cable.  This one has been far more complex to put together on the software side, mostly because I took to many photos, and iMovie won’t let you show a photo for shorter than .2 seconds.