Time Lapse Sunset Photography Workflow

Time lapse is fun... sunsets are great... marrying the two has always been a challenge.

I'll break this up into the following sections:

1. Equipment

2. Environment (weather, locations)

3. Photography - what we need to do differently than stills - including issues that come up "in motion" that we are not aware of in stills. Including my preferred

camera / intervelometer

settings.

4. Assembly / Editing

Let's get rolling...

Equipment

Camera:

Equipment requirements can vary, and will in part depend on your make of camera - to be more specific, whether your camera has a built in time-lapse function. Nikon DSLRs do - Canon do not.

With Canon DSLRs you need to use an intervelometer, a devide which plugs into the "remote control terminal (

N3 typ

e on 7D, 5D, 5dm2, 1D, 1Ds, and 10D-20D-30D-40D-50D cameras, E3 type on the 60D, XT,XTi,XSi,T2i,T1i, and their Euro counterparts the 300D-350-400-450-500-550D and the 1000D as wells as the Powershot G10, G11 & G12).

These can be the Canon originals, or their off brans equivalents (which tend to cost 2-3 times less). I've been using the Satechi TR-A (RS-80N3 compatible) with great success for the last two years.

Saterchi also makes a model the for the Sony DSLRs. Pentax K7 users can use the Canon model (E3 type).

Tripod:

This can be overlooked, and sometimes you can get away with just placing the camera on the roof of a car.

If going the no (low) cost route, at the very least buy a 3 kilo bag of rice, or other beans, use 1/3 of it in food, and the rest (re-sealed) as a pillow for the camera. Make a nice indentation in the bag of rice/beans to hold both body and lens - making sure there is enough in there to hold the camera in place.

This will help with positioning, and help reduce vibration. There are commerically available "bean bags" such as the one in this photo, or the Molar Bean Bag, but there is really nothing stopping you from making your own.

Obviously a tripod will give much more control in positioning and framing.

Software:

Quicktime (QT Pro preferred for assembly), or any of the free/shareware tools - but flexibility to achieve results will be limited.

You can stop here, but I would strongly recommend also having access to the follwing:

Digital Media management tool - i.e. Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture as well as your choice of video editing software.

This will help greatly in post production on with the project.