What are the shooting skills of time-lapse photography?

Time-lapse photography is a photography technique that takes an image or video at a low frame rate and then plays the image at a normal or faster rate. The process of slowly changing objects or scenery is compressed in a very short time, presenting a strange and wonderful scene that is usually imperceptible to the naked eye. So what are the skills of time-lapse photography? Come and have a look with me!

Skills of time-lapse photography

Daytime shooting

Basically, you can set the exposure mode in the aperture priority mode, automatically select the white balance, and reduce the ISO value as much as possible. Most importantly, the shutter speed should be as slow as possible. If you shoot with a high-speed shutter of11000 seconds or 1/2000 seconds, you will get a condensed instantaneous picture. However, it is suggested to slow down the shutter speed as much as possible, for example, using a speed below 1/50 seconds, because it needs to be cut into flowing film later.

Time-lapse photography is mostly about scenery, so the related photography concepts and skills of landscape photography can almost come in handy in shooting. However, compared with taking a single photo, it is necessary to consider the need to combine into a film in advance when taking time-lapse photography.

Night shooting

I suggest you shoot in manual mode (M mode). In the white balance part, if it is in light environment, you can use automatic white balance. If it is in a dark environment (such as a mountainous area), it is recommended to adjust the color temperature and white balance to about 3300K, so that the picture will look blue and pleasing to the eye. If you use automatic white balance in a dark environment, the picture may appear brown or yellow tone. Before shooting, use a higher ISO (such as ISO 800), aperture F5.6 and shutter speed of 30 seconds for Shoot, and observe the details of the scene and environment (such as whether the composition is stable, whether there are unnecessary objects such as telephone poles in the picture, etc.). Basically, the exposure time should not exceed 30 seconds, because with the interval time, it may take more than 40 seconds to take a photo alone, and the connection of later images may not be smooth, because the time difference is too large. If the exposure time is controlled within 30 seconds, the continuity of the scene will be ideal.

Light-dark transition moment

At this time, whether from day to night or from night to day, the camera must record the whole process. For shooting from day to night, you can choose the aperture priority mode, first use a small aperture, and then gradually increase it (for example, from F22, F 18, F 16 to F5.6, F4), so that the shutter speed can be as close as possible when shooting from day to night. If the gap is too large (for example, 1/60s during the day and 30/60s at night), you can also try to fix the aperture and shutter speed, which can automatically improve ISO, thus maintaining the balance between aperture and shutter speed, but the disadvantage is that the image quality is degraded due to high sensitivity. In addition to the above basic concepts, I will also share the setting method with you from several aspects related to time-lapse photography.