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Lesson Info
13. Astro-Timelapse
Lessons
M0 - Introduction
1An Introduction from Alex
01:25 2Coffee Q&A with Alex
09:26 3Introduction to the Workshop
01:51M1 - Timelapse Basics
4What is Timelapse
04:48 5Camera Gear
06:05 6Timelapse Gear
06:49Support Gear
03:14 8Field Essentials
03:46 9Key Takeaways
01:01M2 - Shooting
10Motion Timelapse
11:11 11In the Field: Manual Exposure Ramping
06:31 12In the Field: Shooting Waterfalls with Motion
07:55 13Astro-Timelapse
08:47 14In the Field: Shooting Moonrise
09:07 15How To Do A Lens Twist
03:17 16Day-to-Night Timelapse
06:42 17Day-to-Night at Tunnel View
05:01M3 - Editing
18Import Structure
10:37 19Basic Timelapse Editing
21:40 20Advanced Timelapse Editing
19:58 21Outro to Editing
00:56M4 - Developing and Planning a Project
22Seeing Life In Timelapse
03:57 23Finding Purpose In Your Timelapse
01:43 24Mood Boards & Shot Lists
08:39 25Production Schedule
02:55M5 - Outro
26Q&A with Alex
20:14Lesson Info
Astro-Timelapse
(bright ethereal music) Let's go over how to capture an astro time-lapse. I'm gonna need to think about what's gonna be in our frame 'cause that can change the way your image looks. Now, when you're looking in the night sky, you're gonna see moon, you might see the Milky Way, and you might find certain constellations and other celestial bodies, but also you need to know where the sun is, 'cause that's ultimately gonna determine how long your astro time-lapse will be. So we need to use tools in order to familiarize ourself with where these bodies will be, at what time during the night. What I like to use is Sky Guide to find the Milky Way in the sky. Now, this tool is really good 'cause it allows you to pinpoint the location of the Milky Way at a certain point in time from the location that you're researching. Other things I wanna research when I'm doing astrophotography are the positions of the sun and the moon. So with those two bodies, I like to use Sun Seeker. And that gives me a ...
lot of information as well as the tools to augment the position of the sun in the sky. So I can see specifically when and where the sun will rise and set, and I can do the same thing with Moon Seeker. So those two apps I use, and I really like the augmented reality features built into them. We also need to be aware of the phases of the moon because if it's a full moon, we're gonna have a whole lot more light than if it were a new moon. Now let's go over the gear and the settings that would work best for an astro time-lapse. Let me grab my tripod over here. (tripod clicking) I'm gonna set this up so the camera's facing you, and hopefully you'll be able to see everything that I'm doing on my camera while I'm setting up this time-lapse. All right, so I have my tripod that I've just set up, and I've got it set up so that it's nice and stable. I've got my ball head on top here. And I'm just gonna put the camera on top here. Now, I'm setting up my camera but imagine we're out in the field. It's pretty cold outside at night. So if the camera's a lot warmer than the outside temperature, you wanna give yourself about 15 minutes before setting up the time-lapse so that your camera has time to acclimate to the outside temperature. So just leave the camera in your bag for about 15 minutes before taking it out of the bag. All right. Let's clip this in here. Snap into place. Level it out a little bit and point it up into the sky where we think that we're gonna be filming. Take the lens cap off. (camera clicking) We're gonna click in the anemometer into the camera. Okay, so the first thing we're gonna do, is we're gonna set up the camera. The camera settings we're gonna use, I'm gonna use my notes here just so that I can make sure I go through 'em all. We're gonna use the 5D here because it's a full frame camera, and the 1635 millimeter because it has an aperture of 2.8. Combination of those two will allow us to capture more light from the stars in our night sky. Okay, so we've got the camera set up. We're ready to start adjusting our settings. We can adjust the shutter speed to 15 seconds. And the reason why I chose 15 seconds is because I think it's a long enough exposure to capture the light in the night sky. But also, it's not so long that you'll capture star trails. Because the Earth's rotating, we wanna make sure that we don't let the rotation of the earth create streaks in the stars. And this will change depending on your camera and your lens. So if you're not sure what shutter speed you should use to capture the least amount of star trails in your shot to get crisp shots of the night sky, you should probably check out this app called Photopills. You can type in this information on what gear you're using, and it will tell you what max shutter speed you should use. We're gonna also set up our ISO. So I'm gonna change my ISO to 4,000. I might take a photo, and then I might take another photo at 3,200, and just compare those two ISO settings and see which one gathers the most light and provides me the most detail in my shot. Next step, we're gonna set up our aperture. So this camera goes to 2.8. That's the widest it will go. So we're gonna use that so we can gather more light. And we're gonna set our white balance to be 3,200. That's a good temperature for nighttime photography. Now that we've got those settings, we're gonna set up our interval. So we're gonna come to our intervalometer here. We're gonna navigate to the interval settings and adjust that number to 18. So that means it will take a picture every 18 seconds, and the shutter will be open for 15 seconds. That's good because it allows three seconds for the camera to save the image before the next picture is taken. So, we'll have a picture every 18 seconds. After interval, we're gonna make sure that our camera is out of auto focus. So on your lens, you might have auto focus and manual focus. We're gonna snap that into manual focus. And with manual focus, we're gonna point our camera wherever we think that our subject is gonna be in the sky. So if we're looking for a mountain and over there we have the Milky Way rising over the mountain, we're gonna find that general area that will be happening, point our camera in that direction. Make sure that everything is steady, and take a photo. And I use the intervalometer to take a photo versus pushing down the shutter on the camera. Because when I push that down, I'm applying force to the camera, which can shake the camera while it's trying to take a picture. That little amount of shaking on the camera could generate an image that isn't as clear as is possible. So I took a picture using the intervalometer's remote, and that will allow me when I'm changing my focus to find the perfect focus on my camera to get a sharp image. Now, up here when I'm focusing using the focus ring, you might have an infinity marker on your camera. So if you have an infinity marker on your camera, then use that to find your focus, but be aware that infinity isn't always gonna be perfect. And it's because the focus ring might be a little bit off with where infinity is. You wanna take a few photos. So I'm gonna find infinity, I'm gonna set it right there. I'm gonna take a photo. This will be a test photo. I'm gonna rotate the ring a little bit more. I'm gonna take another photo, and just a little bit more. And then a third photo. I find that that will give you some reference as to where infinity is best on your lens. And you're gonna wanna do that every time just so that you can make sure that the image looks good. When you've got those photos, you can open 'em up, and you can zoom in. So we don't have an image here of the stars, but we're just gonna imagine that we're looking at a picture of the night sky. We're gonna use the magnifying feature to zoom in, and that will just push into the image as close as possible so that we can compare by going back and forth between different images. And that will show us that exact point for three different images. And we'll be able to determine using that information which is the sharpest. Now you've got your time-lapse going. I recommend just watching the first 10 or so frames, just to make sure that the camera is capturing every image, every 18 seconds. If it's not capturing an image, if it skips an image, then I would extend the length of your interval because maybe you're not giving your camera enough time to save the image and take a new photo. So let's just make sure that we look for that, and then just enjoy yourself, and watch the time-lapse, watch the night sky. And when it's all done, you can click through and review what you got, and it will probably look amazing. (bright ethereal music)
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Ondrej Dvorak
I have seen tons of timelapses, but there is no other timelapse film that touches my soul as much as Project Yosemite 1 I never forget the moment when I saw Project Yosemite for the first time! That moment I knew that that’s what I wanna DO! Colin is the reason that I bought my first DSLR! Thank You Alex for getting together with my hero and make this awesome idea happen!
Bryce Lord
Clear and concise workshop to understand the process of Time-lapse photography Being new to this aspect of photography, I found this workshop informative and directional. If I were to give a critique, it would be regarding equipment choice for the entry level bridging to pro-level for the introductory student. Otherwise, it lays a nice foundation to build from.