Before watching this black and white thunderstorm video from Mike Olbinski, I had never considered if time-lapse could ever be considered “fine art.” It’s a term that varies depending on who you ask, but if fine art landscapes or fine art portraiture can be a thing, why couldn’t time-lapse video be included as well?
Traveling 5,500 kilometers in six weeks, Filmmaker Florian Nick explored the wilds of British Columbia and Alberta in search of beautiful scenery, capturing 54,000 photos along the way. The result is a gorgeous time-lapse film showcasing the best of the region in stunning detail and sweeping scale. Nick discussed the making of the film with Fstoppers.
Shooting time-lapse video can be a slow start for many videographers. There’s a lot of time put into capturing every scene, and so when you’re just learning the ropes, mistakes in scene selection or camera setup can mean hours of shooting time thrown away. In this video, Moritz Janisch of Fenchel & Janisch gives newcomers some helpful tips on shooting better quality time-lapses in the city at night.
Adrien Mauduit has released the second piece in his “Galaxies” series. Volume II features time-lapses taken against winter skies, a deviation from his first “Galaxies” film which captures our galaxy and the surrounding stars during the summer nights.
City life is always fast-paced, and plenty can change in three years. Seattle is no different, as the footage in this four-minute video proves. Check out just how drastically the city has changed.
The start of a new year is always rife with possibility and plans for self-improvement. Something I intend to accomplish in 2018 is improve my time-lapse photography skill set. As with most self-improvement goals, this will involve a combination of education and practice. For me, the education part of the equation comprises binging YouTube tutorials and inspirational videos. First on the docket for 2018 is this behind-the-scenes video of a time-lapse and nightscape photography winter trip in the Alabama Hills.
When a glowing contrail appeared in the sky on the evening of Friday, December 22, people took to the streets, and to Twitter, to figure out what was going on. Was it a nuclear bomb? Aliens? Some secret government project? The spectacular sight was actually the SpaceX rocket launch, and Photographer Jesse Watson was prepared for the event with his cameras rolling.
Late last year, Photographer Marsel van Oosten received one of those phone calls that we all dream of: Nikon rang to ask if he would be interested in shooting a time-lapse to promote the global launch of their new, groundbreaking camera: the D850.
Hyperlapse is a variant of time-lapse where the camera moves between each shot in order to bring motion to the video sequence. The result is visually impressive, but this technique requires a high degree of precision and concentration. Furthermore, the entire process is tedious and time consuming. But thanks to the recent progress of gimbal stabilization, anyone can now produce decent hyperlapse with an entry-level gimbal. Photographer Matthew Vandeputte from Sydney shows us how to create an easy hyperlapse with a $550 gimbal.
Nightscape and wide-angle astro photographers have a number of choices for lenses and gear that they didn't have before and NatureTTL has put together a quick rundown of 3 of the most popular lenses for astrophotography; the Sigma 14mm f/1.8 DG HSM Art, the Rokinon SP14mm f/2.4, and the Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 IF ED UMC.
If you’re like me, you have little to no experience with time-lapses. It’s just something I haven't done much of. I’ve never had a client request it, and I’ve never really tried to do them for fun. I’m a stills guy, mostly, so time-lapses seem kind of like encroaching on video. But I thought this video was pretty interesting and had no idea that new versions of Photoshop have time lapse capabilities built in. Maybe I’ll give it a shot soon and get my feet wet with moving images with the help of this awesome tutorial on how to do time-lapses in Photoshop.
Time-lapse films are all the rage these days. They make for great personal projects and for most people they aren't anything more than that. Nathaniel Dodson of tutvid discusses how his personal project of a time-lapse film showcasing Philadelphia ended up going viral and becoming lucrative.
The thing I love about creative people is that just when I think I've seen it all, they do something that never even crossed my mind. Such is the case with this very unusual and very cool time-lapse of New York City that completely blurs the line between day and night.
In August 2016, Sony made a firmware modification to the a7R II and a7S II cameras. Among the changes was a new algorithm designed to reduce noise during long exposure photography. Unfortunately, the new noise reduction approach was a bit too aggressive and the astrophotographer community quickly realized that the new filtering method was removing minor stars during exposure longer than 3.2 seconds. They named this issue the “star-eater” effect and many specialists called Sony for a change. Photographer and time-lapse expert Drew Geraci is happy to report that the problem has been fixed in the new Sony a7R III.
In case you didn’t already know what a beast of a camera the Nikon D850 is, another incredible 8K time-lapse video has surfaced created using the D850’s powerful 45.7-megapixel sensor and the built-in interval timer.
The latest in the “More Than Just Parks” video series has just been released and was worth the wait. On display in beautiful 4K is the vast 400-square-mile Rocky Mountain National Park teeming with mountain vistas and hardy wildlife.
Michael Shainblum, Fstoppers' Photographer of the Month for August, has been creating epic time-lapses for years now and he’s just released a new YouTube video tutorial. In this new video, Shainblum goes through his editing process detailing an Adobe-centric workflow for time-lapses.
Time-lapses have become exceedingly popular over the last several years and it's easy to become numb to them after a while. It takes an extraordinarily good time-lapse to capture a viewer's attention and stand out. Martin Heck of Timestorm Films has done just that with his 8K time-lapse film of the Dolomites mountain range in Northern Italy.
After seeing the hundredth time-lapse, it can become a little difficult to appreciate the incredible sight of an aurora creeping over hills in Iceland. Do many of us suffer from "art fatigue" where seeing so much great work online can make us a little numb to incredible sights? I admit this was the case for me until I saw this time-lapse from JeffHK.
I don't make time-lapses, but as a viewer I frequently happen to find time-lapse videos that I can't or don't watch at all. Here are my tips for all of you out there to make your sequence of images more appealing to any audience.
The Syrp Genie Mini is a neat little tool to add a little motion to your time-lapse project (or a smooth pan to your video projects). But in a new post from the folks at Syrp, it turns out it’s pretty good for a home-brew 360-degree timel-apse rig, too.
Daniel Dean knew the total solar eclipse would be an incredible opportunity for him to capture something amazing. A few months prior to the eclipse, the idea of being able to photograph the celestial event became a blip on his radar after seeing in the news that the first solar eclipse crossing the U.S. since 1979 would be happening again in August. Here is the story of how this awesome time-lapse solar eclipse video came about and how it was made.
After eight months of work I finally finished this project: an aerial tilt-shift hyperlapse of Miami. The idea was to produce something different. Time-lapse videos are very common these days and most drone operators can make a decent hyperlapse with their drones. In this video I wanted to replicate the out-of-focus look normally associated with macro photography to give a miniature effect of the city of Miami. Here is how I filmed this video and what I learned during the process.
The eclipse is coming. You know the one — it’s been the topic on most photographers’ lips for weeks. Have you thought about how you’re going to shoot it yet? On August 21, 2017 (this coming Monday), North America and some parts of South America, Africa, and Europe will get to experience one of the most spectacular sights available to us down here on earth: a solar eclipse.
You may have heard Morten Rustad’s name being bandied about alongside words like “time-lapse,” “Norway,” and “that’s-so-fricken-cool.” That last one might not be an actual word, but you catch my drift. Morten’s pretty good at what he does, and he’s teamed up with film equipment company Syrp to let you in on how he does it.
Gunther Wegner, creator of the LRTimelapse software, reveals a major issue affecting all the latest Nikon cameras compatible with the SnapBridge wireless app. For some reason, the Nikon engineers linked the camera’s Wi-Fi feature to the use of the app. When switching to a third-party app, the SnapBridge-capable cameras disable Wi-Fi, completely making the use of third-party apps over Wi-Fi impossible. Hence, photographers who rely on specialized apps for their work such as time-lapse or macro photography are stuck and cannot use these cameras anymore.
Oscar Wilde used to say that experience is “the name men give to their mistakes.” Photography is both a science and an art. As such, the artistic side of photography must be acquired via experimentation, and failure is a natural part of the learning process. Fortunately, Italian photographer Marco Famà, who specializes in time-lapse production, explains how to avoid making common mistakes when capturing and editing a time-lapse video. He lists 21 issues with concrete video examples and describes how to correct these mistakes.
Mike Olbinski, an award-winning photographer, did it again. Here is his latest production, a stunning time-lapse showing some of the most powerful thunderstorms, supercell structures, and tornadoes of the American Midwest. Olbinski specializes on storm chasing but this season was particularly tough for him. Mother Nature has not been cooperative this year despite his extensive weather forecast knowledge. The storm chaser had to drive 27,000 miles across 10 states during a month to capture the 90,000 frames necessary to finish the project. Hence, he called this video “Pursuit.”
The Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Mini (SAM) is Sky-Watcher’s newest time-lapse and astrophotography tracking platform. It’s their attempt at a compact lightweight mobile setup that's both beginner friendly and easily packed into your camera bag.
One of the things I really love about Photoshop is the fact that there is invariably more than one way to achieve a particular effect in the editing software. For this reason, it's hard to get tired of seeing other people's workflows as you'll always find someone doing something which you haven't thought of before.
The art of animation in any form can be a long an tedious process however doing so with traditional stop motion techniques, manipulating your subject one frame at a time takes serious commitment and determination. Brett Foxwell takes this practice to a higher level creating amazing alien like organic worlds by slicing away one layer at a time from various pieces of wood in his newest short film "WoodSwimmer".
"A Taste of New York," produced by Peter Jablonowski, Thomas Pöcksteiner, and Lorenz Pritz, is the third installment of their very popular time-lapse series. The team behind Film Spektakel have once again taken their enormous talents and experience with large scale time-lapses and distilled it down to a masterful three minute experience.
Following up his 2012 viral video hit "Fall," Filmmaker Jamie Scott has only become more focused and experienced as exhibited in his timely new time-lapse titled "Spring." Watch the amazing video and get a behind-the-scenes look at how he pulled it off right here.
First establishing a business relationship with NASA in January 1971, Nikon fulfilled a contract that put several modified Nikon Photomic FTN cameras aboard Apollo 15 which launched later that year. Since then, Nikon equipment has been on every manned space flight. In this time-lapse video by SmugMug Films, the connected history of Nikon and space exploration is observed as part of the company's 100 year anniversary celebration.
Your phone takes the best pictures, right? That’s why you bought it.
Not so fast, says tech vlogger Marques Brownlee in a YouTube video, where he pits the top five smartphone cameras on the market in a blind test against one another to see which one comes out on top.
The first time I landed in a foreign country at night was when I went to Costa Rica in 2009. I remember being wide awake for the last hour of the flight and looking out the window at the yellow spider webs of city lights as I descended over Central America. Seeing populated places from above at night was new to me; the patterns of the streets, the sprawl of the towns, the promise of life popping up at random amidst the calm of the surrounding darkness all made it one of the most exciting flights I'd ever taken. And that's not even mentioning the stars overhead.
Picture this: you and some friends are on a week-long backpacking trip in Alaska, and it’s a frigid 20 degrees Fahrenheit outside. You really don’t want to get out of your sleeping bag. Luckily, before you got in it, you went out and set up your camera with a incredibly lightweight remote that you can control from your phone so that you can take photos of the aurora without leaving the tent. If you want to be able to do this, and for only $100, you should check out the Pulse camera remote by Alpine Labs.
For us English folk, Spain has been the go-to summer family holiday location for decades. So much so, in fact, that I'm almost repelled by how familiar it is to me. Then, this morning, I received an email from Peter Jablonowski of FilmSpektakel informing me that he and Thomas Pöcksteiner produced a time-lapse of the Spanish island Tenerife and all my preconceived notions melted away.
Microscopes allow us to peer into the tiny worlds hidden from our naked eyes, but tracking slowly evolving movement with them can be a logistical nightmare. Scientists have developed a new technique for automatically tracking movement and locking focus, creating spectacular time-lapses in the process.
When asking people what they hate retouching the most, usually the answer is anything hair related. It requires a tremendous amount of precision and a lot of time. Something retoucher Pratik Naik seems to have, at least according to this video in which he fixes eyelashes to perfection while keeping them natural looking. Have you ever wondered how high-end retouchers achieve such result? Then you should definitely watch this time-lapse.
Even if you hate the cold and snow, spending time in an isolated winter landscape is a truly wonderful experience. "Lost in a Skier's Dream" captures that feeling in all its glory.
Looping videos without any noticeable sign of a start or end adds so much production value to your work. The cool thing is this technique only requires Photoshop and is so simple you'll be kicking yourself for not knowing how.
If you've ever dabbled in time-lapse photography, you know what an incredible amount of effort goes into making a very short video. From the prep work, to setup, shooting, and editing, you're often looking at a couple of hours for a few seconds worth of video. Well, Morten Rustad invests a bit more time than that: roughly 20,000 kms traveled, 200,000 photos on 20 terabytes of hard drives, and two years of time invested. The result is an incredible seven-minute video that puts Norway's beauty on full display.
Jerusalem is an incredibly historic city overflowing with people and culture, and successfully capturing and representing its many facets is not an easy undertaking. This amazing short film certainly pulls it off.
The aurora borealis are hauntingly beautiful, but we're used to seeing images of them shot from the confines of the ground. One photographer looked out his airplane window and saw them, however, leading to this unique and spectacular time-lapse.
Time-lapse photography has quickly become one of the most popular forms of creative expression in the past year. A ton of expensive gear and advanced methods exist to produce cinema quality videos like the opening sequence in "House of Cards," but this shouldn’t deter you from getting out and trying it on your own.
We've all seen impressive time-lapses before, but what really caught my eye with "Destination DC" was its human element. Washington D.C. is undoubtedly a historic city full of sites that are primed for capture, but that in itself means it's a challenge to create something that rises above the countless images and videos we've seen before. "Destination DC" does just that.
Morten Rustad’s a rarity, managing to make time-lapse photography his fulltime gig – and today he’s teamed up with New Zealand based company Syrp to share his expertise and host their latest Filmmaking Guide: “How to Setup a Long-Distance Cable Cam Motion Time-lapse”.
If I'm brutally honest, I felt as if I'd become a bit numb to time-lapses. There's a sense in which the bar has been raised so high of late, that it's difficult to create anything that's likely to capture my attention (not that anyone's trying to). However, if there's one place that can deliver over and over again, it's the frozen tundra that feels as if it has been designed by a landscape photographer: Iceland.
Internationally acclaimed time-lapse film maker and photographer Rob Whitworth brings magical Cappadocia alive in his flow-motion hyperlapse film for Turkish Airways. The visually stunning clip, which highlights the tourist attractions in the region, took six weeks to shoot over the course of two months and two seasons. The effortless blending of multiple photography techniques and precise After Effects work culminates in a breathtaking finished product which pushes boundaries and leaves no doubt as to why Whitworth's videos have over 9 million online views.
