Recently i have been playing with time lapse photography, Unfortunatly my Sony Nex 5 doesnt support timelapse out of the box and the IR port tends to be a bit troublesome (Misses ptake a shot commands from a timelapse remote). I was also playing with my Little Canon point IXUS 70, which does great shots like;

I have also been trialing using the Creative Vado HD for timelapse, dropping 29 frames a second from the footage received which gives me shots like;

Now I have really enjoyed these timelapses, In the previous few weeks i have found more and more awesome timelapse movies by people out there. And now im at the stage (i guess), where i have to decide do i want to move to the next level. Do i spend 700 odd bux on a Canon DSLR, do i try to get the NEX working better with the IR remote. I love my NEX tho i dont want to trade it in. Anyway back to the post at hand.

These are the movies im talking about, these are just amazing;

Sub Zero – winter night timelapse from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.

TimeScapes: Rapture from Tom Lowe @ Timescapes on Vimeo.

“Orion” – motion controlled night timelapse from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.

Now vid 1 and 3 are from a great website called Dakotalapse. Great because he is happy to share exactly what he did to get the shot, from F-stop & exposure to tripod head and dolly system. Actually in that last movie if you look just after the two minute mark you can actually see a timelapse of his setup working.

This is just duplicating what dakotalapse said on his post http://dakotalapse.com/?p=281 but incase you dont want to read i will give a quick overview for both my and everyone elses knowledge.


He is using a Orion, Merlin or Celestron telescope head like above and seen on Amazon http://amzn.com/B003YLJHQA this is fairly cheap at 200 odd bux. This allows you to set a pan and tilt automatically but dakota timelapse said it moves too quick.

Dakota Timelapse also utilises an open source dolly system here is another look at the bit i was telling you about before:

That kit is about 900 dollars from http://dynamicperception.com and looks like

I think you could build one from an arduino kit for alot cheaper, but the above one is pro. This setup also allows you to connect it to the head mentioned above to slow down the rate of movement.

Other things i wonder about is what if someone steals the kit, i suppose it would be hard to sell most of it. As the kit would sit in a field for about 3-6 hours to get you 20-1minute of footage. You couldnt camp near it as the light from your tent etc would show on the timelapse. Ahh just some thing to sort out.

And last but not least settings i have seen used:

30seconds exposure, 3200 ISO, fstop 3.5

25 second exposure, 1600 ISO, fstop 2.5

Image at the top of this post is from dakotalapse check it out here http://www.flickr.com/photos/57801101@N06/5608769850/