Sunsets make for good time-lapse projects.
Time-lapse photography captures a lengthy event on film and then shows it in a very compressed period of time. Frames spaced largely apart in real time are taken and compressed together in order to create a kind of animation. The common cliches for this kind of shot show a sunrise or sunset, a flower opening and other similar events.
Instructions
1. Decide on the subject of your film. This is very important because it predetermines everything involved in the shoot, such as what equipment to use and set it up. Choose something where clear changes over time are seen to make an interesting film, such as a house being built or a block of ice melting.
2. Set up your camera physically to get the shots. You need to mount it on a tripod or other steady mount, as stability is very important. Put the subject exactly where you want it in the frame, because unless you have a moving tripod your camera won't move for the duration of the shot.
3. Connect an intervalometer to your camera if it does not have an internal setting for this purpose. If it does, access that setting menu.
4. Set your intervalometer or internal interval settings to take pictures based on how often you want a frame captured. The shorter the real time of the event you are shooting, the closer together you should set your intervals. For instance, cookies baking in the oven will only take an hour or less, so you should set your intervals maybe two seconds apart. A sunrise or sunset should have intervals closer to 30 seconds.
5. Import the shots into your film editing program of choice after the sequence has been completed. Premiere Pro, Quicktime Pro, Final Cut Pro, iMovie and Sony Vegas are all video editing programs capable of doing this. Just import all the photos into a sequence in the program, set the length of each image to a very short duration, such as two or three frames, to create your video.
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