$30 doesn’t buy you basically anything in photography.  Maybe a lens cap.  That’s the main reason I never bought a Timer Remote or Intervalometer before.  The Canon branded one costs about $150.  After reading up on how to make Time-Lapse movies on the awesome DIY Photography website, I did a little research and once again, it was Ebay to the rescue!

When my Taiwanese beauty arrived in the mail I was quick to bust it out.  You have a few options, but basically it comes down to:

1. How long should I wait to start taking pictures?
2. How long should I wait between shots?
3. How long should I make the shots (or let the camera take care of it)?
4. How many pictures should I take?

Want to read all about it and see the final movie?  Hit the jump and read on.

Before I go any farther, I should mention a couple things.  Some people don’t need to buy anything to do this.  Some cameras (Old Canon P&S, newer Nikons of many stripes) have this time-lapse functionality built in.  Many other Canon models can load some aftermarket firmware (void your warranty but unlock lots of extra features) that can do the same.  Lastly, there are ways to connect your camera to a laptop via USB or and use the software the ships with the camera.  There are even iPhone apps.  If you care, let me know in the comments and I’ll add more.  Somehow I think you’d rather see the outcome.

Steaaady: Ok.  So you got your camera and we’ll assume you’ve got something like the intervalometer I got.  You definitely want a tripod for this.  If you’ve got a ledge or something that might work, but your camera is going to have to sit awful still.

Framing: If you can get something in the foreground and background your end product might be more interesting but your focus is more difficult.  I used my wide-angle lens which has some pretty good depth of field.  If your lighting isn’t going to change a ton, the Av setting is great.  If it won’t change at all, Manual is even better.  Frame your scene, set up your little remote control doo-hickey and press start.  You can do whatever you like, but taking one picture a minute and taking as many pictures as you can seemed like a good plan to me.

Going the distance: Speaking of taking a lot of pictures, you’re going to need to think about some things you don’t usually think about.  The most obvious is memory card space, but if you’re going to turn this into a movie, you probably want to select your smallest image size or close to it, which should render that moot.  Battery is the other big issue.  If your lens is stabilized, turn it off (which you should do when using a tripod anyway).  Unless you really need to, turn off autofocus – do you really want it changing mid-stream?  Lastly, go into your settings and turn off the picture review on the LCD screen.  After doing that, my camera seems like it can burn through about a bajillion pictures – I haven’t exceeded 450 or so yet, but the gauge still reads full.

Making the Magic: Alright.  You took a bunch of pictures, right?  Pull them all over onto your computer.  Now you need some software to turn it into a movie.  There are many options, but I haven’t found anything as easy, straightforward, and… um… free as JPGVideo. Install that puppy and pick the folder with the pictures in it, where you want the movie to end up, and how many pictures per second you want.  TV is 24, and that seems to work pretty well for me.  You want your video longer?  Turn it down.  Straightforward, right?  The last option is what sort of encoding you want.  Choose DivX here.

The Final Results! Alright – somehow you got this far.  I suppose you want the payoff.  This is my first real attempt and I think it came out pretty nice!  I’ve uploaded it to Flickr, which means you’re seeing it at about 1/4 of the original size, so remember that when you do this at home, it can be pretty spectacular since every frame has the quality of a real photograph.  Here you go!
Here’s the final product:

If you have questions or comments, let me know.  This is pretty fun and I’m going to be doing some more work with it, so feedback is appreciated.

Definitely worth thirty bucks.  I’m just sayin.

30 Bucks – A Lens Cap Or Time Lapse Movies? is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

The Budweiser Select sponsorship on the sail sort of cracks me up.  Not only do you not see it when you’re on the boat, but I don’t even know what Budweiser Select is.  If ever a misnomer there was, this is it.

Sponsorship In Calm Seas is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

I can see how sailing might be your religion.  To top it off, this boat gets the triple cross – symbolism, right?  Maybe there is something to it – I managed to bring my camera and my camera strap, but not the piece that attaches the two together and somehow I didn’t drop it into Elliott Bay.

Religion of the Sea is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

Lots of cones.  There are a bunch of signs next to it as well, which also have something cool going on, if I can figure it out.  Anyway, as you can tell from the signs picture above, this area is a bit surrounded by fence, cars, trees – lots of things that, as some friends of mine used to say are all great tastes that taste funny together.  So I’ve been thinking about these cones and eventually I think I figured it out.  Get low, get close.  This picture was taken with my wide angle, which means I was REALLY close to the cones to not show what is around.  But the cones are thick enough that it just doesn’t matter.  Sea of cones.  That’s what I wanted, and that’s what I got.

The Artificial Forest, Via The Orange Trees is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

The University of Washington is not lacking for nice architecture.  Quite opposed to the soviet-bloc style architecture of my alma mater, UW for the most part feels the way a real old-fashioned school should – lots of ornate stone buildings with ivy up the side.  They also have this brick thing going on in places, especially the aptly-named Red Square (not to be confused with that other Red Square).  Although home to a couple statues, a lot of freshmen, and a great view of Suzallo Library, I like the brick monoliths above the best.   The fact that they only built them to ventilate the parking garage underneath only sorta detracts from them.

The Towers of Power is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

The UW has a power plant.  I suppose it’s pretty obvious when you look at the massive smokestack, constantly billowing… well… smoke, I guess.  I’ve looked at it a million times, but it wasn’t until I was lurking around campus the other day, trying to find an innocuous place to illegally park while driving the afternoon impromptu shuttle run that I realized how close you can get to it.  Even though it still produces 40% of the campus emissions (coal to natural gas switchover in the 80′s not withstanding), I’ve always loved looking at it.  A massive symbol of industry, hiding in plain view next to Montlake boulevard.

I took this picture with my wonderful Tokina 12-24 wide angle lens.  Although I was a little worried about how long I could hang around taking pictures of university infrastructure before someone ran me off, I got up as close as possible to the base of the stack and shot almost straight up.  In a more documentary picture, especially shooting from corner to corner of the frame, I might have used Photoshop to straighten out some lines, but I liked the effect of all the angles in this picture.  Using my standard HDR setup (handheld, but tight against my wonderful R-Strap, burst mode, AEB) I shot three shots and used Photomatix to combine them, but I dialled down the insanity a bit as I didn’t think this picture needed the glowing lights treatment.  I really like this shot in general – having a good subject means you don’t need to work nearly as hard to make the final product something you like.

Up In Smoke is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

See all of the images in the gallery below.

Capitol Hill Light Rail Demolition is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

I know that Seattle is huge in fishing.  We have a Fisherman’s Memorial.  We have tons of fishing boats.  It’s just that until a few days ago I’d never been down to the docks where all the boats are moored.  That oversight has now been remedied.   I had a good time walking the docks looking at the fishing boats.  When I was growing up in San Diego, it was home to a ton of purse seiners, but those are long gone.  Seattle still fishes for real.  Some, like the boat above, still sport the wooden-sided retro look.  How cool is that?  I really like the symmetry in this shot.  Taken from right in front of the bow with my trusty wide angle helps really bring out the sweeping lines in the shot.  Just remember to shoot from the middle with a wide angle – any distortions toward the edge of the shot will be mirrored on either side.  Nobody likes a misshapen ship, right?

Seattle Has Fishing Boats – Who Knew? is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures