RCP Photography School: Time Lapse

Hello to all who’ve joined me on day 20 of this 26 day challenge to learn about the basics of photography.

If you’re doing this course, you probably already know a little bit about me but if you don’t, please check out who I am.

Today I’m going to talk about...

T for Time Lapse

Time Lapse has been around for years and is a type of photography that takes a single photograph every 1 second, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 30 seconds or longer. These single photographs can then be created into a video to show the movement of the surroundings in the photographs.

How does it work?

You need to go to 'Menu' then find 'Metering Mode' within your camera settings, and set it to how many frames you want captured - for sunsets, you might want it to be photographed every 60 seconds; for fast moving vehicles or animals, you might want to set it to 1 second; for melting ice, you might want to set it to 4 seconds.

Practice makes perfect for everything, so really do practice and see how many seconds works best for the surroundings you are photographing in, and bring a tripod as well! The steadier your camera is, the consist the photographs will be meaning you can see a 'story' unfold.

Here is an example on a sunset time lapse during a camping trip in Australia in 2018. It was in Wilpena Pound, Flinder's Range and I couldn't resist doing a time lapse of the skies and landscape. These images were taken every 60 seconds, for 45 minutes. Watch the light slowly disappear and the clouds move in the distance from left to right.