How to make a Time Lapse Video

I had a lot of fun creating this time lapse of a couple of pieces of bindweed growing in the hedgerow. I had no idea whether they would continue to grow – once immersed in a gin bottle full of tap water.

I wrapped the bindweed around an old clothes airer, set up my camera on a tripod, set it to aperture priority and did a test shot to see if any exposure compensation was required, set a manual focus on the clothes airer.

I used an external intervalometer for my Canon camera. Many cameras have intervalometers built-in. I set it to take a photograph every 15 minutes.

To my amazement the bindweed just kept on growing............out of the frame. So I had to keep shifting up the camera at the start of every day. I plan to do this again having framed up initially to include the full height of the airer, and chosen a lens with a focal length which

will allow this.

After 3 days of watching the bindweed curl around the airer – you could honestly see it twitching – I imported the raw photographs into Photoshop, adjusted the images and saved as jpegs.

In Photoshop, choose image>open navigate to your folder of images. Choose the first image in the sequence only . and click the button at the bottom of the import dialog box that says “image sequence” . Click ok and select a frame-rate when prompted.

30 fps is common for video and what you see on TV, but you can experiment.

Open the Timeline (Window>Timeline) And press the spacebar of play button to view the time-lapse. And finally  choose Image>Export>Export Video to produce your final

timelapse video.

Anna Henly

Going Digital Scotland