ich hab ja herr timelapse leu versprochen, dass ich mit bastians fisheye-objektiv noch ein timelapse-film machen werde. heute nachmittag (nein, ich bin nicht auf dem gurten) hab’ ich dann gestartet und in gut 2 stunden und 45 minuten genau 990 bilder (bis die batterie der kamera leer war) aufgenommen.

dank dem unsteten wetter entstehen daraus dramatische 40 sekunden (die auch direkt auf vimeo in HD angeschaut werden können):

timelapse-movie with a nikon d80

lately, there has been quite a hype around timelapse-movies (one fabulous example by the amazing keith loutit: Metal Heart ), so i wanted to jump the bandwagon: as there is no addon firmware for my camera as there is for certain canon models i’m confined either using an intervalometer or an external software to trigger the time-lapse process. luckily for me there exists an donation-ware called which allows for tethered shooting with os x. enables you to remotely control your cameras setting like exposure and aperture, perform bracketing and inteval-timed shots. and it looks quite gorgeous:


so, to generate a time-lapse movie you need:

  • a subject, which either moves quickly or very slow (my little “garden” being a very good example)
  • a nikon DSLR, and a mac or some other way of getting a lot of shots out of your camera
  • some way of generating a movie, either with quicktime pro, imovie or the free and platform-independent imageJ
  • a bit of time (starting it in the morning and then going for a dive in the thunersee is perfect for this :) )

i’ve set up to take a picture of my garden with an interval of 1 minute and let it run from 10:49 until 16:21, giving me 333 images (i’m a sucker for nice numbers…), imported the images in quicktime pro with a rate of 10 pictures per second resulting in the short movie below

i’m amazed on how much my chives move during approximately 6 hours, even inside the room (which was necessary, since we’ve got scaffolding around our house which is being renovated). oh and yes, they look bad, but it’s because they have to live inside for the moment…