Time-lapse recording

- Your DSLR camera can also record time lapse movies. There are really two different approaches to this work flow. The more traditional approach is to record a series of still photos. Remember, your Nikon camera, has a built-in interval timer that makes this fairly easy to do. To access the timer, press the menu button. From the shooting menu, select interval timer shooting and press to the right, you can now choose now, and press to the right again, and dial in the correct interval. In this case, you can set delays for hours, minutes, and seconds.

When you have the interval that you want, press to the right again. Now, you can set the number of shots, up to 999. When you're ready, press to the right again. You now have the choice of on or off. If you're ready to start shooting, highlight on, and press the OK button. The timer will wait for three seconds, and then start to record with the interval. This particular method of time lapse recording takes extra steps of post-production.

But, it produces the highest quality results. This allows you to shoot using raw files, and really get the benefits of post-processing. I love time lapse photography, and you'll find extensive coverage of this work flow, in a series of courses I produced on Lynda.com. Now, alternatively, you can create a time lapse movie right inside the camera. This approach is very easy, but you don't really get any of the benefits of raw processing, nor are the high quality photos saved. Rather, you just end up with the movie file.

In this work flow, it's very important that you set the exposure, white balance, and pictures controls accurately before you start, as you can't really go back and post process the file. First, get the camera set up with all the settings that you want, and compose the shot. It's generally best to set the focus and exposure then flip the camera into manual mode and manual focus so nothing changes over time. Then, press the menu button. In the shooting menu, choose time lapse photography, and press to the right.

Here, you can adjust the settings. Press the right arrow one more time to edit the settings. You can now dial in the interval using minutes and seconds. These intervals will set the time between each shot. Press to the right when the interval is set, and you can set the total shooting time. In this case, you set for how many hours and minutes you'd like to record. As you make this change, you'll see at the bottom, the resulting time for the final movie.

This is a combination of the interval, and the duration of recording, which will result in the final run time. When you have the interval and shooting time set correctly, just press the right arrow once more. You're now presented with the ability to start, or to turn it off. When you're ready to shoot, highlight on, and press the OK button. The camera will wait three seconds, to let the vibration settle down, and then it will begin to record. When the timer completes, your camera will process the photos that it shot, and assemble them into a movie.

You can also interrupt this process early by pressing the OK button, and it will use all of the frames its captured so far. Now, the downside of this movie method is that it doesn't store the original high quality stills, just the final movie. This is a really easy way to make a time lapse movie, but it doesn't give you the full potential of your camera. I strongly encourage you to explore the more advanced work flows that we cover here on Lynda.com, if you'd like to get higher quality results.