Timelapse Question for Guys with Cameras

[Tom Lowe]

Are the timelapse features enabled on your REDs? If so, is there a long-exposure capability? Say, 30- to 60-second exposures?

thanks!

[jamesedwelland]

Would be good to know. The SI camera has a great interface that allows not only time lapse, but long exposures too..

james

[jbeale]

Frame rates slower than 1 fps have never been advertised by Red, as far as I know. If they do it, that would be a new feature. There may be hardware reasons for not having longer shutter times also.

You can always combine frames in post for a longer effective shutter. There will be brief exposure gaps due to sensor readout & reset time, but if the camera is capable of 96 fps, I have to believe that inter-frame dark time is going to be very short.

[CVB]

As I recall you can remotely trigger the frames via the GPI connection on the aux power connections at the back of the camera. This might not be enabled yet though.

[bradvr]

On our cameras this feature is not implemented yet.

[bradvr]

Another useful feature for cinematographers is post triggering. Last week I confirmed with Red that post triggering, though not available today, will be implemented in the future. For those of you who don't know, post triggering is the ability to record continuously, analogous to a loop record, and then by triggering you will start a save cycle. In effect keeping the prior 5 seconds (or whatever) and then the recording going forward. This is useful for recording many things such as lighting, waiting for someone to exit, let's say Air Force One, car accidents, etc. BH

[Rocco Schult]

yeah, post triggering is cool. was not aware there was something going on there. mostly used on hi-speed ala phantom and such. but cool to know that it'll will be enabled once.

[Tom Lowe]

Another useful feature for cinematographers is post triggering. Last week I confirmed with Red that post triggering, though not available today, will be implemented in the future. For those of you who don't know, post triggering is the ability to record continuously, analogous to a loop record, and then by triggering you will start a save cycle. In effect keeping the prior 5 seconds (or whatever) and then the recording going forward. This is useful for recording many things such as lighting, waiting for someone to exit, let's say Air Force One, car accidents, etc. BH

Yeah, or lion kills on the Serengeti! Or croc kills in some river in Kenya. One minute you're sipping your beer, the next second, some zebra is bitten in half flying through the air, and you're diving across your jeep to hit "record"... :)

Is it 5 seconds, or 10? Adjustable?

[conrad gaunt]

I`d like to know if the possibility of recording RAW image data (ie, non compressed) might become a timelapse option, since media speed shouldn`t be an issue for timelapse, depending on interval times.

[bradvr]

I`d like to know if the possibility of recording RAW image data (ie, non compressed) might become a timelapse option, since media speed shouldn`t be an issue for timelapse, depending on interval times.
It will be great and convenient to have an intervelometer integrated into the RED. However, truth be told, using a contemporary digital camera (Canon 30D) is a great solution for time lapse. We own (and rent) after market intervelometers for our still cameras and since the resulting images are greater then 7 megapixels are suitable for high def (4K?) work. SInce it consumer so few frames it is a great solution.

As far as work flow goes, it is easy to create a Automator script to scale and resize the images into QuickTime for integration in FCP. BH

[bradvr]

Yeah, or lion kills on the Serengeti! Or croc kills in some river in Kenya. One minute you're sipping your beer, the next second, some zebra is bitten in half flying through the air, and you're diving across your jeep to hit "record"... :)

Is it 5 seconds, or 10? Adjustable?
No details available on post trigger cache. If you have comments or input on this then post here for Red to see.

I personally think a post trigger with user selectable times of 5,10, and 30 seconds would be adequate.

[Tõnis Liivamägi]

Little OT but most DSLR`s shutters are designed for approx one and a half hours of resulting footage (ca 100000 to 150000 actuations) displayed at normal film speed. Electronic shutters are the best for extensive time-lapse applications but in the other hand I`ve jet not met a person who had complained about the short shutter life cycle on DSLR`s.

Cheers,
T

[Tom Lowe]

It will be great and convenient to have an intervelometer integrated into the RED. However, truth be told, using a contemporary digital camera (Canon 30D) is a great solution for time lapse. We own (and rent) after market intervelometers for our still cameras and since the resulting images are greater then 7 megapixels are suitable for high def (4K?) work. SInce it consumer so few frames it is a great solution.



It's really a convenience issue. Shooting DLSR timelapses RAW is kind of a pain in the neck when it comes time for post processing. RED, in theory, might be a little more convenient, if it worked in a way similar to the HVX200. HVX daytime timelapses are a breeze - super easy to shoot and there is no post production beyond just regular post production for any other clip.

For moco there might be advantages to having a matching camera and lens for compositing timelapses with live-action, a trick I am hoping to learn using Curt's moco rig next year, if I can work it into my budget.

[conrad gaunt]

It will be great and convenient to have an intervelometer integrated into the RED. However, truth be told, using a contemporary digital camera (Canon 30D) is a great solution for time lapse. We own (and rent) after market intervelometers for our still cameras and since the resulting images are greater then 7 megapixels are suitable for high def (4K?) work. SInce it consumer so few frames it is a great solution.

As far as work flow goes, it is easy to create a Automator script to scale and resize the images into QuickTime for integration in FCP. BH

Good point, but read this..

WARNING ABOUT CANON AND MODERN CONSUMER S@@T
I have a canon 10D and an interval timer switch, however, after about ten thousand frames or so my canon sensor decides to mysteriously disappear from within the sealed camera body (I only use one wide angle lens, and I don`t take it off as policy, dust,don`t need to, only bought two, lost other etc). Its happened twice now, and since canon people always say "well wheres it gone?", and I always say "you tell me, inside somewhere, floating about", and generally get made to feel like some kinda houdini fraudster, why bother spending your life doing it. I thought this camera would last decades, and since it ain`t ever been mishandled or dropped, I can only blame poor design and build. And I can`t be bothered with equipment designed to fail mechanically wise (as that seems the case), in less than a year. Deep breath. Or guarantees that run out while my camera is on vacation being fixed for months on end, or argueing whether I should pay for the fix. Apart from the problems of the short lifespan of modern consumer s#1t, I agree about the image quality, thats why I bought it, and to kill time while Red was concieved (now is that i before e, looks wrong). However they`ve lost me as a customer, as discovering these problems is expensive and irksome. Good luck with your cameras, don`t over work them, they tire easy.
I should mention I was shooting clouds at about 1 frame every 6 sec, high-res jpeg capture during the last failure, and before that boats at Whitby during sunset. Basically the speed my old 2gig card could sustain writes at, so more stop motion than time-lapse you could argue. I was planning to use it for long interval timelapse (trees/plants spanning years), once I had a newer model (which I planned to buy every year), till I had many camera hides working on many long term subjects. Consumer equipment sucks basically. I won`t waste my efforts or my money on them again.

ps, Its interv"a"lometers, I`m being petty, but you rent them out. Thinking about canon customer support hurts my brain.. Then there`s the faulty driver disk I got, available online only to AOL customers (at the time) etc etc ...

pps, If anyone from canon reads this, feel free to fix my camera, or just send one of those mystery "non arriving" emails telling me where to send it to for re-glueing

[Mark Thorpe]

NOOB TIME!
Regarding Timelapse with this system, RED. If you are setting up a shoot where you want to take every 12th frame over the course of say 24 Hrs, will the operator have to sit with the system for that time? I mean everything in RED is manual right so all of the parameters require constant attention and manipulation as light levels, weather patterns and other factors could have a detrimental effect on the finished sequence?

I have only ever shot time lapse sequences on lesser formats so please take that into consideration when reading this.

Cheers,
Mark.

[jbeale]

Regarding Timelapse with this system, RED. If you are setting up a shoot where you want to take every 12th frame over the course of say 24 Hrs, will the operator have to sit with the system for that time?

You mean to say you were thinking of leaving your Red unattended for 24 hours? Hmm.. Where would this be, exactly..? :-)

I think it's just like a regular DSLR in full-manual mode. If you want the exposure to change (by adjusting aperture, shutter speed or external ND) then you need to change it yourself. You could simply set it to be good at the brightest time of day but obviously, towards sunset and beyond your image would end up dark.

[Mark Thorpe]

You mean to say you were thinking of leaving your Red unattended for 24 hours? Hmm.. Where would this be, exactly..? :-)
hahaha, you think I'd list that location and time here?? :blink:

Thats kinda what I was thinking too but there will then obviously be a very distinguishable change of image aesthetics as sequence parameters follow the ambient conditions! There's always post I guess.

Cheers,
Mark.

[Tom Lowe]

In theory, there could be auto settings on the camera that could control the iris or exposure time, but that tends to give shoddy timelapse results, from what I understand. I think the HVX can do this, because I remember shooting a sunrise at a lake with the HVX over the course of about an hour, and I'm pretty sure the exposure was set to auto and was changing with the light.

Generally, though, with timelapse, you have to get all your settings done manually, then start the timelapse and hope for the best. Usually for sunsets, I start the timelapse one stop over, and end it one or two stops under as the light goes away.

[Stuart English]

I`d like to know if the possibility of recording RAW image data (ie, non compressed) might become a timelapse option, since media speed shouldn`t be an issue for timelapse, depending on interval times.

Not for on-board recording. REDCODE RAW is so good, there is not a lot of point following an uncompressed RAW to on-board recording strategy. You just burn up 12X the media.

[explosive]

Are the timelapse features enabled on your REDs? If so, is there a long-exposure capability? Say, 30- to 60-second exposures?

thanks!

Don't think so. Last I heard lowest was 1 second.

What you are talking about is taking a photo. So why not just use an DSLR for that?

[Tom Lowe]

1 second? There is an intervalometer, then? One second is great for day timelapse. Most cloud shots, etc, are done with like 3- to 5-second intervals.

[ColinSmith]

As far as I remember, the most that was promised from the longgggg..... timelapse thread some time back was a 1s shutter speed.

You can do pretty much anything else by setting the camera up appropriately and doing smart things with frames in post, so it's not going to stop anything being shot, and it's not anything very complex, just that at the moment it seems you need to allow a bit more post time and a bit more space on the media, although TL is of course pretty gentle on that anyhow.

[Tom Lowe]

1s rules out night/star timelapse photography for the most part, but that's a small issue. DLSRs can do that job. But I guess my main question is whether RED has an intervalometer or intervalometer-type function? If not, is that something we can look forward to later?

[Mark Thorpe]

Slightly OT but Tom, when shooting Time Lapse photography on DSLR do you then take all the frames in to Photoshop resize and apply filters / effects as required, cut n paste to each and then import to FCP? In a simplified work flow explanation. I've never tried that yet.

Just curious.
Mark.

[jbeale]

I've never used FCP, but in Vegas you can select any number of stills and import them in one group on the timeline. They appear in name order, which for all the DSLRs I know, means they appear in the order they were shot in. A preference setting controls how many video frames each still occupies. I assume most other editing software can do the same thing. No Photoshop is required, you can do cropping, filters and effects in the NLE software.

[Tom Lowe]

Slightly OT but Tom, when shooting Time Lapse photography on DSLR do you then take all the frames in to Photoshop resize and apply filters / effects as required, cut n paste to each and then import to FCP? In a simplified work flow explanation. I've never tried that yet.

Just curious.
Mark.

Mark, it's quite complicated and time consuming. I shoot Canon RAW on my DLSR, then I process all 400 or 500 frames with Photoshop using the Batch/Action function, which CCs and resizes them to 720p or 1080p or 2K, etc, saves them number-sequenced as JPEGs, then you can import them directly into Premiere Pro or After Effects as an Image Sequence. It's a bit of work to get right.

If you ever need step-by-step instructions, I'm always happy to help the best I can, by email or phone or whatever.

I would guess that FCP has file import options similar to Premiere Pro, but I'm not exactly sure.

[Tom Lowe]

I've never used FCP, but in Vegas you can select any number of stills and import them in one group on the timeline. They appear in name order, which for all the DSLRs I know, means they appear in the order they were shot in. A preference setting controls how many video frames each still occupies. I assume most other editing software can do the same thing. No Photoshop is required, you can do cropping, filters and effects in the NLE software.

With RAW?

[Mark Thorpe]

If you ever need step-by-step instructions, I'm always happy to help the best I can, by email or phone or whatever. Cheers Tom,
I'll definitely pick yer brains on this in the hopefully near future, I'll PM you at the time.

Best,
Mark.

[Tom Lowe]

Cheers Tom,
I'll definitely pick yer brains on this in the hopefully near future, I'll PM you at the time.

Best,
Mark.

Any time, my friend.

[Stokestack]

Slightly OT but Tom, when shooting Time Lapse photography on DSLR do you then take all the frames in to Photoshop resize and apply filters / effects as required, cut n paste to each and then import to FCP? In a simplified work flow explanation. I've never tried that yet.

You can also bring image sequences into Shake and do your cropping & resizing there. I think someone has written a free raw importer for it; you can probably find it at FXGuide or HighEnd2D.

Since time-lapse shots don't typically require cutting, you're better off optimizing for image quality (in resizing algorithms and color handling) rather than using an editing product.

[Mark Thorpe]

Thanks for the info.

[Stuart English]

I guess my main question is whether RED has an intervalometer or intervalometer-type function?

Not in the camera yet, but we plan to offer one via a camera firmware upgrade.

[Mark Thorpe]

Any ideas what the parameters will be at this point?

[Andy Fordham]

Is there an external connection to allow for a remote shutter release rather than rely on an integral intervalometer.

This is then more useful when running on a motion track and the shutter released by external pc controlling positioning.

[conrad gaunt]

Not for on-board recording. REDCODE RAW is so good, there is not a lot of point following an uncompressed RAW to on-board recording strategy. You just burn up 12X the media.

Thanks for reply. Thats what I assumed, although I worry how it might stand up to post image panning (although not a great deal). Extra file sizes wouldn`t bother me, and I can think of lots of uses for uncompressed stills.

[jbeale]

With RAW?
Actually I shot my timelapse stuff in JPEG just to save space. But there are a bunch of different raw converters and all of them will do batch conversion, AFAIK. If you convert your Raw to a 16-bit format, you aren't loosing any dynamic range in subsequent processing, as long as your NLE handles it. Vegas only just now with version 8 offers 32-bit floating point bit depth.