Is Time Lapse Photography in Your Skill Set? by Bob Coates

© Stillfx

Intro by Skip Cohen

In the 190+ year history of photography, there have never been more creative tools at your fingertips than today! As imaging artists, whether your specialty is weddings/events, portraits, wildlife, or even macro - your goal is always to tell a compelling story.

Bob Coates shares an incredible tool, which as he states doesn't always get the attention it deserves - time lapse photography. And, he's included a few solid tips to help you create outstanding time lapse stories and in turn create more excitement with your clients. Remember your goal with each client - exceed expectations and make working with you habit-forming!

Check out Bob's website to see more time lapse images. His website, Successful-Photographer is always filled with great content to help you raise the bar on your images. And, stop by the Lumix Lounge and meet the rest of the Luminary Team. This is one of the most diverse and talented groups of artists in professional photography.

Panasonic's tagline is "Changing Photography," and they never slow down on developing new technology to add to our creative skills and the quality of the images we capture!

Click to find out more about the GX8

by Bob Coates

One feature that doesn’t often get attention in the Lumix cameras is the ability to impressively compress time in a very easy fashion to tell a very different story of a scene.
 
The Lumix line of cameras has a built-in interval meter to control the time between image capture of individual frames. You set the parameters depending upon the story you are trying to tell. This will take some experimentation but here are some guides to get you started on your captures for scenery.

• Fast moving clouds and storms, one frame every ten seconds.
• Slow moving clouds, one frame every one or two seconds.
• In the flower opening video below an image was made once every thirty-eight seconds.
• The look and feel of the finished video can also be altered when processing the files at different playback frame rates.

 
Your camera should be mounted on a tripod or set on a non-movable object for the capture. Advanced techniques involve moving the camera on a rail across the scene at the same time or mounting the camera in a moving vehicle for even more possibilities, but let’s keep the camera still for now.
 
Here’s the best part! The camera allows you to process the time-lapse still images into the finished video with a multitude of options in the camera. You have choices to the quality (size), playback rate, and direction of the video.
 
In the video above are three versions processed straight out of the Lumix GX8 camera sized to 4K. You can choose any number of settings for size along with the number of frames per second. I used 6 fps, 12 fps, and 24 fps. Because I made these in 4K I am able to add additional movement to the videos without loosing quality. For variety the middle video at 12fps video was processed in reverse order.
 
Enjoy becoming a ‘Master of Time’ by playing with this feature. It’s a blast!
 
Yours in creative Photography,     

Bob

---