Today I went out to Little India in Kuala Lumpur to do some street shooting. I had the Nex-5n with me with the Leica Summicron 35mm and the EVF. Nothing fancy, just a few street shots to capture what’s going on in Little India. What probably impressed me the most were the many food and clothing places in the alley ways.
Tag Archives: Kuala Lumpur
Tutorial: how to do a time-lapse video with the Nikon V1
As part of my review of the Nikon V1, I wanted to check out the interval timer function which is perfectly suited for creating time-lapse videos. So here is a simple one that I took today.
Software that you will need:
- In case you shoot RAW some RAW-converter to create JPG files (such as Lightroom or Aperture)
One of the questions is whether you want to shoot RAW or JPG for the files. Some people will tell you basic jpg to save space and this is definitely true for long sequences. For short ones however, I recommend RAW because you can simply adjust more things without deteriorating the images. The one above was shot in RAW and then converted to JPG with Lightroom. - Time Lapse Assembler for Mac or Apple Quicktime 7 Pro (Win/Mac) for creating a movie from the picture sequence
Once you have created the sequences of pictures you will have to stitch them together to a movie. I used the free tool Time Lapse Assembler which is fast and did a great job. For post-production you can also later reopen the video in, say, iMovie to add captions, music, etc.
Hardware that you will need:
- Tripod
- Large SD card (at least 16GB, preferable larger)
How to shoot/create the time-lapse video:
I will keep the necessary steps as brief as possible. This will be a Bruce Lee style tutorial: “Take what is useful, discard what is useless, and add something to make it unique.” There are different ways to do the same thing – this is one out of many.
The shooting part:
- Mount camera on tripod and choose position/zoom
You want a steady image – shake is bad. - Switch Exposure Program to Manual and adjust exposure
You do not want to use any of the automatic modes because they might change exposure between frames, especially if the light conditions are changing. Also set white balance to an appropriate but fixed value if you shoot jpeg. If you shoot RAW, it does not really matter and you can adjust white balance in post-production – that’s what I did. - Focus by half-pressing the shutter button. Now switch to manual focus.
This ensures that the focus is the same for the full sequence that you will be shooting. - Set the interval shooting timer. Set the camera to take a shot every 5 seconds and choose a large number of shots to be taken.
For the one above I took 250 – you might want to take more.
The post-production part:
- (you can skip this step if you shot the sequence in jpg) Import the files into your favorite RAW converter and adjust for white balance, exposure, etc. Apply the same changes to the full sequence to keep the sequence smooth, or exactly know what you are doing!
I adjusted the white balance to be slighter warmer. - Export the files as jpgs with width 1280 and height proportionally.
- Open the sequence in your time-lapse assembler and generate the movie.
I used Time Lapse Assembler with its standard settings and a frame rate of 15 frames per second.
That’s it.
Links and related tutorials
The challenge – stranger #3
Today I did not even plan for shooting the next stranger. I just wanted to pick up the electronic viewfinder for my Nex-5n. I was so amazed with the one of the Nex-7 so that I was clear when I returned it that I had to get the EVF for the Nex-5n. While it looks rather bad on the Nex-5n it works extremely well. Will review it soon.
So on the way back we passed these security guards and my wife told me that this would have been a great shot for my strangers project and challenged me. So I went back for a shot. One of the two felt a bit uncomfortable so that I really kept it brief. The other one was quite comfortable and actually moved the mic to the shoulder pad.
Taken with Leica Summicron 35mm @ f2.0 on Sony Nex-5n. Processed with the Lightroom 4 Beta.
The antique dealer – stranger #2
Went to Pasar Seni today to further test the Nikon V1 (see my rolling review here). But today was the “wife test” day, so my wife got the V1 to play with – will update the review later.
So I walked around Pasar Seni with my X100 and found this amazing antique store where the owner was collecting mugs from all over the world (and many other things). It was clear that he would be my second stranger – he was immediately in.
The captioning with the white line is shamelessly ripped-off from Rick Nunn – just looks great.
Taken with Fujifilm X100. Processed with the Lightroom 4 Beta.
Terence S Jones - a guy with a camera 