Expert Interview

About Mr. Vilas Waghamare

He is working as a cameraman in company which work for DRDO for making product
videos & simulation. He done diploma in cinematography from FTII Pune. And working in
this field for last 10 years.




1. How you can define time lapse photography?
Time-lapse photography can be considered the opposite of high speed photography or the
photography in which very slow movements or changes are captured. Actually, in time lapse, the
things which appear steady to human eye, but which change over a long time, are filmed over a
regular interval of time and played back at normal movie speed.

2. What all are the equipment needed for time lapse photography?
A good and sturdy tripod, a camera, an intervalometer, and neutral density filter, this is all that
you need.
Stability is the most essential component in time-lapse photography. A heavy sturdy quality
tripod is an absolute must.
One of the most important thing in time lapse is accurate and reliable automatic shutter triggering,
and its what an intervalometer does, so if you dont have one built into your camera then you
need to buy an external one.
Neutral density filters i.e. ND filters are essentially sunglasses for your lens, ND filters reduce the
amount of light entering the camera without altering its color. ND filters allow slower shutter
speeds and come in handy when we want to create motion blur by dragging our shutter.

3. Please tell more about camera, like brand, features required etc..
Well about camera, any camera will do, but DSLR cameras have several advantages. Like
today most of the DSLR come with built in intervalometer. If you ask for brand, then I will say
that, go for one with which you are comfortable. In general cannon is good for outdoors.

4. You just talked about motion blur, generally it is avoided, then why it is good in time lapse?
Basically motion blur occurs when the image being photographed changes slightly during its
exposure. This change or motion is captured in the form of a slight blur. Think of this blur as
extra information about what is happening within the scene . In still photography a fast shutter
speed and minimal (or no) motion blur is usually the goal, but because time-
lapse photography involves the blending of many still frames to create a moving sequence, we
can utilize slower shutter speeds and motion blurring to create a smoother looking time-lapse
compilation.

5. How you choose location for it?
I think time lapse is the only type of photography which doesnt need any particular location. You
can create time lapse almost from anything. Very normal day to day scenes like blooming
flowers, busy street, sunset, moving clouds, can be a subject of time lapse. What you need is just
to look in your surroundings. Yah.. but regarding the location of tripod, you must be conscious.
Take care that you place tripod on leveled floor. And also avoid extending the vertical center rod
unless you absolutely have to because it adds to instability.

6. For time lapse, in what mode you operate camera? Like manual, auto, shutter priority or
aperture priority?
Manual mode (M on your camera dial) is usually the best choice for most time-lapse scenes with
relatively constant light. This is because it provide entire control in your hand. But there is also
one problem with manual mode, it might quickly over or under expose your image as the scene
changes. For example if you set your exposure manually for a low light sunrise scene, as the
view gets brighter your image will be quickly overexposed. In such situations shoot in Aperture
priority mode. Set your aperture and allow the camera to select the corresponding shutter speed
for the desired exposure. Over time the camera will meter the changing light in your scene and
adjust shutter speed automatically.

7. How to adjust white balance and ISO settings?
Selecting a white balance come in picture when you are shooting in JPEG mode. White balance,
if not selected properly, can create some pretty scary color casts. So I advise to shoot in RAW
format. Because a lot of more options are available in Photoshop than your camera menu.
About ISO, when shooting in manual mode dont ever forget to set your ISO to a specific value
and remove it from automatic control. I have forgotten a few times and had to deal with more
flicker and noise than I wanted to. Keeping a low ISO setting will result in less photographic
noise but will require a brighter scene. A higher ISO results in a sensor that is more sensitive to
lower light situations but, it also subjects your final images to more random noise.

8. You just talked about Flicker, what it is it?
Basically while playing your time lapse sometimes you encounter with few frames which are
relatively dark or bright as compared to other frames. Due to this the time lapse film
appear to flicker or strobe a few times a second. This is flicker. And I think it is the biggest
enemy of time lapse photographer.

9. Then how to avoid flicker?
Shooting in manual mode is the ultimate solution. But some times you have to shoot in AP mode.
In this case post processing deflickering software come handy. You can remove the flicker to
great extent by using GBDeflicker which is a plugin for Adobe.

10. How to choose the interval between two photographs?
Yah the most important point. The interval depends on the movement that is taking place in
front of you. There is no any hard and fast rule for it. You have to experiment and learn because
no two scenes are exactly alike, but in general it ranges from 1s to 60s. For very slowly changing
things, like what I photograph, construction of machine, buildings can have intervals as large as 5
15 minutes also. It purely depends on subject.

11. Which post processing software is good for time lapse?
As usual you are going to need Adobe Photoshop for editing your images. But creating time lapse
movie from images Adobe After Effects CS5 is best. Some free software are also available like
LRTimelapse or Photolapse 3.