Timelapse Photography

Timelapse video and behind the scenes from a stay in Wainui, Banks Peninsula, Canterbury, New Zealand

As I often work solo, I’m always looking for ways to automate processes, as it frees me up to take variations of photography and video while I’m on location and the lighting is good. Timelapse videos are great material to create when putting together a story of a location.

I have returned to timelapses after some recent succesful attempts to automate the process. I used to find it frustrating being tied to the camera during sunrise/sunset in order to adjust the exposure, thereby missing other photo opportunities. Auto exposure is tricky for day to night timelapses because of the need to control the exposure variables of shutter speed, aperture and ISO in a particular order.

The Sony mirrorless cameras I use have very good timelapse capabilities, though I haven’t been able to fully automate timelapses using just the camera. There have been a few failed attempts when things didn’t work quite as expected. It turns out I still need to adjust aperture manually, which is not ideal.

After some research I have found a product called unleashed that is optimized to adjust day-night exposures automatically. As a bonus, the unleashed device will reduce the weight and clutter of remote releases and preview devices I carry in my camera bag. The device is still on its way from Germany but, judging from the experience of others, it will be a very useful tool.

Other challenges in day to night timelapses include: