Timelapse Photography Tips With A Nikon Camera

Timelapse photography is growing ever popular with photographers who want to try something a little different. The technique takes a lot of patience, but at the end of the day you get a stunning set of images that tell a story.

It's a great way to capture motion of objects which move slowly, for example clouds or the coming in and going out of the tides. Basically, the technique involves setting the camera up to take an image at specified intervals, depending on the speed of the subject. The faster the subject moves, the less time in between shots you'll need. 

The shots are then gathered together and a movie can be made out of them. This might sound complicated, but there are plenty of software programmes available today to help you create a great timelapse film.

To give you an example of what is possible with Nikon kit today, take a look at the video above. 

Top tips for shooting timelapse photos 

Don't use auto mode

You need to manually set your camera at the chosen destination to the required aperture, shutter speed, white balance and ISO.  All the shots in the timelapse need to look uniform - if you leave auto mode on, the camera might decide the settings need to change, making some image look different to others, and ruining the effect. 

Use Manual Focus 

You'll need to focus on your subject and then lock it. If you leave the camera on autofocus it will re-focus before every shot, potentially accidentally re-focussing on the wrong thing. 

Where is your subject going?

As your subject is moving, you need to make sure you compose the image so the subject has somewhere to go in the frame, otherwise it will disappear from the frame as time goes on, leaving you with an uninspiring and boring timelapse video at the end. Bear this in mind then setting up, as you won't be able to move the camera once you start shooting. 

Reduce the resolution of your images

To be able to store potentially hundreds of images, you'll either need a huge memory card, or to reduce the size of your images slightly. As the end result is going to be a video where you see each image for a split second, image quality isn't the major factor here. Save yourself space and the hassle of changing memory cards by lowering the res slightly.