One of the MOST IMPORTANT things you said is that the Interval is NOT the time between shots AND that it has to be longer than the shutter speed. I discovered this the HARD way when I started trying to use the intervalometer for astro photos a few days ago. I used to do it the hard way, with a remote cable release and timer. But that's a real PIA, especially in freezing temps! So, thanks for clarifying the meaning of "interval" in this set up. Now, if only this would work with the mirror locked up! :) (Nikon D750 here).

This the best "Interval Timer" tutorial I've seen, my Z50 now makes sense, well done Leigh & Raymond.

WOW! I always wondered why my D4S's intervals never worked the intuitive way I wanted it to!!! Thank you so much for this! I've done hours of astrophotography by just bumping up the numbers to 9999x1 shots! I just tested this out. Oh my gosh now the shots goes down 1 by 1 instead of like 30 at a time (I used to set it as 1 second for 20 second exposures!) You just gained a sub lady!

I've spent the past hour or so trying to get a handle on how to set interval timing on my Z50. I watched a lot of videos, most of which offered some good advice, but still left me with questions. Then I found your video from 14 years (!!) ago, which closed the gap, and then found this video that makes everything crystal clear! Excellent information, well presented! You even used my camera, and in your example, used my birthday (5/26)! How cool is that? Thanks so much, and wishing you continued success with your channel! ;-)

Awesome, easily understood as always. Thank you 🙏

You have a real gift for speaking and presentation. Very well done thank you. 👍🙏

To get the 16 stops difference of light change in those 2 hours this is what you should try. ISO (automatic) , max iso 800, 14 BIT NEF, ! D-light off! especially with jpeg because this causes flickering. wb-> don't use auto as ever with time lapses! Focus on manual and infinity. With a good lens like the 50mm 1.8 S you can use the Pr0gram mode. I tend to use A and than dial in f2.8 . Interval about 10 to 20 seconds, exposure smoothing on in the time lapse / or intervallometer option. Lightmetering Matrix, don't use spot metering. You can add some motion with a Syrp Genie mini or a slider, star tracker.

Wonderful you guys. Congratulations

Great explanation. It's definitely more clear now.

Great video! Thank you

Nice and concise.Thank you.

You've got a new subscriber👏🏻

Very nice video. Is there a way to set the exposure time greater than 30 seconds on the time lapse? I would like to shoot using a star tracker and need exposure times of a minute or two. I was able to do this on the D5300 with an intervalometer, but I can't connect it to the Z50. For now, I am using bulb and using a remote shutter via wireless, but I have to press the button each time to start and stop the shot. Thanks

very well explained Thanks a lot

It is not only the D780 that has a bracketing and time-lapse movie option. All Z series cameras has that too. It's just not in the interval timer menu. If you set a bracketing sequence before you start an interval photo session, the bracketing will be incorporated into the interval session, unless you have interval priority; ON. The time-lapse movie option is a submenu right under the interval photo shooting menu. you can see it (greyed out) here 5:08 The time-lapse movie option unfortunately doesn't save the pictures together with the movie.

@JamesZhenYu

3 жыл бұрын

Great answer

Do I need to cover the viewfinder during long exposure photography?

I like the trick of selecting 9999 interval shots and whenever it's done shut down the camera. Never thought of that. Thanks for the trick Raymond. :)

You have amazingly helpful content, thank you for putting this together.

Thanks for the run down Does Z7 and such have a video output mode to create an internal clip from the batch of images like Lumix does? I find that most helpful to avoid days in post... if I need a quick B-roll timelapse. Lumix has option to chose from HD - 4k with a variation of frame rate possibilities. I shoot tons of timelapse and this saves sooooo much time.

I have been setting my time lapses to only +1” on my Z6 and it seems to work fine especially for when i take the time lapse and stack the images for star trails so there is less fill area. Curious why you suggested +2-5” unless you are taking a ridiculously long exposure which seems silly for a time lapse.

Very helpful!

I shoot a lot of storm time lapses with my D850 and Z6. The interval is typically between 1 and 3 seconds. I set up the shot and much of the time the storm will move from one side of the frame to the other. The problem I have is that I can’t really tell when the “subject” of the shot has moved out of the frame since the LCD is blacked out during the time lapse. I have seen other brands (specifically, Sony) that don’t black out the LCD so it’s easy to see when the clouds move out of the shot. Do you know if there is any way to keep the LCD on during a time lapse on a Nikon?

I have a question. I have a Nikon D7000 and I need a lens for it plus a memory card. I do not know much about cameras and I want to use it for my you tube channel. Do you think that I should sell this camera to keh and get a different camera i could use easily or should i keep it?

Hey Leigh. Nikon Z7 have the option to use either the Interval Timer Shooting system OR the Time-lapse Movie system. What would you use ?

I also really like your suggestion about resetting the file numbering and folder when doing timelapse. Usually I don't take more than 40 images for astro shots, but at least once my file numbering rolled over when shooting Orion. It wasn't a big issue since there were so few images to sort, but I will adopt your suggestion to avoid future problems. Thanks! :)

nice video as ever

Can you suggest settings for white balance please and also how to focus for astrophotogaphy. I’d like to try time lapse of stars. Great video tho 👍

I have the z6 been messing with timelapse since lockdown began, I wanted to try and get a sunset and night shot but of course the change in exposure makes this very difficult. Do not underestimate the P mode as you can set it so you have perfect exposure going from day to night or night to day, still got lots to learn but enjoying it. my downfall is in processing

which is the fastest shutter speed to choose in z6 that does not cause flicker in the time lapse movie?

Thank you🎉

Love your shirt!

Z6 + Z7 are the best camera's for day to night time lapse, actually the only camera's that automatically manage the huge difference between illumination of the landscape and the air. You can even time lapse the stars/milkyway and in full sunlight and in one go without touching the camera, no devices needed at all. Even time lapse flickering won't be vissible and the change in light and exposure is handled in a natural way. You have 2 choices in camera time lapse and intervallometer that produces raws or jpegs. The D750, D800/d810/d850 are not able to handle this. The D780 might me able as well. Sony camera's A7 III / III r work a bit less nice but both deliver acceptable results.

Very helpful

Tks for your vid. I understand the exposure time cannot be longer than the interval time. So if I were to shoot star trail where I want as little gap as possible with 30s exposure, shall I set the interval to 31s. Or 60s exposure and 61s interval? Whats the real purpose of having interval. Is it 1) to cool down the sensor 2) to let enough time for cam to write What if I set to zero interval. Meaning letting it shoot continuously non-stop. What is the result. Some camera model already has Live Composition and this function has zero interval. Tks so much

I have a canon 200D ii i have time lapse settings on my camera on using the settings at night all of it shutter 30” iso 400-12800 f 4 still its dark whats the setting i should use

Raymond’s shirt rocks!!!

I think you forgot to mention a pretty significant piece of info… for beginners like me. Once you press start, the camera m just starts going.. how do I know if I have the shot focused in? Does that need to be done before opening up this menu? Also, how do you stop the time lapse early? I’m not sure what to press. Also, is there a way to see what the battery is at? Once it starts the screen just goes black and I can’t see anything.

Would this apply to the Z5?

why does this video not point out that you cannot shoot more than 1 hour .30 mins then it stops with a 128 G B Card Why do you have to re shoot every 1 and half hours instead of a continuous shoot ? Thanks Troy Using Z6

Ultra-cool T-shirt!

@Deuchtivie

4 жыл бұрын

I couldn't agree more. Where can I buy one?

Could you speak about battery life? How does that work out? I would think the battery couldn’t possibly last long enough, but obviously it does. Do you just run on the internal battery or somehow use an external power source?

@LeighAndRaymond

4 жыл бұрын

We turn off image review and the LCD screen during shooting to help with battery life but if we need more than a couple hours of shooting, we use this plug-in battery... amzn.to/36HudvB along with a power bank like this... amzn.to/2ZPwymM or the larger... glnk.io/p5q/thesnapchick

A very informative video, what min. size memory card would be good to use.?

@lescobrandon3047

4 жыл бұрын

Bill A - Depends I suppose on the camera and what size images are. RAW files can fill up a card much faster than .jpg files.

@LeighAndRaymond

4 жыл бұрын

This depends on camera and file size, as Ken said. I can say that I have a 120gb card in the Z7 and it typically gives us enough space. If we think we'll need more, we might use raw-small so we can fit more files on the card!

one example of when you might have more than one shot per interval: HDR time lapse. You would need to capture multiple shots of the same scene... at different exposures... every interval.

I think the low view count of this video is a shame. Thank you so much for explaining the feature for me. I wanted to understand this for astrophotography. Your guidance will be greatly appreciated.

ok......i have a nikon750...I do startrails and timelapse photos.....in startrails every photo is about 25-30secs long (interval !)....so my time between shots has to be at least 35secs......is correct ????......but in this case (startrails ) with such long time between shots will my startrails have long gaps between circles of stars ??????.....please help...on this argument I hear different bells.......

Something you didn’t touch on was to make sure you check the clock setting on your camera. If you cross a time zone or have a daylight savings time change (I know, not a problem in AZ) your start time or finish time shown by the interval timer settings will be off.

@bryandouglas507

Жыл бұрын

Funny, I actually did a Milky Way shoot on the night of CST to CDT time change and it was freezing out!

Can the internal be utilized with BULB mode? What happens if I set the shutter speed to BULB mode and then my intervals set to lets say 4'...will the camera adjust to a 4 minute exposure and allow enough time to process/save the images? Shooting Nikon D850

@LeighAndRaymond

3 жыл бұрын

I haven’t tried it but it would be a risky proposition. The interval you set begins when the shutter opens. If you don’t stop your exposure with enough time for the camera to process the image (which will depend on your settings), the next interval will be skipped.

Requesting clarification on setting the interval: you clearly state in this video that the interval is from the start of one image to the start of the next; it is not the time gap between the end of one image to the start of the next. This seems to be the way it works on my Z5, but in other forums online people believe it is the time gap between shots. Some are stating that their camera will miss frames if they set (for example) a 6-second shutter speed, then set the interval to 5 seconds. According to your description, this shouldn't work properly because the shutter speed is longer than the interval. Is this correct?

I have the Z72 and I tried several times to get this to work before watching. No matter what I put on the interval or number of photos it does a random amount of photos (not the number of photos OR intervals) and then stops 😢

Why does my screen go black when I start the time lapse ? I’m not even sure if it’s recording

great 🙏❤️👌

hey my interval timer shooting greyed out and when I press it says "This option is not available at current settings or in current camera state" please help

@SpaklesDr

3 жыл бұрын

did you ever figure out this problem. I am currently having the same issue. Date and time are set, as that is the only thing I have seen as a fix. But it did not fix it.

Just wanna pop in and say dope SW shirt

Thanks for a great video. I would love to do timelapse with my D850, but the process of editing and compiling a time-lapse movie seems very complicated. That is what is preventing me from taking up time-lapsing seriously. I would love to get into it, though!

@LeighAndRaymond

4 жыл бұрын

It is time-consuming but we'll demystify the process for you in a future video! :)

@simonharding5696

4 жыл бұрын

@@LeighAndRaymond that would be great, thank you!! 🙂

@br2v

4 жыл бұрын

do you own lightroom, even old versions are working well (Full HD) ? or else try Virtual Dub, Syrp has a nice instruction video how to use Virtual Dub, up to 4K.

Very informative video on Time Lapse and Interval Shooting, Leigh & Raymond. One tip I would add for those that may be shooting at 15 to 30 second exposures is that these are not the actual exposure lengths that the camera will use, therefore you need to account for that. The normal exposure numbering convention on cameras is not accurate for all exposures. Have you ever considered why gamers are marked with 1/15th or 1/30th of a second instead of 1/16th or 1/32nd? If you start at a base exposure of 1 second and start dividing by 2 to decrease one full stop of exposure after 1/8th of a second you would think you'd see markings of 1/16th, 1/32, 1/64, 1/128 etc. Instead the standard convention has been 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/125 etc. Why? Human nature. Easier to say and think of 1/250th or 1/500th of a second than it is to say 1/256th or 1/512th of a second. However, the camera actually does shoot at 1/128th, 1/256th, 1/512th, etc. regardless of what the display reads. And, the same is true at slower speeds, which is where this matters in regard to Interval Shooting. So, if you start multiplying a base 1 sec exposure by 2 to increase your exposures by 1 full stop you'll find that 15 secs is really 16 secs, and 30 secs is really 32 secs. So, if you were to set an interval of 31 secs for a 30sec exposure, the camera will count down to the next shot before the exposure is complete. It won't shorten the exposure, but it will decrement the count early and the camera will stop before you expected. So, if you planned on taking 200 images the camera will only end up taking around 180 because it's counted down all 200 images in the time it actually took to make 180 exposures. Therefore, you need to set the interval for a 15 sec exposure to 17 as a minimum, and for a 30 sec exposure it should be 33 sec min. This is only a concern with exposures from 15 to 30 secs (as displayed). With the extended exposure menu that is available on newer Z cameras Nikon actually uses a 60 sec, 120 sec, etc. exposure.

I love doing long exposures traffic time lapse.

Here I disagree, the interval priority I would turn on for daylight AS WELL. Because otherwise the speed (eg. of clouds) can change within the movie, when the single exposure time changes.

To answer your question at 8:57, you would want to take more than one shot per interval if you are trying to compose Timelapse in HDR.

I've done time-lapses with my D810. However, I never use the camera's interval features. I found it not very intuitive. I use my Pluto Trigger. The interface makes sense to me and it is very versatile as I use it as my camera remote, for long exposure shots, astro, and to capture lightning. I also started creating motion time-lapse with Edelkrone products. Edelkrone's apps, like Pluto Trigger's are more intuitive to me.

Thank you for the video, never did a time lapse before. Don't timelapses extremely fast increase your camera shutter count?

@n.moustakas4776

3 жыл бұрын

If you use the silent shutter it wont effekt your shuttercount. The shuttercount just counts the use of the mechanical shutter.

👍👍

Why to use more than one shot in an interval: For example, when you are taking pictures of yourself. Set the timer to 2s or so and 3-5 pictures per interval. Then get in front of the lens and do your posing. Got a great pose in front of a great background but your tongue‘s hanging out strangely? No problem, the camera took more than one picture of that moment and one will be fine 😁

How to shot timelapse all night long with Nikon Z50? How to power the camera? Standard battery doesn't work so long.

Frustrating about batteries ... « z » cameras needs so much energy ... how do you deal with it?

@LeighAndRaymond

4 жыл бұрын

We have found that the Z cameras do fine for most time lapses but we do turn off image review and the LCD screen during shooting. If we need more than a couple hours, we did purchase this plug-in battery... amzn.to/36HudvB. We use it with a power bank like this... amzn.to/2ZPwymM or the larger... glnk.io/p5q/thesnapchick

@br2v

4 жыл бұрын

I can pull out 3h45 min in cold conditions 0C ( freezing point) with turning off image review/lcd . I know in similar conditions a D750 gets to 5h, a D800 to 4,5h. I think that the D780 is the best time lapse camera since it will last even longer and I presume ( did not test yet) that it will handle the day-to night (holy grail of time lapses) as well as the z6 or Z7... (instruction in one of my reactions) I do a lot of astro lapsing with/without sliders et cetera. Just finished an instruction article for a Dutch astro magazine.

The one video I need and no Closed Caption 😞

Trouble with the Nikon is that it doesn't allow you to set a period when you do not want it to shoot. For example you want to show the seasons changing but don't want night time shots. What it needs is to allow you to set a start and end time for each day - but clearly the Nikon programmers are not up to this task.

5:10

Soy persona sorda, no hay subtítulos en tu vídeo.

A 2 minute instruction has beed stretched to 15 mins!!!

You look like you could do modeling.

This isn't the first clip for someone who needs to learn time lapse. The explanation is for experienced time-lapse shooter.