Time Lapse Photography by Bradley Stearn

The above playlist contains photography time lapse videos photographed by myself. I will be shooting time lapses regulary throughout summer. Subscribe to my channel on YouTube to be kept up to date with what I am shooting. At the end of summer I will be making a montage containing all of the best time lapses that I shot. So far I have shot starscape and cloud time lapse.

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How to photograph stars for time lapse

Now I am no expert at photographing the stars, but I have learned a lot from the small amount of experience that I have had. In this post I am going to give a step by step guide on how to achieve the best results when photographing stars, along with tips and tricks I have learnt, and also with some tips on the post production side of star trail photography.

Equipment needed for star photography is very basic, you will need a DSLR, a wide lens (I use an EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5), a sturdy tripod to ensure the camera doesn't move during the long exposure shots or during the time lapse shoot and an intervalometer which is a device which automatically takes a picture for you at set intervals of time. I use the Magic Lantern firmware hack on my Canon DSLR, this makes it to I can have a built in intervalometer which saves carrying extra equipment. I highly recomend taking warm clothes, you will not regret taking gloves and a beanie hat, as it will get cold standing outside at night doing nothing.

These are the settings that I used for the star trail examples below, these settings don't need to be copied exactly to get good results. Firstly make sure you are using a long shutter speed, I recommend between 25 to 30 seconds long, doing this allows for plenty of light to hit your DSLRs sensor which helps bring out the stars in the sky. You also need to make sure you are shooting with an aperture which is at least f/3.5 or lower. ISO depends on how much brightness you need, but I usually use ISO 1600 on my Canon T3i because anything higher is quite noisy.

I won't go into too much detail about the post production side of star time lapse photography, but I do have recommendations on software to use if you are a Windows user. I usually batch edit and process time lapse photos using Digital Photo Professional, which is the free editing software that comes with all Canon DSLRs. I will then use Sony Vegas to edit the photos into a video file that can be uploaded to YouTube. I also have a free application called 'Startrails' which places every photo from a star time lapse into one image to show the 'trail' of the stars over time. You can download the 'Startrails' application by clicking this link which will take you to the official website.


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DSLR Time Lapse Light Streak Cars Magic Lantern

Photography by Bradley Stearn

A time lapse I have been wanting to make for years now, I have just been procrastinating about it. I finally persuaded my friend to drive me to make this last night, and I am very happy with the result. I have always liked the light streaks that you get from long exposures and car lights at night.

I shot this time lapse with the Canon 600D / T3i DSLR, with the EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 kit zoom lens. I used the Magic Lantern V2.3 intervalometre to make the time lapse, I shot at 5 second exposure at 7 second intervals.ISO 100, f/5.6, 18mm focal length.

Equipment used in this video -
Canon 600D / T3i DSLR w/ EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5 - 5.6 kit zoom lens
Manfrotto 700 RC2
Magic Lantern V2.3
Integral Ultima pro 32gb
Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9.0

Time Lapse is something I really enjoy, I am shooting another time lapse during this week, so expect to see that on my YouTube and blog by next Monday.

Starscape Timelapse Test Canon DSLR

This is a short starscape time lapse that I produced for a college music video project. I wanted to produce a much longer time lapse to share on my channel, however I liked how this version turned out. We used this 4 second time lapse in our music video. Also it isn't a shooting star going through the sky, it was actually an airplane.

I really did want to produce a longer time lapse to share on the channel, however after a week of attempting most nights, I just couldn't produce it. It was either too cloudy to see the stars, too foggy, or once it was okay, and 20 minutes into the time lapse the clouds appeared ruining the video. I decided that this version worked the best, with the airplane.

I shot this on my Canon 600D/T3i HDSLR with the EF 50mm f/1.8 II prime lens. I shot with a 20 second exposure, with 25 second intervals using Magic Lantern on a 32gb SD card. Auto white balance, and ISO. I left the camera shooting for around 16 minutes.

Equipment used in this video -
Canon 600D / T3i HDSLR
EF 50mm f/1.8 II
Integral ultima pro 32gb SD card
Magic Lantern firmware hack with the built in intervalometer

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Cambridge Guided Busway Cycling Time lapse

A quick cycling time lapse video shot on my GoPro camera cycling down the guided busway in Cambridgeshire. This is from St Ives to Swavesey. I used the P1 photo mode on the gopro, which means a photo which taken every single second.

GoPro HD Hero Cycling Time lapse

The second time lapse video for my YouTube channel which has been shot with the GoPro HD Hero camera. I used the special time lapse mode, with the P2 setting which meant a photo was taken every 2 seconds. I used the GoPro handlebar and seat post mount to attach the camera to my bikes handlebars. Click here for more GoPro videos.

GoPro HD Hero Photo Time Lapse Mode

I had a go at using the built in photo time lapse mode in the GoPro HD Hero camera. I set the camera to mode P5 which meant a picture was taken every 5 seconds. Someone suggested using mode P2 for doing clouds, as it makes them even smoother. I will definitely try a time lapse with P2 mode in the future. I left the camera running for just under one hour, and managed to get around 700 photos. I used Microsoft Picture Manager to crop all of the photos in batch from 4:3 to 16:9, doing this I lost parts of the image, however I don't think it was too much of a problem. Click here for more of my GoPro videos.