Shooting a long-term time lapse is a state of art. It takes a lot of patience as well as finding suitable conditions to match the time lapse with the vision of what you want. But before shooting high-quality time-lapse videos, one should know what is the true meaning and significance of a time lapse. Time-lapse photography is a cinematographic technique in which a photographer will shoot several still pictures of the same frame at regular intervals over a period of time and then will quickly play it over the entire sequence. For example, individual shots taken of a flower growing over time become a video showing how it goes from seedling to fully blossomed blooming. Please note these are individual photos displayed over the sequence in such a way to show you the process of the flower blooming before even it becomes a flower in a form of high-resolution video quality time lapse.
Not just for this example, but in the case of a construction project as well, from the beginning of construction of the project site to the completion of the same. Quantam’s technology has help achieve the feat many of the companies wanted to achieve, with the help of its outstanding high-resolution time-lapse cameras like the Quantam Iris.
But one should first consider how to shoot time-lapse photography. Now there are so many things to consider when making a long-term time-lapse video. You need to maintain the desired environment conditions in place, in what kind of aperture do you need to record the video, if the number of photos taken is sufficient enough to make a high-quality time lapse, and much more. Let us discuss them one by one:
Shooting in required Aperture
Matching the aperture with the different lighting conditions should be your number one priority while shooting a time-lapse. You will face all kinds of lighting conditions and you need to regular monitor the aperture quality of the still photos you take which you will then use to make the time lapse. This setting will allow the system to automatically change each shot's exposure in accordance with lighting conditions as long as everything else is set to manual. Yes, there will be severe flicker, but with long-term time-lapse, you have to deal with this after the fact rather than during the actual shooting. Also experiment with your aperture to achieve the right depth of field for your subject. You will also need to consider white balance. Select a manual pre-set like a sunny day. If you must click all the pictures in a day, put your ISO on the auto mode, otherwise keeping the ISO on manual mode is the right choice so that it can adjust itself to click pictures in the night as well.
Take a lot of photos
Yes, you read it right. You must take a lot photos while shooting for either a short term or a long term time-lapse. You will never achieve the desired high-quality time-lapse video if the photos you have take are just a few and which does not fully tell the story you have been wanting to depict in the video. The more photos, the better your chances of depicting your narration in the time-lapse. There can be an end number of reasons the photos your camera took are either irrelevant or did not capture well. It can be a rainy day outside, the workers might go on a strike and not working anymore, some photos in the early morning and late afternoon will have yellow or blue tints, and long shadows with high contrast will make other photos unusable or the camera is capturing the barren land of the construction site while all the activity has been done inside the building. The best chance of getting a sequence of good photos is to take lots of photos to choose from and this is where Quantam’s technology can give you a competitor’s advantage. Quantam Iris is made for the challenging conditions to help you build the memory of a beautiful time-lapse.
Choosing the right location
Even while you hope everything will go according to plan, it is a good idea to be realistic when preparing a project as large and technically complex as a long-time lapse video. Choosing the right location should be on the firsts in the to-do list while filming a time-lapse. Shooting time-lapse photography is a long-term commitment, so you definitely want to scope out a location which can cover most of the area of the construction site to capture daily.
Rugged Built
Outdoor construction puts projects under the direct influence of the environment. Yet our engineers and construction workers are equally enthusiastic about constructing dream projects in the most challenging terrains, taming the most inaccessible areas. So, we had to develop a piece of equipment to match their energies.
Our time-lapse service in this regard is precisely built to endure the harshest climate. Housed inside a weatherproof military-grade IP66 Pelican case, Quantam Iris becomes your go-to construction timelapse camera for those adventurous projects.
Plan For Things To Go Wrong
Plan anticipate problems to arise when organizing your long-term time-lapse project (or any project, for that matter). It is possible that nothing will go wrong and that you won't ever need to service the equipment. But there might be a chance the electronics might malfunction, or the day of the shoot, the weather is not helping, or the workers have halted the work and are on strike for the past week etc. Planning is always the best step to stay ahead of schedule for all these activities so that you get the work you need and the video records the whole completion of the project.
Why is photo documentation important in construction?
