# Time lapse - any advice and tutorial recommendations, please?



## Antono Refa (Jul 20, 2015)

I've never shot time lapses before, and am thinking of taking one that would cover a full day, or ~12hrs.

For that, I have two questions:

1. Could anyone recommend good tutorials on the subject, e.g. setting the camera?

2. Could anyone give advice regarding hardware-care?

Having the camera standing all day long outdoor might cause it to overheat. Any advice on that?

Storage issues: my 5Dmk3 raw files are ~32MB in size.

Taking 1 photo per minute for 12 hours would result in 22.5GB of raws and data for a 30 sec video, which would be no challenge.

But taking 4 photos per minute to get 120 sec video would require 90GB of raws. Not having 64GB memory cards, I wonder whether it's practical to switch cards, or would I need to buy at least one larger card, or am I aiming too high for a 'follow the sun' time lapse?

Batteries: I have two LP-E6 batteries. Suppoing I would buy a grip, I gather 12 hrs * 60 min/hr * 2 photos/min = 1,440 would be as much as I could get out of them (with live view off, of course). Switching batteries would introduce too long a break - is there a way to get around this limit?

Thanks!


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## kaihp (Jul 20, 2015)

Antono Refa said:


> Having the camera standing all day long outdoor might cause it to overheat. Any advice on that?
> 
> Storage issues: my 5Dmk3 raw files are ~32MB in size.
> 
> ...



Advice: I wouldn't start out with a full-day timelapse as my first project. Start with something simpler and of shorter duration to build experince. Like a sunset over, say, 30 minutes.

If you're going to put your camera out for a whole day, then you need to protect it from heat and rain. Prepare for that.

Memory cards: I am quite convinced that you could switch it in 15 seconds, although I haven't tried to do it under a hard real-time deadline. If you have a large-capacity SDHC/XC card, you could add that and let the camera overflow to the SD slot. Remember that the 5D3 refuses to store date to the cards while memory card door is open, so this won't help you to get a longer swapping time.
Alternative: Since you won't have a high datarate for the timelapses, you _could_ buy a cheap high-capacity SDXC card for this purpose.

Battery: I have made 2528 shots in a single day on a single LP-E6 battery and still had ~20% power left on the battery. You should be fine.


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## Antono Refa (Jul 20, 2015)

kaihp said:


> Advice: I wouldn't start out with a full-day timelapse as my first project. Start with something simpler and of shorter duration to build experince. Like a sunset over, say, 30 minutes.



Point well made & taken.



kaihp said:


> If you're going to put your camera out for a whole day, then you need to protect it from heat and rain. Prepare for that.



I'm sure there wouldn't be any rain, question is how to protect it against heat, esp as I'd like to shoot a landscape with the sun in it. I thought of making a hole in a white umbrella, and have the lens' front element stick out of it, having the umbrella cast a shadow on the camera.



kaihp said:


> Memory cards: I am quite convinced that you could switch it in 15 seconds, although I haven't tried to do it under a hard real-time deadline. If you have a large-capacity SDHC/XC card, you could add that and let the camera overflow to the SD slot. Remember that the 5D3 refuses to store date to the cards while memory card door is open, so this won't help you to get a longer swapping time.



I thought of using the cheapest large SD card w/ adapter in the CF card, and let that overflow to a second (again, cheapest large) SD card in the SD slot. I'm not certain what would happen if I switch the first one - would the camera overflow to it when the second card is full?




kaihp said:


> Battery: I have made 2528 shots in a single day on a single LP-E6 battery and still had ~20% power left on the battery. You should be fine.



Good news.

Thanks for your reply!


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## distant.star (Jul 20, 2015)

.
This is the best thing I've seen on the subject...

https://youtu.be/vGFnrOsdobw


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## RustyTheGeek (Jul 24, 2015)

*distant.star*, that's a great tutorial!!

I also think this might come in handy...

http://www.thewhippersnapper.com/LittleBramper/Site/Home.html


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