Time-Lapse Photography - Frame-by-Frame Stop Motion: The Guide to Non-Traditional Animation Techniques - page 55

Take a single-frame digital still camera and power it from the adapter
that you plug into the wall. Hook up the camera to a computer that
has a capture software program with an intervalometer (time-lapse)
option. Mount the camera high on a tripod over the bed where you
sleep at night. Stabilize the camera with sand bags or tape down the
tripod to the hard floor. Set the shutter, iris, and focus to “manual”
mode. Have a small nightlight in the bedroom that gives off a small
amount of light, enough to give the room a low exposure with all the
other lights off. Leave this light on as you go to sleep. Set the iris to
f 5.6 or wider (i.e., f 2.8) and adjust the shutter to whatever is required
to get a decent exposure with just the nightlight on. Just before you
go to bed, set the intervalometer to shoot every 15 seconds at your
optimum exposure. The daylight may overexpose the frame when
morning light comes through the window, but do not be concerned
with this. Set the camera maximum frame count to 2000. If you shoot
a frame every 15 seconds, there will be 4 frames for every minute of
sleep. There will be 60 (60 minutes to an hour) times 4 frames for every
hour of sleep (240 frames), and if you sleep 8 hours, then you will
have 1920 frames available (8 × 240). You will see what your sleeping
habits are and have a greater understanding of a part of your life of
which you were never aware. For a little extra fun, you can mount a
clock near the lens with a small light on it so you can associate your
sleeping patterns with a specific time. This is the power of time-lapse
photography.
Understand Your Subject
To make a successful time-lapse film, you must choose an appropriate
subject and study it carefully before shooting the first frame. Some events
cannot be controlled or predicted, but making initial observations will tell
you the length of the event, the extremes of the potential transformation
in the event, the way light and exposures change during the event, and
the external conditions that need to be accounted for to set a stable
camera. Companies like Harbortronics build special housing and controls
for time-lapse cameras that allow you to shoot outdoors in most any
condition. As Eric Hanson, a veteran effects artist and associate professor
at USC, states,
“We shoot primarily during trips to remote wilderness areas, thus there is
some preplanning using Google Earth and the like, but much is reserved
for serendipity, as weather and geography are always an unknown. We
did some elaborate preplanning once when shooting from the lower