[jbrowning]

Hello everyone, I have been given permission to photograph a event called "The Street Breakfast" it is a fund raiser for military families here in Colorado. So anyhow, it looks like I will have access to a building looking of the street intersection where this is going to happen and I was thinking I would try a timelapse series of shots from 11 p.m. Tuesday night till about 9-10 a.m. Wednesday night. Now I will be using my backup Pentax K3 with my Tameron 100-300. I have the battery grip with extra battery for the camera. But I'm needing help on determining the length of shots and how much time between shots. I will be turning off any and all noise reduction in the camera. I do have 2 128 gig cards to put in the camera to capture these dng pictures on. I'm wanting the time lapse to start with the empty intersection, then with the volunteers putting out the haybales in the interesection, then with the folks setting on the hale bales eating breakfast and then when the intersection is being cleaned up afterwards. While this is happening, I will be walking around taking pictures with my K-1 and Sigma 70-200 2.8. So the K3 will be all by itself.

If someone can help me figure this out I would greatly appreciate it. This will be my very first time lapse.

Thank you
Jim

[AstroDave]

A few thoughts:

Do you really need DNG files? If your goal is to make this into a movie, you will be downsizing all the frames, and don't need all that much detail. If you shoot jpeg, you can get 2 or 3 times as many frames on your SD cards. Also, unless your Tamron is sharp wide open (you'll want it that way for the night shots(?)), your images may not be that sharp to begin with with - again a waste of DNG capabilities.

Time between frames? Seems to me that somewhere between 5 and 20 seconds should work. I shot a local forest fire from a few miles away a few years ago at 10 second intervals and that made a nice movie of the smoke. Do some test shots first if you can. Are planning to use the built-in intervalometer? How many shots will it do? The K-3 manual indicates 2000 shots max - that's less than 6 hours at 10 second intervals. Looks like you will need 20 second intervals unless you can go reset the camera part way through.

Exposure lengths? If you are starting at night, unless your street corner is amazingly brightly lit, you will need longish exposures (or high ISO). During the day, though, exposures will be normal. If you are leaving the camera totally unattended, you will have to let it pick the exposure, which may not make for nice movies - you really would like exposure consistency from frame to frame, which might not occur. Similarly with white balance. You can leave it on automatic and hope for the best, since night lighting will almost certainly be different from daylight.

Focus - preset and leave it on manual.

Power? Even with your battery grip, I'm not sure you can power the camera for 10 to 12 hours. For short interval shooting, it is on all the time. Turning off image review should help.

I think you need to try a dry run!!! Good luck.

[bar_foo]

Do you really need DNG files? If your goal is to make this into a movie, you will be downsizing all the frames, and don't need all that much detail. If you shoot jpeg, you can get 2 or 3 times as many frames on your SD cards. Also, unless your Tamron is sharp wide open (you'll want it that way for the night shots(?)), your images may not be that sharp to begin with with - again a waste of DNG capabilities.

In this case, the advantage of DNG may be the ability to play with white balance--going between night and day there will be a big change in the quality of the light. DNG gives you flexibility in adjusting for that.

[Ex Finn.]

A Go-Pro shooting 10 meg JPEGs powered by an external brick, preferably by a wall-wart, that`s what I`d do. Would have to be set up very close to the action thou.
Most definitely do a practice run with what ever setup you go with. My 2 C worth.