Gopro 12 timelapse

[Gmsalterego]

Hello everybody, I was thinking about taking pictures underwater using time lapse feature, both macro and wide angle. What do you think about that? Is it a valid approach and if so what settings do you suggest?

Thank you in advance

Edited August 27 by Gmsalterego

[Davide DB]

For science experiments I made 15-day timelapses with specific equipment. Completely different purposes and problems.

 

For an underwater video, a short timelapse could be a great idea to complete the video editing but you have to keep in mind a few things.

• A tripod is essential. For a Gopro, there are great deals on Aliexpress, otherwise Flexarm has inexpensive tripods perfect for a Gopro. Even a classic Gorillapod is fine.
• With battery life in mind, you need to choose subjects/phenomena that will resolve in a half hour at most.
• Plan for a dedicated dive.
• Good subjects might be urchins, starfish, sea cucumbers and ophiurans. it's amazing how fast they move! I do not recommend an Astrospartus because they are very deep 😉 Even ascidians such as classic sea tomatoes in a tide pool could excellent BBC style subjects. Although they are shot with a GH5, our member @Alex B has some excellent examples in some of his old videos.
• If shooting below 10 meters consider an artificial light. You can also place it on a separate tripod or mud stick. If you hold it with one arm on the Gopro tray, make sure the tripod is stable and heavy enough.
• For Gopro settings just apply the same rules for land timelapses. Gopro has the option to get directly video files. For full light are OK, if you works in low light situations maybe a photo timelapse is better. If you choose a video timelapse go for 5.3K so you can crop and add some fake movement in post.

Where do you dive?

 

Ciao

 

[Gmsalterego]

I try to explain my target. 

Taking stand still with gopros is quite difficult. 

I would use time lapse mode in taking photos without worrying about pushing the shutter at one precise moment. No tripod, only point and shot a sequence. This way could allow to take pictures at the highest resolution 27 MP.

I've planned a cruise in october and I'm experimenting time lapse with video lights.

Ciao Giacomo

 

[TimG]

Are you going to stay in the same place to hold the GoPro whilst it runs through the time lapse sequence? If your intention is photo the same area over a given period, I doubt you can hand hold?

[Gmsalterego]

I suppose something is wrong or not so clear. My intention is shooting a sequence of 5 still photo over a period of 15 secs while I'm moving around a target. 

[Davide DB]

21 minutes ago, Gmsalterego said:

I suppose something is wrong or not so clear. My intention is shooting a sequence of 5 still photo over a period of 15 secs while I'm moving around a target. 

 

I don't understand the meaning. Why don't you shoot plain photos?

[humu9679]

@Gmsalterego I think I understand what you are trying to do. A friend of mine will set up his GoPro to shoot two frames a second, and that handles his stills all right. If memory serves, these are JPG images. I gave up trying to shoot RAW stills as the shutter delay is far too long.

[Elvandar]

22 hours ago, Gmsalterego said:

I suppose something is wrong or not so clear. My intention is shooting a sequence of 5 still photo over a period of 15 secs while I'm moving around a target. 

 

I suggest you to just take normal video and then extract the frames you are interested, and generally avoid use the gopro for taking still, in my experience, GoPro shine with video, and pretty much sucks with photo.

 

But if you still want to take photo, you can try to use the burst option, and you can set how many photo to take in how much time, like 60 photo in 10 seconds, or 10 photo in 3 seconds.

 

To take 5 photo in 15 second, as you asked, just press the button every 3 second when you like the action you see

 

Ps:
my profile cover photo is extracted from a video made with GoPro 11 and a macro lens, just as an example for the quality you can expect

Edited August 28 by Elvandar

[Gmsalterego]

Thank you, I've extracted frames from my videos till now. I was looking for a different approach in order to get better photos with higher resolution. And GP12 ensures 24MP for photo mode...

[humu9679]

22 minutes ago, Gmsalterego said:

Thank you, I've extracted frames from my videos till now. I was looking for a different approach in order to get better photos with higher resolution. And GP12 ensures 24MP for photo mode...

I've taken some stills from video, and if the lighting is good, it looks passable. Generally I try not to do that. On my Hero 7 black, I have it set to video by default. To shoot still JPEG photos at intervals between 0.5 to 5 seconds: Swipe left > TIME LAPSE > ICON (lower left) > scroll down to Time Lapse Photo > Command Bar > set intervals (0.5 to 5 seconds). Hope this helps.