Underwater Timelapse

does anyone have any experience with underwater timelapse with a dslr? I was thinking of doing some soon with the d7000 but the only problem is that it only takes up to 999 photos which wont be enough for what i want to do.

I thought i could maybe just go and reset the timer over and over a couple of times, but just wanted to hear if anyone else had any better ideas, maybe taking apart an intervelometer and fitting it inside a housing somewhere?

and also ideas for lighting that will last 1-6 hours?

I will be using a d7000 in an aquatica housing and have 2 ds-160s

I been trying (and to be honest failing) to shoot some decent timelapse sequences this summer in the UK. I find that the maximum number of frames I want to shoot is around 500 as this is a twenty second clip - which is about as long as you'd want to go if it is to be incorporated into other footage.

500 images is pretty easy for modern strobes to cope with, if they are not at full power. I have used a pair of Inon's and they cope fine.

Alex

I believe Doug Andersen did the uw time lapse sequence for Life. He's still on ice I think but I do remember he mentioned using 200W HMI lights, surface powered(?) and 2 housings (one macro and one WA). A constant light source(s) is probably better than strobes from an exposure point of view. He uses a custom housing for his intervalometers.

If you don't want to do that, try disassembling a cable one and sneak it into the housing. I think there was a thread about this a while back. You just have to start shooting before you enter the water. Another issue is the camera's battery. How many shots can the D7000 on one battery?

I believe Doug Andersen did the uw time lapse sequence for Life. He's still on ice I think but I do remember he mentioned using 200W HMI lights, surface powered(?) and 2 housings (one macro and one WA). A constant light source(s) is probably better than strobes from an exposure point of view. He uses a custom housing for his intervalometers.

If you don't want to do that, try disassembling a cable one and sneak it into the housing. I think there was a thread about this a while back. You just have to start shooting before you enter the water. Another issue is the camera's battery. How many shots can the D7000 on one battery?

I think Doug Allan did the shooting of the seal being eaten by starfish/hagfish bit with a D70 in an Aquatica housing. I think the how we did it bit - has that bit in.

The big difference with the D7000 battery life is whether you use fibre or electronic flash synch. A friend (and WP member) on my Red Sea trip in May used the same battery all week on his D7000 using the Seacam housing with electronic synch. With pop-up flash you would be lucky to get two days of shooting.

Alex

p.s. But don't listen to me on this - my UW ones were useless.

I was just thinking, would a radio or infrared remote work if you made some sort of cheap housing for it, would these work underwater and in an aluminum housing?

Interesting thread.

I would be pretty sure, but guessing, infrared wont work underwater, because infrared is higher than the red end of the spectrum, which of course disappears first underwater, so guessing it wont travel underwater. You may have more luck with radio, because i imagine full face/communication devices are radio?

if a standard video is 24fps or 25fps then 1000 frames is 40 seconds. I think timelapse videos are more effective when they are short, but depends what settings you can get on the d7000.

Olly

does anyone have any experience with underwater timelapse with a dslr? I was thinking of doing some soon with the d7000 but the only problem is that it only takes up to 999 photos which wont be enough for what i want to do.

 

I thought i could maybe just go and reset the timer over and over a couple of times, but just wanted to hear if anyone else had any better ideas, maybe taking apart an intervelometer and fitting it inside a housing somewhere?

 

and also ideas for lighting that will last 1-6 hours?

 

I will be using a d7000 in an aquatica housing and have 2 ds-160s

Can you share the operating depth with us?

I would say between 0-20m i will try closer to the surface first so save on my strobe power.

Im just waiting on the new aquatica housing to arrive!

Can you share the operating depth with us?

You could always ask this chap ... Well if he used DSLR's obviously

Underwater timelapse

Dive safe

DeanB

I would say between 0-20m i will try closer to the surface first so save on my strobe power.

Im just waiting on the new aquatica housing to arrive!

I was thinking that if it was shallower, you could run a Time Controller such as the StopShot from a remote control bulkhead, in essence you remove the Hydrophone and put a bulkhead normally used for the remote grip, but in lieu, you add the Ikelite 15ft extension + Ike sync cord and you have +/- 20ft of cable to play with, so you could wire the time controller to the extension on the surface and push it all the way.

I guess it could be done by housing the StopShot, or one of those easy home built circuit from HiViz, in a water tight enclosure and programming it ahead of time.

It is sort of parallel to something I am working on (its a non Aquatica project, I do have a private identity BTW ),

I have a question, is it time lapse because you want to capture a specific behavior or the whole point is to make a clip out of it. if you want to keep hush, hush about it, you can PM me.

that sounds like a good idea, nothing too hush hush. i do a few timelapses on land and i was just thinking of experimenting with underwater now,

so if i had the bulkhead for the remote on the housing and the ike extension, how to you then connect the ike cord to a remote?

I was thinking that if it was shallower, you could run a Time Controller such as the StopShot from a remote control bulkhead, in essence you remove the Hydrophone and put a bulkhead normally used for the remote grip, but in lieu, you add the Ikelite 15ft extension + Ike sync cord and you have +/- 20ft of cable to play with, so you could wire the time controller to the extension on the surface and push it all the way.

 

I guess it could be done by housing the StopShot, or one of those easy home built circuit from HiViz, in a water tight enclosure and programming it ahead of time.

 

It is sort of parallel to something I am working on (its a non Aquatica project, I do have a private identity BTW ),

 

I have a question, is it time lapse because you want to capture a specific behavior or the whole point is to make a clip out of it. if you want to keep hush, hush about it, you can PM me.

I think Doug Allan did the shooting of the seal being eaten by starfish/hagfish bit with a D70 in an Aquatica housing. I think the how we did it bit - has that bit in.

 

The big difference with the D7000 battery life is whether you use fibre or electronic flash synch. A friend (and WP member) on my Red Sea trip in May used the same battery all week on his D7000 using the Seacam housing with electronic synch. With pop-up flash you would be lucky to get two days of shooting.

 

Alex

 

p.s. But don't listen to me on this - my UW ones were useless.

Hmmm, pretty sure that the time lapse stuff was done by Hugh Miller, Doug's camera assistant.... he's worth a shout if you can get hold of him, lovely chap with a lot of knowledge and experience, generally happy to share as well (he was on quick dial when I was looking into the UW UV for the UK)

External intervareometer (or whatever they're called!), Kevin at Aquaphot has been working on a solution for me (for the Canon 5D MKii), not sure how he's getting on or when it'll be finished, I'm sure he'll be able to do something similar for the D70/Aquatica though...

that sounds like a good idea, nothing too hush hush. i do a few timelapses on land and i was just thinking of experimenting with underwater now,

so if i had the bulkhead for the remote on the housing and the ike extension, how to you then connect the ike cord to a remote?

Well that's the thing, being shallow you could run the time lapse rig from the surface, if you go under, then it kind of complicates things, you would have to house the time controller in a housing of some sort (Don't even think of asking me to make one ) but it would give you beyond the 999 shots, (the StopShot goes to 9,999 shots)

If you have a suitable enclosure, you just add a Ikelite bulkhead to it and rewire from the inside of the enclosure to the time lapse controller. (they run on 9V so the life expectency of this battery has to come into play as well)

If you loose the strobes you will get more autonomy without having to touch the housing itself, at one point, the battery on these will give up, forcing you to stop the sequence, pull out the rig out of the water and replace the strobe batteries, doubtful you would position the camera identically as it was before.

Hey! you know what, it it was simple to do, it would not be fun!

I realise this will soon be a pretty redundant question, but what software do people stitch sequences with? And is there software that will allow you to digitally pan through a high-res, 3:2 scene to output at 16x9. Or is there no sense in shooting time-lapse at high resolution.

Ideally looking for a cheaper solution than buying a full video editing software.

Alex

Oh, and if you are working from stills - what colour space should you use. I shoot Adobe RGB, but should I use sRGB for time-lapse?

Alex

You can use PS to output or import the images into a NLE like FC or Adobe PP.

sRGB conversion can be done in post. Not a big deal.

This is some of my test footage from Cayman (low res), just to test the technical side of shooting and putting together time lapses - it is not in any way interesting.

This sequence was taken as individual frames (different rates on each clip). I shot 700 and 600 frames for the two sequences - although what is shown here is only about 180 frames each. I changed the files to sRGB, cropped them to 1920x1080 using a batch process in Bridge and then used free software - Time Lapse Assembler - to stick them together. I then used iMovie to join the (least boring bits) of the two sequences and upload to vimeo.

[vimeo]36091475[/vimeo]

I just left my camera wedged in position shooting these - while I went off and shot macro with my other system. It was a 1400 photo dive!

Alex

Interesting stuff, Alex and a proper reminder that my Nikon has this feature in the menu, now I just need to remember this feature, geez, to think I can hardly remember that I have video also, good god, I'm getting task loaded here

Your next Nikon, Jean, will have time-lapse video direct from the camera (which is good for memory card space at least)...

Alex

Yes that would be an intersting development, I love the result of time lapse, but always short on time when it comes dow to making them, ironic!

I'll see you in London at the end of March?