Re: TimeLapse
 

And to the best of my knowledge no one has permanently damaged their cameras using Magic lantern.
Go on load it, you know you want to.

Re: TimeLapse
 

Don't want to be negative but Philip Bloom reported it bricked his 550D,I had it on mine for a while and it worked fine until one day the camera locked up, something it did not do before, I removed battery for a while and rebooted camera with memory card without ML on it. Everything was fine after that but it put me off ML.

For timelapses I use a cheap Intervalometer I got from ebay,does the job.

Re: TimeLapse
 

Has anybody had an issue with creating a time-lapse sequence from a tricky location?

I will be filming a wedding at this location Nawaab‎, Manchester, M19 3WN and would love to create a nice piece of time-lapse footage of clouds moving over the building. I had planned to park across the road and shoot from within my car until I realized that any car or truck passing buy would simply ruin the shot as its a busy road. I can kiss goodbye to my camera if I was to stand outside with it.

Any tips or advice would be great.

Re: TimeLapse
 

Tariq,

I'm trying lots of timelapses these days also, and by no means am an expert, but will offer a few observations I've made:

1. If no movement in the scene, it's very boring just watching sunset/sunrise in high speed. Need something moving. So if no clouds, I'd say forget it.
2. Clouds coming right at the camera is best, followed by laterally moving clouds. If you can check the weather report for that location and get the wind direction, and whether there are clouds, then try to set up your shot to get the clouds coming directly towards you.
3. I would not recommend shooting from a car, since any movement of the camera will likely result in some bad footage. You want the camera to be rock steady, especially during low light where the shutter stays open longer. (Personally, I like clouds shot on a video camera better than a series of still shots. Very fluid motion when shot in 24p.)
4. For your stills camera, use Aperture priority, and add a ND 0.9 to 1.8 depending on brightness of daylight For white balance I like to set a color temp to something slightly warm looking and leave it at that. If that option isn't available on your camera then I think you would be fine with AWB. You will need to snap a photo every few seconds so it looks as smooth as possible. The ND filter is supposed to help with smoothness also.
5. If shooting stills, shoot RAW and then you can easily tweek the colors, perhaps make the clouds look more purplish or whatever.

There're lots of other tips on this forum. I'm trying to follow of Jon Fairhurst's tips.

Good luck,

Mark

Re: TimeLapse
 

No cons whatsoever, it will transform your camera, and the way you use it. A must have for Canon DSLRs

Re: TimeLapse
 

Are you able to restore the camera to the factory settings should one want to sell it?

Re: TimeLapse
 

Google it, all the information you need is out there. To reiterate, install ML, it is a Canon transformer.

Re: TimeLapse
 

i read somewhere that because of the mirror to the eyepiece, that light can leak in there and create flicker, so putting some gaffer tape over the eyepiece might be a good idea

another tip might be to always consider your 180degreeshutterspeed

if you shoot 25fps and have your shutter at 50, then maybe consider a 2second shutter for your 4 second exposures

those are just technical tips, and Mark I appreciated your aesthetic tips above!

a static foreground object will definitely give depth and reference to the picture

moire can occur if you don't compress it right

Re: TimeLapse
 

I checked this shoot location [Nawaab‎, Manchester, M19 3WN, UK] on Google Map and can see the challenge for getting a decent time lapse. I would have approached the shop owners across the street from the banquet center and asked to shoot from inside one of those buildings, either ground floor or 2nd level. That health club looks good and would probably be off-center enough to keep the light pole out of frame.

Mark