It's really awesome when you buy a piece of gear and though it provides the value you purchased it for, you discover a hidden feature or a new way to use it that you hadn't considered. Like anyone else with eyeballs, I enjoy time adjusted footage whether it be true slow motion or awesome time lapse. I haven't really gotten into actually creating it because the equipment is pretty specialized and often expensive. It's hard to justify buying specialized gear unless you are going to see some kind of return on it, so buying intervalometers or high speed cameras has never been a priority for me. Enter the continually awesome HVX 200.

Awesome HVX Time Lapse Demo

While it's starting to get a little old and the camera has some quirks, it continues to impress me with it's flexibility and wide range of features designed for a director of photography with high standards. Even features that were never meant to be found are hidden in the murky depths of settings files and menus. With a little work you can get great results from time lapse and slow motion. It even offers a high degree of control over the rate of the motion change. This topic has been covered in a lot of places, but I'm going to rewrite the tutorial here because there simply isn't enough detail on the exact specifics in other locations. I had to piece several tutorials together and get forum advice, but allow me to save you that hassle.

Hit the jump for the whole story.

Follow up:

What you need

Well, I mentioned the HVX, now you'll need to note that this is a P2 format, so you won't be able to use tape. P2 card is the way to go. While I've read that firestore hard drive solutions seem to work in some setups, we won't be going over that.

You'll also need an SD card, the regular kind and some kind of reader for your computer (mac or pc, even pda).

We will be editing text files, so a good text file editor is needed. I'll be using notepad in windows.

Shooting time lapse is great when the camera is stable or in a moving stabilized setup. In cars, it's fun because it shows the travel from point A to B in high speed, while setting it up in a crowd on a tripod is fun because you see all those people zooming around. The huge advantage of setting the shutter to a slow speed though is that the low light photography looks great. Motion gets a little blurry but in time lapse land that ends up being pretty great. Try testing at night on a city street as well!

Next page: How it Works

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