Shooting Time-Lapse Photography (Canon)

If you’ve ever watched a concert video, they always seem to have a video segment at the beginning where you see an empty venue, and then you watch while a giant stage, with tons of lights and speakers, is constructed right before your eyes—something that took an entire day or two to construct in real time, but here the whole experience lasts maybe 30 seconds total. This technique is called time-lapse photography (you’ve seen this used on TV to show a setting sun, outdoor events, a flower opening, etc.) and to do this, you set your camera on a tripod, and have the camera take a shot at a regular interval (like every 30 seconds, or every minute, etc.) over a certain period of time (like an hour, a day, two weeks, etc.), and then you combine all these images into a movie on your computer (I did a how-to video for you at www.kelbytraining.com/books/digphotogv3). Now, if you’re doing this over a short period of time, you can just pull out a stopwatch, and every so many seconds or minutes, take a shot. However, for longer periods, if you’re shooting a Canon camera, you’ll need a separate timer accessory like Canon’s TC80N3 Timer Remote Control, which costs around $140, which is why you probably want the Opteka Timer Remote Control instead (for around half the price). Either one connects to your camera’s 10-pin input and lets you choose how many shots, how often, and over what length of time to capture your images. Now just start it, and walk away (well, walk away, providing of course, that your camera gear is safe and won’t get stolen).