A time lapse video assembled in ImageJ

Trees in the wind

techniques
time-lapse
Author

Pedro J. Aphalo

Published

2019-08-21

Modified

2023-05-13

Keywords

time-lapse, circular fish-eye

Steps used to create the video

  1. Use time-lapse setting in camera to take a series of 300 photographs, one every 10 seconds, using auto-exposure lock. Set camera on a tripod.
  2. Import the 300 images into Capture One (version 12.1). Edit the first image including correction for perspective and cropping. Select the 300 images, copy the edits from the first photograph to the remaining 299.
  3. Export the 300 photographs JPEG, setting long edge maximum length at 1600 pix.
  4. Read the 300 images into ImageJ (version 1.52p) using “File > Import > Image sequence”.
  5. Export the video from ImageJ using “File > Save as > AVI…”, choosing the desired number of frames per second (fps).

Equipment

Camera Olympus E-M1 Mk II and M.Zuiko 12-40 mm f:2.8 objective. Camera on tripod. Zoom objective set at 12 mm, f:5.6, 1/400 s, ISO 200.

Caveats

It is possible to create the video in camera, but I do prefer to convert from raw (ORF) and edit the images in Capture One before assembling the video.

Note

Although I used Capture One any RAW converter that can export JPEG files can be used instead. One could also use JPEG files from the camera.

Any camera, or a smart phone that can be internally or externally triggered to take a series of images with consistent exposure settings and equally spaced in time can substitute for the Olympus E-M1 Mk II camera I used. A camera that has built-in support for time lapse like the E-M1 Mk II only makes things a bit easier.