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How can I do some time lapse photography?

Can someone give me advice on a DSLR for time lapse photography?

  • I'm enthralled with time lapse movies of the milky way such as those by Randy Halvorson ( http://dakotalapse.com/ ) and Tony Rowell ( http://www.astronomytimelapse.com/ ).I'd love to be able to do similar photo shoots.  My question concerns the difference between taking those photos with an APS-C DSLR and a full frame DSLR.   I am aware that if I use a cropped frame camera I'd have to use a wider angle lens to capture the same section of sky as I would with a full frame camera.  However, using the rule of 500 I would not be able to have as long of an exposure with the cropped sensor as I would with the full frame.  How much detail will I lose with the 10 second difference?   I've only been able to see one side by side photo of the night sky using the two cameras and both of them using the same lens. (Both cameras used a 16mm lens.) Does anyone have a source that I could see that would show more examples of this?   Thank you Ray

  • Answer:

    I think you're over-thinking it. 500-rule aside, you will ALWAYS have stars streaking in long-exposure photography. The knee-jerk question is, "to what degree," but the real question we should ask it, "will we notice." That depends on how large of a print you make, or how closely you zoom in on a digital image. The 500 rule makes some assumptions, but they don't all hold up, because the visibility of streaked stars in a long-exposure photograph is no only determined by the focal length. It is also affected by the pixel dimensions of the camera. There's an informative article here: http://starcircleacademy.com/2012/06/600-rule/It's a little dense, but it gives a very precise picture of what's going on here. My recommendation would be to buy the best camera you can afford, whether that's a cropped-sensor camera or full-frame. The benefits of a quality body extend well beyond the specialized kinds of photography you're asking about. That being said, camera bodies have a life-span much shorter than the lenses you put on them. If debating between a great body and a good lens versus a good body with a great lens, I would lean towards the latter.

Rick Rhay at Quora Visit the source

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You need a high-ISO camera. Also, be cautious about using such a wide angle. You can't have a sufficiently long exposure time when the angle is as wide at 16mm because the stars on the edge of the frame will make lines. Dakotalapse looks like 50mm, probably a 50mm f/1.4. You can't shoot 20-30 seconds, like his website says, with anything wider than about 30mm. But, to answer your camera question. Any new model will have sufficient ISO: 70D, 7D, 5D mk III, 6D (or Nikon equivalents). It is a matter of what you can afford. 70D is the cheapest on this list and should do fine for this work.

Todd Gardiner

One of the things I am looking for is a real world example of how much FOV I lose between using the same lens with both formats.  I've seen examples of scenes of buildings and a few other stationary things that show the full frame composure with the crop boxes superimposed on it to show what FOV is available using the same focal length lens, but I just can't wrap my head around what the milky way would look like using the same lens.   Thanks Ray

Ray Murphy

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