Frequently Asked Questions

I get a lot of similar emails, most of which I have little time to respond to. So if you have a question, look here first.

First off, if you have a general time lapse or time lapse work flow question, check out The Making of Eclectic 2.0. It will answer a lot of questions.

I’m in the market to buy a new camera. What do you think I should get?

This is by far the most common question I get. Honestly, I have no idea. Do some research! It is waaaay better to educate yourself and spend hours upon hours learning about all the different types of cameras instead of asking me a simple little question. If I tell you to buy something, you’ll probably get pissed off that now that you bought it, you don’t know how to correctly use it, or it doesn’t do what you’re looking for. There’s no “one camera fits all” in professional video production. Check out Prolost.com or Strobist.com (for lighting). You’ll learn a lot through their archives of information.

How did you make the words appear in light?

It’s a technique called light painting. I took 10-15 second exposures in a dark room and used a flashlight to paint out the word. I did this about 20 times. For words that last longer than 20 frames in the song, I just repeated the 20 frame sequence. When I brought the file into Final Cut, I changed its blending mode to “screen”. This made the black background go away.

How do you make the light words stay on top of a mountain for example?

Simple resizing and playing with the “basic motion” and keyframe settings in Final Cut Pro.

Are those shooting stars in the time lapse shots?

Nope, since the exposure times are around 20 seconds, those are airplanes flying across the sky.

How do you get the panning time lapse shots?

I modified a Meade telescope tripod (Model# DS-2114ATS-TC ) so I could attach my camera and program it. Check out The Making of Eclectic 2.0 for more details.

In Eclectic 3.0 some of those shots looked as if they were mini models or something. What’s the deal?

It’s a style of photography called tilt-shift photography. It uses a special lens to rotate the depth of field.

What did you use to make your website?

I use wordpress to support the back end, but I hacked the hell out of a theme called Hemingway by Warpspire

I’m in a band and we love your music videos. We were wondering if you would be interested in doing a music video/short film/documentary/live show for us. We don’t have much money, but it would be great exposure. (Also applicable to this question: What would you charge to make a music video for my band?)

Sorry, but I am so swamped with paying gigs right now that I can’t take on any passion projects.

How do you do the zooming effect in your videos?

Since I’m taking high resolution still images, there’s enough resolution to allow me to zoom in on things in post production. It makes things a lot easier to do.

How do you rack focus in a time lapse?

That is done by just adjusting the focus ring about 1/2 a milimeter after each exposure. It takes about 10 minutes to go from infinity to the closest setting on a lens.

If I wanted to take a time lapse of sunset or sunrise. How would I do it?

To shoot sunrises, I do what I call a lock down dissolve (I don’t know if other people call it that, but maybe I can be credited for coining the term? haha). I shoot a time lapse an hour or two before sunset, then stop. Don’t touch the camera, wait until there’s absolutely no more sun illumination, then do another lapse. Then in post, fade them together.

ross:ching