Webcam Timelapse Photography

Something quite basic but with dramatic results. There are many tools for creating time-lapse videos or taking time lapse photos but for Windows i came across the Webcam Time Lapse Software by TNL SoftSolutions. I like it. Simple, straight forward and not documented but it also allows intervals below 1 second! I took few videos. Some of them are rather personal so i'm not going to upload them (but it was funny as hell to watch myself sleeping!). I take pictures by a low quality (640*480) Logitech C120 web camera. The good thing with this camera is, it easily allows refocusing by hand and allows me to use different lenses with it. What i mean different is random pieces of lens, that i generally took from dead cameras, old 8mm cameras even a magnifying glass will help. I like wide angle, so i generally shoot with a wide lens on the camera.

Some tips for using web cam for time lapse. Most webcams try to optimize its exposure and white balance values while the work. For time lapse we generally don't want this because one will end up with high variations in luminance, exposure and color values as the camera records over varying light conditions. To achieve this, we have to fix these values. It mostly depends on the camera and the driver but i assume most of web-cams allows manual settings.

Here is a short "how to" create your time-lapse video with ease. Download the Webcam Time Lapse. It's 13 megabytes but might take little long to download. (Server throughput?)

Then make sure your web cam is working properly. You might want to correct focus settings, if your camera allows so. If there's a ring that can rotate (sometimes snugly fit don't force it!) try to turn clockwise or counterclockwise and see if the focus changes. Sometimes this setting might drift after few months/years of use and if they are used a little rough. What i do to check focus of my webcam is to point the camera to a remote but detailed thing. (For me the Venetian blinds on my windows work great) or a car's front grill. Something with a repetitive pattern is easier to understand the focus situation. Rotate the focus ring back and forth and try to find the sweet spot where you have a sharp image.

Next...Install Timelapse. Assuming everything went OK during installation, start time lapse. You should see something like the following.

If you have more than one imaging device (camera) you can select from the select button. For setting the white balance and exposure click on start. And actually you'll start recording frames 1 per sec. but we'll not bother ourselves with that. When you click on start a new window pops open, showing your webcam, likely out of aspect ratio. Something like this:

Fancy the wide angle lens? I love it. Click on the small sprocket on the lower left corner. It'll give you this:

What we want is to uncheck the White Balance setting here. Then switch to Camera Control Tab and uncheck the exposure. You might have more settings, less settings, grayed out or non-existent but this is the default setting for web-cams under XP. I'm no expert in photography or computers and i don't know the proper technical way of white balance calibration, but i know the underlying form. Make a white paper look white on screen on the given light conditions (dot). You might fiddle with the setting to get different effects but white paper idea gives the most straightforward setup. For exposure, see how it looks on screen. Don't let light colors to burst (over-exposure) or make darker place go black. Because we are dealing with record times more than few hours, we have to fix the exposure. For example, if you are taking pictures of a cloudy day, you'll have different lighting conditions. So try to setup your exposure not much and not less. Experiment!

This is the key to good looking time lapse videos with webcams. Few ideas to capture time lapse and some time intervals i use.

• Clouds, fast moving, 3 seconds.
• Clouds, slower, 5-6 seconds.
• Clocks, 2-3 seconds create quite smooth results with 24fps.
• Ice melt, 5 seconds.
• Decaying flowers, 2,3 Minutes (can be more indeed)
• Baking cake, 3 seconds.
• Busy traffic, people moving in crowded areas: 1 second as basis but can go lower, such as 0.3 seconds.
• Sleep (no, not other people, myself :D) 10 to 6 seconds.

To simplify your approach, imagine you're recording. Count to number of seconds while you close your eyes and take a look again. What are changes? So you'll get the feeling. If you are not sure, especially with crowded people etc. a lower interval is better than higher one, even if you'll have more frames to deal with.

Webcam time lapse photography is no wonder, but experimentally it's nice to see how this tiny bit piece of cheap technology can create nice things. Also it's good for teaching! Me, no i'm not teaching but it's much easier to show that clouds are travelling rather than telling and trying to convince students!

And don't forget to clean-up your Frames folder before every set of shooting.

Here are two sample videos i have made with TNL Enterprise software.

Another one... Testing the "smoothness" of the final product.