Time-lapses of light changes such as those at sunset or sunrise are the pinnacle of time-lapse photography.
That’s because they’re notoriously tricky to get right but are spectacular to watch when done well.
As the light changes, your camera settings need to too so you don’t have a flickering under-exposed mess. It can all be a bit of a balancing act and takes a fair amount of practice – and a little study.
If it’s all sounding a little bit above your skill level, don’t worry – professional time-lapse photographer Morten Rustad has just completed a second filmmaking guide with motion control company Syrp, this time showing you how to create the perfect sunset panning time-lapse. You can watch it in the video above.
You may have heard of Morten before – he’s first hit our screens in 2014 with his viral success “Norway – a Time-lapse Adventure” and followed it up with ‘Seasons of Norway’ earlier this year.
Anyway, moving on to the important stuff – this filmmaking guide uses the Genie Mini, a pocket-sized motion control panning device from Syrp that makes setting up and running time-lapses easy.
Controlled wirelessly from your phone or tablet, the Genie Mini takes care of triggering the shutter at specific intervals, how long your time-lapse will run for, how far your camera will pan and how fast.
It’s a nifty bit of kit, and while it makes the whole process a lot easier, you can still learn something from Morten’s tutorial without a motion control time-lapse device.
Morten covers everything from setting up your composition, interval, manually ramping your ISO to maintain exposure and editing your time-lapse into a stunning film.
The gear Morten used in this tutorial is as follows:
Don’t worry if you don’t have everything listed above – have a watch of the tutorial and see if you can give it a go with the gear you have!
To get inspired for the filmmaking guide, we definitely recommend heading over to Morten's website to watch the master at work.