This is an article by our guest author Julien Leveau, who today explains how to make a hyperlapse with a drone.
If like me, you already have a drone and you want to do something different and spectacular, stay with me! Here I tell you everything you need to know to make a hyperlapse with your aircraft.
What is a hyperlapse?
Hyperlapse is a form of dynamic time-lapse (meaning the camera is moving during the shot). But what is a time-lapse?
A time lapse It is a video made from photographs. When we record a video with any camera, what the camera actually does is take a certain number of photos per second. As a general rule 24fps, but it can also record at 30fps, 60fps, 120fps, … understanding fps as “frame per second” or image per second.
Obviously, the resolution of them is much lower than that of our DSLRs, so the time-lapse is not an accelerated video. On the contrary, it consists of taking photos every certain period of time and putting them together in editing so that there are 24 photos per second. Do you still have doubts? I invite you to consult this article that explains it in more detail.
Now back to our topic, the hyperlapse. We have three ways to do it:
- With a tripod, a DSLR and a lot of patience
- With a shake stabilizer and a DSLR
- Or it can be done with a drone, the effects are great and that is what we are going to see in this article.
What do you need to make a hyperlapse with a drone?
- A drone equipped with a camera (obvious :P): in my case, as a professional, I use the DJI Phantom 4 Advanced
- An application that allows you to request the drone to take photos every certain period of time: I use Litchi for Phantom 4 Advanced
- A video editing software: the one I use is Adobe Premiere Pro (or Adobe After Effects)
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Step 1 – Find your subject
The interesting thing about a time-lapse is that it allows you to virtually “speed up time”. How does that happen? Good. With a normal camera set to record at 24fps, we get the following:
- One second of real time = One second of video at 24fps
Now if, for example, we decide to take a photo every second (there are a multitude of different settings depending on the desired effect and length of the final video), we get:
- 24 seconds of real time (24 x one second) = One second of video at 24fps
As I have already mentioned, this technique will allow you to speed up time, but if you record something still you will not feel this effect. Therefore, rule number one when making a hyperlapse is to look for something in motion! Here are some clues:
- Clouds
- A sunrise or a sunset
- The streets (day or night)
- A fair
- A storm (obviously from afar, you don’t want to fly your drone with 100km/h wind!)
- Etc.
Step 2 – Adjust your drone
You will have to make the adjustments in the application that allows you to maneuver your drone, so there may be a small difference between the applications. I, as I mentioned before, use Litchi (it costs around €20 on the Playstore), but you can also use the native DJI app (if you use a DJI drone obviously).
In my case I use Litchi because it also allows me to set the route and points of interest that the drone will follow during its flight. If you don’t have this app, the only difference is that you’ll have to fly it manually.
Before entering the settings, you have to think about two things:
- How long do you want your final video to be?
- How long can your drone fly until the battery dies and it crashes to the ground?
Taking those two elements into account, you do the calculation. For example:
- If you want your video to last 6 seconds once finished, you will need 6s x 24fps = 144 photographs
- If you can fly your drone for 10 minutes without risking your life or someone else’s, you have 10min x 60s = 600 seconds to perform the hyperlapse.
- Now you calculate: 600 / 144 = 4.166667. So you set the camera to take a photo every 4 seconds (which will prevent you from taking RAW photos, but we’ll talk about that now).
With this calculation you enter the camera settings and do the following:
1. You click on image format and you have two options: RAW or JPEG. Any photographer will tell you to go for the RAW format because it allows you more manipulation in post production, which is true. However, in the case of hyperlapse it will not always be possible. To keep it simple, if you decide to take RAW photos, the time between each photo will need to be greater than 10 seconds. If you change it to JPEG, you can lower it to 2 seconds (even less depending on the device).
2 in lapse of time, you adjust the time between each photo and the number of photos the drone will take in total (in my case I set it to indefinite).
3. Adjust manually exposure and whites as you would in a normal photo. Never leave it on automatic!!
4. Let’s fly!
If you fly manually and not with a pre-established route like me, I recommend two things:
- fly slowly so that the movement of what surrounds you is better appreciated and not so much the movement of the drone (remember that everything will be accelerated)
- avoid movements camera (they will look very rough)
If you don’t get it the first time, don’t despair and try again, the effort is always rewarded!
Stage 3 – Post Production
We come to the stage of our beloved computer. You download the photos and import them into a video editing software (in my case, as I said before, Adobe Premiere Pro).
you click on File>Import or press Ctrl+I on the keyboard and a box will appear. You look for the folder that contains the images, you click on the first one, click on “Image sequence” and you have it. The sequence of photos will be interpreted as video according to the settings of the sequence (24fps, 30fps…).
Now you will see that the video probably looks very shaky and is not acceptable in itself. It is because you haven’t stabilized it yet. To do this, open the sequence in After Effects. Right click and press “Replace with After Effects compositing”. Once in the program, use trackers to stabilize the video. In case this doesn’t sound familiar to you, here’s a video that explains it in more detail:
Finally, if you see that there is some kind of flicker (blinking) during the video due to exposure changes in the shot, you can adjust it by following the steps in this tutorial:
And now you have it! Your first hyperlapse pro made with a drone. Over time you will see that you can achieve spectacular videos. Here is a hyperlapse (from day to night) that I did in a project in Puerto Vallarta (go to minute 2:00 if you want to get directly to the hyperlapse).
This is an article by our well-known guest author Julien Leveau, architectural and wedding photographer. You can follow his work at Julien Leveau and at Arcenciel Studio.
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