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T7i Time lapse - Minimum shutter speed

cybust
Apprentice
Hi,

I’m looking for a way to get buttery motion blur time lapses on my T7i, but there is no way to do it through photo mode (no interval timer) and through the « Time lapse movie » mode under video, it won’t let me set the shutter speed any lower than 1/30 sec. I need to set it to 1 sec.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.


Thanks
9 REPLIES 9

John_
Authority

Purchase a wired or wireless interval timer, they are not that expensive and it plugs into your 2.5mm remote shutter release port

Using an external interval timer works, but it trips the mechanical shutter every time, unlike the "built-in" time-lapse function. This makes it much more obtrusive to make a timelapse. I'm frustrated by this setting... the 1/30 is obviously some kind of artifical limit in the software since the camera can have much longer exposures in other modes. Should be an easy software fix for Canon. Canon, please fix this asap!

dybcanzinski
Apprentice

cybust, I have this problem too. Did you have any other insights or solutions since posting?  thx! 


@dybcanzinski wrote:

cybust, I have this problem too. Did you have any other insights or solutions since posting?  thx! 


You need to brush up on video frame rates.  The shutter speed has that limit because the cameras is capturing single video frames in time lapse video mode.

--------------------------------------------------------
"The right mouse button is your friend."

I don't understand, apologies. When I use an external timer to make a time-lapse movie, I can set the timer to take a picture, say, every two seconds. I can leave the shutter open for, say, one second. Things blur nicely. Then I take all of those pictures and use third-party software to stitch them into a time-lapse movie at, say, 30 fps. I don't understand why the camera's time-laspe software would be any different. The capture shutter speed in time-lapse can be MUCH longer than the video playback rate. Why is this a limit in the Rebel T7i?


@dybcanzinski wrote:

I don't understand, apologies. When I use an external timer to make a time-lapse movie, I can set the timer to take a picture, say, every two seconds. I can leave the shutter open for, say, one second. Things blur nicely. Then I take all of those pictures and use third-party software to stitch them into a time-lapse movie at, say, 30 fps. I don't understand why the camera's time-laspe software would be any different. The capture shutter speed in time-lapse can be MUCH longer than the video playback rate. Why is this a limit in the Rebel T7i?


I have already explained this to you.   The camera is not taking a series of photos.  It is capturing a series of video frames, and building a time-lapse movie in the camera.  Some cameras have both interval timer mode and time-lapse movie mode.

--------------------------------------------------------
"The right mouse button is your friend."

Not trying to be argumentative, but I don't think this issue is resolved and I'd love for Canon to address it. Note that I've made time lapse movies with long exposures and created video files from them manually, so I'm not a novice. I do understand about video frame rates. I understand that if I were making a video at normal speed, my exposure could never be longer than my frame rate - having a limit of 1/30 would make perfect sense for a normal speed video. But time-lapse is different.

 

In principle, a video frame is a photo - think of a stop action animation. I could make a normal speed video by taking a series of photos 30 times a second (with an exposure less than 1/30) and then stitching them together in a computer. It would be the same as if I had let the camera stitch them together itself in movie mode. So I don't think the photos/video frames distinction is useful in principle.

 

It is an undeniable fact that I (and thousands of other people) have made time-lapse movies with standard video frame rates (e.g. 30fps) with long exposures (e.g. 1 second). We did this by taking a series of photos in the camera, exporting them to a computer, and stitching them together using third-party software. In principle, the camera's software could do the work of the third-party software to render a 30fps time-lapse movie with 1 second exposures internally.

 

So in principle it can be done (I feel this point is beyond dispute), but maybe there is a practical reason why the camera's software isn't up to the job? Maybe that's what you mean?

 

 


@dybcanzinski wrote:

 

Not trying to be argumentative, but I don't think this issue is resolved and I'd love for Canon to address it.

 


 
--------------------------------------------------------
"The right mouse button is your friend."


@dybcanzinski wrote:

I don't understand, apologies. When I use an external timer to make a time-lapse movie, I can set the timer to take a picture, say, every two seconds. I can leave the shutter open for, say, one second. Things blur nicely. Then I take all of those pictures and use third-party software to stitch them into a time-lapse movie at, say, 30 fps. I don't understand why the camera's time-laspe software would be any different. The capture shutter speed in time-lapse can be MUCH longer than the video playback rate. Why is this a limit in the Rebel T7i?


To put it in simplest terms, it's because the T7i is not a video camera. No DSLR is. And certainly no Rebel is. If you intend to do serious videography, you need a video camera.

Bob
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA
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