Stop motion with HD Camera

[Diana Fisk]

Hi there

I am wanting to make a stop motion video making a birth announcement :)

I have a Sony NX5P and wondering if there is a way of altering the settings to limit motion.. Possibly shutter speed?

Has anyone done this? Also, would love advice as to how to best edit it together.

Thanks so much!!

Diana

[Mark Watson]

I've made some stop motion video, but I usually use my stills camera to do it. The process I use is:
Set up dSLR to shoot a picture every 3 seconds (or something similar) for as long as I need to capture the event, then bring the photos into my video editor and adjust the settings so that it plays back at the speed I want.

If your video camera can do interval recording (record 1 frame of video per second, for example), then you could use that. It would be easier to go from the file created in your camera to a finished product, since you wouldn't need to mess with the huge pictures or play with the timing settings to get the look you want, it will be easy and fast and look decent.

If your camera doesn't have any kind of interval record, then you might want to consider using a dSLR with an intervalometer to make the camera automatically take the pictures every x number of seconds. Personally, I'd go the dSLR route because the quality will be better and you'll be able to crop and pan to create those artistic movements in your video editor since you'll have huge photo resolution to play with.

If you decide to use the video camera you have and it doesn't do interval record, then I guess you could shoot straight video at highest quality (1080 50P) and speed it up in the video editor so it plays back fast.

Tips: Make sure the camera is stationary and not going to get bumped, remember to set white balance, do a test before the live shoot.

HTH,

Mark

[Bill Ward]

Diana: are you saying stop motion like a Claymation style interval recording of things that move in small increments, or more of a time-lapse where it's a real time event, but sped up dramatically?

[Diana Fisk]

More of a real time stop motion.. It will be my disband and I painting some words with our little boy. I just love it looking jilted and obviously want it to be quite a bit shorter in length :)

[Diana Fisk]

*husband

Oops!

[Chris Medico]

Would using a smartphone be a better choice?
Make animated movies with your smartphone - CNET