Tuesday, April 3, 2012

G1X: Time Lapse

Time lapse photography is yet another aspect of the game hobby that I want to learn about. I’ve made one time lapse video using my G12 and an intervalometer. The same intervalometer works with the G1X; however, the G1X battery has less capacity than the G12 battery. How long would the G1X run using only battery power?

To test the battery and practice the technique, I set up my G1X for time lapse with a freshly charged battery and put it on full manual exposure, manual WB, manual focus and turned the display off. Exposure was set for 1/100 sec at f5.6 and ISO 100 -- my guess for capturing a morning sunrise. I also set image capture for JPEG only at 1920x1080 pixels. The memory card was a Transcend Class 10. To my dismay, I forgot to turn off the focus assist lamp and didn't realize that until later so decided to let it run anyway.

I used this cheap and simple intervalometer to trigger the G1X at 2 second intervals.

All this was (roughly) the setup and process I used to make the time lapse sequence with my G12 except that a 6 second interval was used for the G12.  (I don’t remember how I arrived at a 6 second interval but it must have made sense at the time.)

In the morning, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the G1X had run for 2 hours 46 minutes and captured 2518 images of the dark room.

There was a problem though. Right away I had sensed that the interval was not always 2 seconds. Sometimes it would be 2 seconds and sometimes seemed to be more than 3 seconds but I continued the test anyway. Checking the times, the first shots were at intervals of 2 sec followed by 4 seconds then 2 sec, etc. The last shots were all at 4 sec intervals (battery running down, I assume). The gross average interval during the night was 3.96 seconds. So it appears to me that the G1X should be set for intervals of more than 4 seconds over a long period of time.

4 comments:

Roff said...

Do you know if the G1X has a custom self-timer function similar to the one on the G11? On that camera I can adjust the delay to be up to 30 seconds, and choose how many frames I want to shoot. That is a function I use a lot - I do a cycling blog and this function is indispensable for getting shots of me on the bike. I want to upgrade to the G1X but I want to know if the new model has that same function. I have not been able to confirm this anywhere.

Cheers

Roff Smith
www.my-bicycle-and-I.co.uk

Roff said...

Nice post. I am wondering if you can tell me if the G1x has the same self-timer function as theG11? I write and photograph a cyclin blog and I find the custom self timer on the G11 a real godsend - it is hugely handy to be ble to set th timer delay at 30 seconds and then have it fires as many as 10 frames. Does the G1X have this same capability? I can't find out anythin about i from the reviews I hav read or from the Canon website. Am hoping you cn hlp!

Roff Smith
Www.my-bicycle-and-I.co.uk

Croxie said...

The G1x does have the custom self timer.

It appears to be the same as the G11/12 (which I do not have access to) but it will delay up to 30 seconds before shooting and then shoot up to 10 frames at the settings you've placed on the camera.

Em said...

I don't think it was the battery running down. The G1X seems to have serious speed issues when the memory card starts filling up, so maybe it was just that you had too many photos stored. That's something I hope they fix next generation, if there is on.