Does your listing have a great view? How about a time lapse movie to show it off?

We have a great view from our offices in downtown Seattle. This Saturday I set up my digital camera to take a series of time lapse photographs to record a sunset before the grey clouds return for the winter. This video is the very rough result of my first experiment with time lapse photography:

As you can see, I totally overdid it on the the contrast and saturation. And the video needs music or a voice-over but you get the idea. The sunset view over Elliot Bay from downtown Seattle is breathtaking and there’s always something happening on the bay and downtown.

Could this work for advertising listings? I think so. The way a great view changes throughout the day can be spectacular and it’s something a prospective buyer cannot fully appreciate even after visiting the house. If the home’s view accounts for a large chunk of its price tag, a time lapse movie may be the best way to show it off. I can imagine a looping video could be useful at an open house and it could be a deal clincher on bad weather days.

Once you know what you’re doing and have equipment and software that you trust, shooting a  time lapse movie is pretty easy; just set up the camera and leave it shooting. You can then create a movie with just a few clicks of a mouse. Here’s a list of the tools I used and what I’ve learned for next time.

1. Digital Camera – Nikon D70 with standard 50mmm lens. The camera’s battery died after about 6 hours but I suspect that I’ll be able to shoot 12+ hours with auto-focus turned off.
2. Laptop – PowerBook G4 – to control the camera and store the photos. With a laptop for storage, you don’t need to worry about exceeding memory card storage limits – about 5 GBs of photos went into that short video.
3. Camera control software – Nikon Capture – I hope to find a better alternative before the trial runs out on the Nikon software but it does what I need it to (i.e. it takes a photo every X seconds). For this movie, I shot a photo every 6 seconds but exported the movie at 15 fps (normally 24 fps.)
4. Time lapse video creation software – Bensoftware’s BTV PRO – it didn’t crash once despite moving large files around. If you’re using a mac, I can recommend BTV PRO and it seems to have a few other good reviews online.

Last tip: beware of shooting through windows. If you can, place the camera outside – shooting through glass can cause all sorts of unintended side-effects. If you have no choice, place the camera as close to the glass as possible, disable auto-focus and ensure that there aren’t any lights immediately inside or outside the room that you’re shooting from.

Update (9/29): I’ve fixed the contrast by exporting the movie again. This really is easy once you get the hang of the software settings. So the movie looks a lot better raw I also uploaded it to Viddler this time and switched to the Viddler player you now see above. I think Viddler does much better justice to a movie like this and it would now make a great feature on a single property website. Anyhooo – here’s the original from YouTube if you’re interested in checking out my first attempt (Youtube is much easier on memory though so the Youtube embed seems to play the movie much smoother – at least on my computer.)