Time-Lapse Photography Art and Techniques by Mark Higgins

This chart shows that changing the aperture changes the amount of light that is let in through the lens,
but at the same time it also changes the depth of field.
Fast shutter speeds
When we use fast shutter speeds, the shutter opens and closes much more quickly. This will freeze
any movement that is happening and achieve a sharp image, which is exactly what you want for
normal hand-held stills photography. However, for time-lapse it is advantageous to have the choice
between both fast and slow shutter speeds in order to achieve different looks with your work. The
kind of parameters we are looking at with fast shutter speeds are around 1/4000th of a second, down
to 1/125th of a second.
APERTURE
What is the aperture?
The aperture is a circular opening in the lens that is controlled by a dial on the camera or a ring on the
lens. Because the aperture is in the lens, the parameters of your aperture settings will vary depending
on what lens you are using. The aperture value is often called the ‘ƒ-stop. This affects two things:
firstly how much light is being let into the camera, which affects how bright or dark the image will be;
secondly how much of the image is in focus, which is known as the ‘depth of field’.
Aperture priority mode
This mode enables us to prioritize aperture, resulting in the shutter speed being automatically chosen
by the camera. If we are on a tripod this approach will usually work very well. However, if we shoot
handheld we need to keep an eye on our shutter speed in order to avoid accidental blur.