A timelapse is a sequence of stills, not a fast-forwarded video
Speeding a normal clip up throws frames away, and it looks like it. A real timelapse is hundreds of separate frames captured at a fixed interval with the exposure, focus and white balance locked so nothing drifts, then assembled into a sequence afterwards.
That's the difference between something that holds up on a screen in a showroom and something that looks like a phone trick. On the FX3 there's no built-in timelapse render, which is a feature - you shoot an interval recording, keep every frame, and build the clip in Resolve or Premiere.
What Dubai does to a timelapse, good and bad
The good part is why everyone shoots here: the skyline, the light, the pace of the place. The bad part is heat and dust.
A phone left in July sun on a balcony overheats and stops recording inside ten minutes, so the rig sits in shade with only the lens out and the power comes off a bank instead of a battery. Wind on a Marina balcony will wobble a light tripod and take an hour of frames with it, so it gets weighted.
Daylight here also needs a strong ND filter, and that isn't optional. Dragging the shutter to somewhere around a quarter of a second is what gives each frame a little motion blur, and motion blur is what makes the finished sequence feel smooth instead of stuttery. You can't drag a shutter in full Dubai sun without cutting the light down first.
What's worth shooting as a timelapse here
- Skyline and sunset sequences - a high floor in Business Bay or JLT, held from before the light is good through blue hour.
- Traffic and crowds - a short interval, so movement reads as one flow rather than as individual cars.
- Construction progress - a long interval running for hours, for a site that has to prove it moved.
- Showroom and retail floors - people moving through a space that looks completely static in a photograph.
Most failed timelapses fail for four reasons
- Auto exposure left on, so the clip flickers every time a cloud passes.
- A boring frame with nothing in the foreground.
- A tripod that moved.
- The wrong interval - too long and the motion is jumpy, too short and you wait an hour for three seconds.
None of those are camera problems and all of them are decided before you press record. I've written down the settings I actually use, phone and FX3 both, and they're linked at the foot of this page.
Where the sequence ends up matters too
A timelapse is usually the opening shot of something else - a property film, an ad, a brand page - and that's where most of them get ruined. Either it's compressed until the sky bands, or it's served at a weight that loses the visitor before it plays.
I build the sites this footage lives on as well as shooting it, so it gets delivered at a size the page can actually carry. The dealership site I rebuilt loads in 0.4 seconds, images and all.