Stop Motion with camera?

if my digital camera (Nikon) can take time lapse photos, is that basically like stop motion or can it be used as stop motion?

It has seeting for how many photos to take with the time lapse- from 1 a day to 1 every second or so.

so si the time lapse also considered stop motion?

i know that i shoukld really set the photo taking time to about 5-10 seconds in order to move the object and move my hand out of the way.

or should i just use my tripod and take photos normally?

I am getting doubts in my mind as i type this...

what if i use a tripod

I've used time lapse software with a digital camera to do stop motion films before (I used GBTimelapse). But instead of using the software's automatic time settings I'd simply move my object or character, then click the instant release to capture a frame. I'd move the object or character again, and capture the frame again. That way I didn't have to wait for the timed capture to go off.

Unless you have a wireless remote or some kind of manual shutter release cable for your digital camera, you're better off not shooting just the normal way. Even the tiniest pressure and movement of your finger pressing down on the shutter button will make the camera move and it will show up in your frame grab. There was a girl in my class who filmed her stop motion short that way, and you could tell. Everything was jiggling all over the place. If you can avoid touching the camera when taking a frame, do so.

If you have a webcam or camcorder that can hook up to a computer through USB or firewire, there are stop motion programs that can recognize your webcam or camcorder, capture frames (with a live preview), onion skin so you can see your previous frames, and show all your images on an exposure sheet/timeline so you can delete/reshoot images. They can also compile your images into a movie clip afterwards.

http://www.stopmotionworks.com/stopmosof...

A free program is MonkeyJam.

http://www.giantscreamingrobotmonkeys.co...

For more specific questions, you should check out http://www.stopmotionanimation.com
It's a message board filled with stop motion animators who help each other out.

Let me know if you need any more help.

what about a tripod Report It

Stringing together digital photos in a slideshow or similar program will create a stop-motion movie effect. The way you set up your shots is up to you. You can manually shoot each one, or set up the camera to shoot in increments of a few seconds, as long as the action in front of the camera is moving.

To me, time lapse is a film that has been sped up, not a string of individual photographs. Your camera has shot say, 24 hours of footage of the sun rising, setting, stars appearing, sun rising again, and this is sped up to show the cycle in a matter of seconds.

If you want stop motion, you need to use fast shutter speeds.