f-stop Ambassador Matthew Vandeputte (@Matjoez) is a timelapse photographer and YouTuber who specializes in the 'niche within a niche' called hyperlapse photography. Creating this unique engaging content started as a hobby which got out of hand, and now he is commissioned by brands to create timelapse videos, and has written two e-books on how you can do this yourself.

To celebrate this and spread the knowledge, we are giving away both e-book guides to timelapse and astro photography, and a Dalston pack. But before you enter the giveaway, here are 5 tips from Matthew to improve your timelapse photography and a look inside his bag...

MATT’S MINI TIMELAPSE KIT:

TIP 1: USE A STURDY TRIPOD

This may seem simple, but seriously spend a bit of extra money on a tripod that won’t be wobbly or shake around in the wind. It saves you so much time in post production from stabilizing. It is always better to get it right in camera. When you can't bring a large tripod, even a compact tripod can be stable.

TIP 3: USE FILTERS

Something that a lot of people don’t do, but it makes your footage look so much better, is use an ND filter to drag your shutter. So ideally when you are shooting with a 2 second interval, you shoot with 1 second exposure. Now most lenses don’t stop down enough to get that shutter drag, or that extended exposure, so you are going to want to put a ND filter on your lens to make sure you have the cinematic looking footage.

TIP 4: TURN OFF YOUR CAMERA STABILIZATION

If you are using stabilization in your lens or camera, make sure to turn it off, because if your lens has a stabilizer and it is on a tripod, it will actually hunt that motion that is not there, and your footage will wobble. I know it’s counter intuitive, but anytime you put your camera on a tripod, turn off your image stabilization

TIP 5: HOW MANY PHOTOS SHOULD YOU SHOOT?

If you live in a PAL country where video broadcast is twenty five frames per second, you want to shoot at 250 photos minimum per sequence, whereas if you live in a country like the USA (NTSC video broadcast) you want to shoot 300 photos minimum per sequence, because that gives you at 30 frames per second, 10 seconds of video and I call that the bare minimum for a nice timelapse shot.

GET LUCKY: ENTER TO WIN @MATJOEZ'S NEWLY PUBLISHED GUIDES TO TIMELAPSE PHOTOGRAPHY AND ASTRO PHOTOGRAPHY, PLUS HIS FAVORITE f-stop DALSTON BAG HERE!