This post was last modified: 2015-11-02, 02:16 by lapse-it-up.

I'm working on a long-term time lapse, where I basically have 1 shot per day (outdoor). I take my "1 shot" usually at dusk, where the light is somewhat flat. Most days, I have about 4-5 images to select from, and pick the 'best' one (which is usually the most consistent of the bunch)

The difficulty is that even in flat light there is a lot of variation from day-to-day. I have my camera set to Av, so constant aperture, constant ISO, but the shutter speed varies (usually between 2-8 seconds). Each day, the white balance can be a little different, the exposure/brightness can change, etc. 

I can spend a ton of time tweaking settings from image to image, and get them a bit smooth, but it's a real chore. 

I've tried using LR timelapse to help automate this, but it doesn't seem to work too well either. It doesn't recognize anything for the "holy grail method" (button is grayed-out). Setting keyframes doesn't help much, because there is so much variance from frame to frame... almost every frame is a keyframe (though, the auto-keyframing only suggests 1 keyframe). The visual deflicker does help a bit, but only a bit... (Plus, if I do hand-tweak these, and then try something in LR timelapse in addition, I can wipe-out all my manual edits pretty quickly!) 

I've read about the "long-term" timelapse function, but I don't think that'll help me. I need 1 image per day to keep the integrity of the timelapse (the transition needs to be smooth as well), and can't "filter-out" too many of these. At most, I only save a few shots per day anyway. Anyway, I don't have the Pro license to try it out... though, I might need to get that ultimately anyway for other reasons. 

Has anyone else worked on something similar? do you have any suggestions about a good workflow to help?  I was thinking that the "Holy Grail" function might help (where nearly every frame is a Holy Grail Keyframe), but it is grayed-out. Is there any way to force it to 'go'?

FYI - I also tried using the Lightroom "Match Total Exposures" function, but that doesn't work for this setup either.

Holy Grail won't help you, since it does basically the same like deflicker, only based on exif-data.
You already described the problems - that's why professional long term shooters shoot a lot more images (every 15 minutes or even more) to have a lot of material to be able to filter from. Then the LRT Long Term Workflow comes into play and allows you to automatically reduce that large amount of images to a reasonable amount leaving only the ones that "match" in terms of Contrast, Color and Brightness.

If you want to do it manually like you currently do, I'd suggest to do all your corrections in Lightroom and try to get a look as close as possible and then use the visual deflicker at the very end to smoothen out things even more.

Thanks for the reply... that's pretty much what I was planning to do. I think the Motion Blur Plus may help too... but I haven't tried it yet. The exif data on these does change quite a bit from frame to frame, but only the shutter speed. 

My setup takes images every 12 minutes, but only at dawn & dusk. (I have no use for images in full sun). So, I get about 25 images a day. But, I only want to use about 1 a day. If I used the LRT Long Term filter, I may have 10 from one day, and 0 from the next few days. (some days I may skip if there is fog, etc). I'm filming a natural process, so it needs to show a steady change. 

Anyway, even at dawn/dusk, the light can be quite different from day to day. On the good side, I do have a lot of time to manually process these.

Just a quick follow-up, in case anyone reads this thread. I think I found a solution that was "staring me in the face". 

I just use auto-tone & auto-white-balance on everything. Since it's the same scene, Lightroom compensates pretty well from image to image. I never use auto-anything, so I had almost forgotten about it. 

I have to reset the exposure to +/-0 after the auto tone. For some reason Lightroom wants to over-expose everything. 

These are coming out a lot more smooth now! 

I'll still use LRT for some post-processing & pan/crop, but the "auto" function in Lightroom really did the trick, I think.

Hey Lapse It Up.

I'm just embarking on editing a long term time lapse.

So apart from using auto tone and auto white balance, is there any other tips you found along the way which helped with the workflow and end result of your time lapse?

Did you have to deal with camera stabilisation at all?

Thanks!