This post was last modified: 2014-10-30, 17:26 by panoramia.

Hello fellow timelapsers!

I have started to shoot my first timelapse transitions using Holy Grail in conjunction with qDslr Dashboard and my Canon 5D Mark II as suggested by Gunther in his videos.

In the beginning I had some issues with the intervalometer but after I got Pixel Timer all ISO ramping problems were fixed, but now I have some issues related to the work flow in order to capture what I want. I would like to have your opinion and hear from your experience in this sense if possible, it'd be great.

What I want to do is:
Start shooting about 1 hour before the sunset, then transition from day to night and stars with milky way.

The issues are related to f/ stop and intervalometer as well as manual intervention:
- Because sunset I'm using a 10 seconds interval with exposure ramping up to 6 seconds and then iso ramping up to 2000. That works great
- However, after that I will need to change interval to a much bigger one to capture the stars and milky way if I wanted to. Let's say to about 30-35 seconds with my Samyang 14mm f2.8
- My initial f/ stop is as high as possible before sunset so that I can get the lowest exposure time to smooth the water or anything that moves, but that brings up another issue, if I have f22 or a bit lower, I can't get the miky way correctly, I need a much wider f number so that I can get more light.
- f stop ramping is not supported with qDslr Dahsboard so I will have to change my f/ stop manually and then adjust it with holy grail. I did it and it "worked", I had no flickr because I used a manual lens, my Samyang 14mm, the problem is when I want to use an automatic lens. Why? If I want to avoid flickr, I will need to disconnect my canon lens from the lens connection so the f/ stop is fixed and flickr is avoived. Deflickr is not recommended with a holy grail scene, Gunther mentioned to me in a post that it won't affect the keyframes, so that's a problem


My question about the day to night transition is:
- What would be a good workflow to follow in order to capture this long transiton timelapses using both
A) a totally manual lens like Samyang 14mm. I believe that changing the f/ stop manually could work, tried it and it more or less works. I would need to calculate the correct exposure and compensate it when I stop to change to a new interval. For example, if I am shooting at 10 secs interval at f22 and iso 2000, then I could change it to a lowr f/ like f8 and then even lower to f/4 and f/2.8 for milky way. I would do that manually by rotating the f/ stop ring in my manual lens... flickering would not exist since lens is manual. But what about automatic lens?

B) Automatic lenses. If I have to disconnect lens from the lens circuit by pressed the DOF button and concinve the camera that the f/ stop is fix, let's say f22 at the start before sunset... how can I make a transition up to the milky way and ramp down f/ stops together with exposure and iso ramping up? Once the lens is disconnected, connecting it again and changing the f/ manually a few times would move the camera, would take a long time to do and the whole process is most likely to fail

** Also using ND filters and ND gradients is a problem. If I am using a 6 stops ND before sunset to smooth water at the sea and the sun sets, if I remove the ND then I don't think that number of stops can be fixed in any software. So how can a correct transition be made using ND filters to smooth pre-sunset scenario, and then transition to darker night and stars/miky way? Any recommendations?

This is my first transition: https://vimeo.com/110007715
It's in the city where I live (Marbella, South of Spain), testing qDslr Dashboard with my Canon 5D Mark II, working nicely. But my iso was at 2500, my f/stop couldn't be changed from f22 to lower, exposure 6 seconds max, I did the exposure+iso ramping, my Canon 24-105mm is automatic and the f/stop cannot be ramped down. How would you solve this issue? What if I was in the middle of the countryside and I wanted the stars and milky way to appear? I would need a much lower f/ and flickering needs to be avoided

This is the second tansition video I shot, : https://vimeo.com/110054174

I had some issues right in the middle since I shot 2 separated ones, filenames count started from 0001 again in canon and had to merge them independently in Premiere so I couldn't process well the transition in the middle and it flickrs (I know how to solve that now).

There are the issues I'm dealing with, any recommendations on which way to go in order to shoot a day to night (night to day) transition correctly?

Thanks a lot!
Greetings from south of Spain,
Alfonso

Hi Alfonso,
I'd suggest not ramping the aperture and not using ND filters. Sure, you will have to start with shorter exposure times, but it's not that bad. You can smooth out everything later with "Motion Blur Plus" when rendering.

The reason is, that changing Aperture will not only change depth of field but as well introduce different vignettes and probably flicker. Apart from that when disconnecting you won't get right exif values, so that you won't be able to properly use the HG wizard and have a lot more complicated workflow when editing.
Using ND filters introduce similar problems: color casts and vignettes that are hard to match.

So: just start with a rather open aperture and a short time and use the fully automatical ramping of qDslrDashboard. This will give you outstanding results. I do it all the time like this.

Best
Gunther

Thanks a lot for your quick reply on the subject Gunther, it's a great support that you are providing the timelapse community.

I stopped using ND filters on the sequences tests I'm shooting because of the problems they will cause in the transition, post-processing, etc, that's fine and logical.

You suggest using a rather open aperture and a short time and use qDslrDashboard to do the whole process automatically, that's fine. But I see a limitation there I believe, correct me if I'm wrong...

I am using a 14mm f2.8 lens for some of my timelapses, if I use as sugested a rather open aperture (I guess you are referring to f5.6 or f4 or similar), my ISO will ramp up higher than 3000 if I want to see the milky way. I remember shooting with my f4 24mm trying to get some nice milky way and it was sort of impossible unless I used a very high ISO, and that means a LOT of noise, a lot.

The interval is also an issue:

- When I start before the sunset, my interval is about 8-10 seconds. Shutter speed maybe 1/20 or so. If I want to use qDslrDashboard full automatic until the stars/milky way are seen, it won't be possible with 10 seconds of interval. Milky way would require much more seconds of interval and a wide aperture. So full auto in qDslr would not be possible. At night I get some nice shots of the milky way with about 30 seconds at f/20 and iso 2000. Using 10 seconds as exposure would not allow me to get the right transition, also at night we require more time to get more detail... since the aperture would not be set at f2.8 (as you suggested)

- I can't see how I could break that loop in the work flow for day to night/milky way the only thing I can think of biw is starting with 1/20 sec, iso 100, and about f/5.6 with a 10 seconds interval and when the iso ramps up to 2000-3000 iso on my canon 5d mark ii (more will display a lot of noise), I would stop shooting and use a bigger interval like 30 seconds, 2-3 seconds lower for shutter speed (no pause) and shoot 1 image at such interval with same aperture or lower.

That's the only thing I can think of. Is there a specific work flow that you are using to prevent those issues I'm referring to? I understand the HG videos and functionalities, awesome tool and software, but the work flow to have longer sequences escapes my understanding because of the f/ and interval limitatons. Any recommendation?

Thanks a lot for everything you are doing!
Have a great weekend Gunther!

Regards,
Alfonso Moreno

This post was last modified: 2014-10-31, 21:43 by Gunther.

WIth the 14-24 f/2.8 I can use f/2.8 all the time. Then with the Canon 6D or Nikon D750 I can ramp ISO until 6400 without problems. If you want you can even use the internal interval timer of qDslrDashboard that will allow for Interval Ramping, so after sunset you can easily ramp from 10 secs. interval to 20secs in 1 hour time or whatever you want to allow for longer exposures.