Has anyone experienced a rapid flickering throughout a timelapse despite fully manual camera settings and using the deflicker workflow? I'm getting this in numerous timelapses and can't figure out what the issue is.

Here's an example...

http://youtu.be/iQVeK1me8AI

You'll see the rapid flickering most apparent in the sky.

The camera settings were manual/constant throughout the shoot.

I have tried using processed and unprocessed RAWs as well as 2-stage deflickering and also applied smoothing.

Any help greatly appreciated.

It looks like aperture flicker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl...Vnqd4f3Kmk

In my ebook I explain different ways to circumvent it when shooting. Normally you should be able to correct it in LRTImelapse as well, but since there is so much movement in that sequence...
Did you set the reference area appropriately?

Thanks for the quick reply as always.

Yes, the reference was set.

I've been doing a bit more research and I think you're right about aperture flicker. My aperture was probably set too high (f11 I think).

There are a few recommendations to lock the aperture by slightly disconnecting the lens from the camera. I might try this, as well as using a wider aperture.

Thanks again.

A "wider" aperture won't help, you would have to fully open it. The disconnecting trick will only work with Canon, not Nikon.

Yeah I've just worked out that aperture locking doesn't work on Nikon.

So would you recommend only ever shooting at the widest aperture of any lens, even at 1.4?

In case anyone's had the same issue whilst shooting at anything other than the widest aperture, I've found rendering using the following settings pretty much removes aperture flicker.

4K, speed 4x, quality high, motion blur low.

Any residual flicker can be removed in Premiere using a plugin such as GBDeflicker.

Hope that's of use to someone.

The settings you use (speed 4x) will just skip 3 of 4 frames, this might, randomly produce a better result, if the flicker frames are skipped, but that's not a solution.

The LRTimelapse deflicker works pretty well when applied right (see deflicker tutorial) but:
It's always best to get rid of flicker when shooting, not in post. The known approaches, not only shooting wide open, are extensively described in my EBook!

It was only really meant to be a solution for idiots like me who don't read manuals until they've made a load of mistakes - just a way to make unusable footage usable

I will buy and read your ebook.

Thanks.