Posts: 2
Threads: 1
Joined: Oct 2014
I've been researching time-lapse technique and I keep encountering the time-lapse mantra of "ALWAYS shoot in manual everything!".
But here is my time-lapse challenge and I am skeptical that the "ALWAYS" rule is actually best for my situation-
I need to shoot a long time-lapse of an interior movie set as the set goes through multiple transformations from one set to another, as the set is repurposed.
The location is indoors but one side of the indoor space is a huge hangar door that will be opened periodically, during the times the construction crew tears down a previous set and constructs the next set.
The time frame I need to cover is at least 30 days, I'd like it to be 90 days if possible.
The light will change from indirect daylight ( when the hangar door is open ) to industrial work lighting ( metal halide ) to dimply light tungsten. The WB range will likely be from 2800k to 10,000k.
The light level will shift dramatically, likely on the order of 80 foot-candles to 2000 foot-candles. Probably a range of 14 stops if not 20 stops.
I am new to time-lapse but my instinct is that setting everything to Manual simply won't work in this situation. If I expose for the indirect daylight the low-lighting will be underexposed, if I expose for the low-light the images will be blown out when the hangar door is open. The camera will be mounted 30 ft in the air, a position that will be difficult to access and at times will be inaccessible.
What to do? Any advice would be much appreciated.
The advice I received that I suspect is the best advice thus far was to shoot in Aperture priority AND in auto White Balance. I am told that RAW would allow for de-flicker and WB correction in post but I cannot shoot in RAW because the size of the files would reduce the length of the time lapse dramatically.
I was told to shoot small file sizes- around 7mb. The camera will be snapping away at night and on weekends when there is no activity so I am going to have a lot of wasted frames.
I was warned about the "staccato" effect that results from shooting in Aperture priority but my interval will likely be in the range of 1 frame every 10 minutes, so I suspect it's not an issue with that long of an interval.
The camera will be a Canon T3i and the lens will be the Tokina 11-16 zoom. The camera will be operating off a power supply. 128gb sd card.
Any advice is much appreciated. Any error that you see that I am about to make? Anything I am failing to anticipate? Do I need to use Magic Lantern? This is a paying gig and I am starting to feel as if I should have told the client "I don't do time lapse. That's a Stills thing."
I'm a Video guy who spent 20 years locked into a single "ISO" and shutter speed, all exposure compensation done with the iris and ND. I've never touched a Canon t3i before and I've never shot time-lapse on anything beyond a GoPro. I let the client tell me "You're good, you'll figure it out." in response to my warning that I don't have time-lapse experience. Now I am feeling as if I am in way over my head!
But here is my time-lapse challenge and I am skeptical that the "ALWAYS" rule is actually best for my situation-
I need to shoot a long time-lapse of an interior movie set as the set goes through multiple transformations from one set to another, as the set is repurposed.
The location is indoors but one side of the indoor space is a huge hangar door that will be opened periodically, during the times the construction crew tears down a previous set and constructs the next set.
The time frame I need to cover is at least 30 days, I'd like it to be 90 days if possible.
The light will change from indirect daylight ( when the hangar door is open ) to industrial work lighting ( metal halide ) to dimply light tungsten. The WB range will likely be from 2800k to 10,000k.
The light level will shift dramatically, likely on the order of 80 foot-candles to 2000 foot-candles. Probably a range of 14 stops if not 20 stops.
I am new to time-lapse but my instinct is that setting everything to Manual simply won't work in this situation. If I expose for the indirect daylight the low-lighting will be underexposed, if I expose for the low-light the images will be blown out when the hangar door is open. The camera will be mounted 30 ft in the air, a position that will be difficult to access and at times will be inaccessible.
What to do? Any advice would be much appreciated.
The advice I received that I suspect is the best advice thus far was to shoot in Aperture priority AND in auto White Balance. I am told that RAW would allow for de-flicker and WB correction in post but I cannot shoot in RAW because the size of the files would reduce the length of the time lapse dramatically.
I was told to shoot small file sizes- around 7mb. The camera will be snapping away at night and on weekends when there is no activity so I am going to have a lot of wasted frames.
I was warned about the "staccato" effect that results from shooting in Aperture priority but my interval will likely be in the range of 1 frame every 10 minutes, so I suspect it's not an issue with that long of an interval.
The camera will be a Canon T3i and the lens will be the Tokina 11-16 zoom. The camera will be operating off a power supply. 128gb sd card.
Any advice is much appreciated. Any error that you see that I am about to make? Anything I am failing to anticipate? Do I need to use Magic Lantern? This is a paying gig and I am starting to feel as if I should have told the client "I don't do time lapse. That's a Stills thing."
I'm a Video guy who spent 20 years locked into a single "ISO" and shutter speed, all exposure compensation done with the iris and ND. I've never touched a Canon t3i before and I've never shot time-lapse on anything beyond a GoPro. I let the client tell me "You're good, you'll figure it out." in response to my warning that I don't have time-lapse experience. Now I am feeling as if I am in way over my head!
