Gunther-

I'm a new fan. I just love your videos.

I'm an LA based photographer, and I'm getting into time-lapse obsessively. As such, I have a question about your holy grail technique with DslrDashboard. By the way, I'm excited to see what your new partnership with the developer will reveal! Exciting things, I'm sure.

It seems that what you get from a Bulb ramping device (like Promote Control) is very small and smooth increments of transitions (though we've agreed it's expensive, and though automated, is not the best quality result because it can't take into account external factors). And I understand that LRTimelapse does the smoothing work for you in post. But I imagine that "getting it right" in camera is the best way to get to get the best results to help the LRT holygrail conform. Ie, no sloppy mistakes.

My question:

Do you assign different priorities to shutter speed, Fstop, or ISO? By that I mean, when you're standing by the camera, and you're ready to go up 1/3 stop, how do you prioritize which setting to adjust? I'm looking to go from full daylight to milky way. 1/100th, f16, 100 ISO all the way to 30 seconds, f2, ISO 3200. Do you use shutter speed first, then go to f stop, then to ISO, as far as priority?

I know all depends on where on the planet you are as to how fast the exposure changes occur, but I'm wondering if you can offer insight into where you make each kind of adjustment adjustments, shutter speed, Fstop, ISO vis a vis how dark it's getting.

Thanks so much!

-Giorgio

Thank you for the compliment, much appreciated.
Doing it "right" for the holy grail is just not possible, you will have to edit either way - Whitebalance, the correct luminosity transition etc... Levelng the 1/3 steps is not a problem with LRT. But this method gives you all the control that you need (an the Bulb raming devices mostly lack).
On Nikon cameras for example you cannot make smooth rampings with bulb ramping only because the bulb time cannot be controlled exactly.

I leave the aperture open, I start with the Shutter, increase until one step before maximum, then I increase ISO.

Hope I could help!

Gunther-

Thanks for you response which was, as usual, immensely valuable! I'd also like to report that I have successfully flashed the suggested TP Link MR3040 on a Mac, and connected to my 5DMarkiii wirelessly, I'm stunned at what $35 and DSLRdashboard can accomplish. Woah. DP's in LA are going to freak out.

Great, a constant aperture wide open for a day to night sequence (so I'm already wide open when the milky way comes out) is a great solution, and is probably a great help for avoiding Flicker.

But of course you know what question is coming nex, right?t: If I'm at f2.8 for 1-2 seconds at the beginning of the sequence at lets say 6:30pm (for cloud movement), you must suggest using a series of ND filters. Or a Variable ND, right? Because wide open, I'm going to be way way over exposed. And This would of course also mean that you'd have to get super good at putting those puppies on and off while the time lapse is going! Or I guess you could delete frames with fingers in them, so as not to rush and crack the lens front element, I sometimes have a beer while time lapsing!

Are ND Filters the solution? Any thoughts you have would be great!

So Last Question for clarification. I want to see if this is what you're talking about. Let's assume that I only have access to ONE ND filter, a 10 stop filter. I'm shooting on the 5dmarkiii with the Zeiss 15mm.

The scene is: A lake, mountains, clouds moving, and then the stars are come out.

START 6:30pm, with the ND Filter ON
-increase shutter 1/3 EV as needed for 10 stops.
-REMOVE the ND filter and quickly set the shutter back 10 stops to 1 second Exposure.
-increase shutter from 1 second to 25 seconds.
-increase ISO from 100 to 3200.
-increase shutter from 25 seconds to 30 seconds.

Huzzah? Did I get that right?

Thanks so much!
-G

I don't use ND filters. I usually make the compromise and start with rather short times and even low ISO's (32, 50, if the camera supports it).

Changing ND's while shooting is not a good idea normally, because you won't be able to change them that quilckly and they introduce weird color casts and vignetting that are really hard to match with the adjacent images then.

So just go for the Shutter and ISO ramping only. Everything else is way, way more complicated and would include additional hardware and software (motorized aperture ramping for example).

Excellent!

I'm in the car now on my way to the kaiser wildnerness, with a new moon above!

I'll share my end result!

Well, my first Holy Grail stuff got botched because I was a dumb dumb. I thought it would be possible to take a few trips away from my Android phone and the camera for about 10 ish minutes (to get firewood and water) between the hours of 7 and 8:30 pm. Woah, big mistake. You really really want to watching the waveform and getting somewhat even adjustments, as per Gunther's solid advice in his HolyGrail tutorial by the ocean. "Stay within a beer-length of the camera, cuz you'll need to check it." Very very true. When you go away for too long, and you have to skip a bump in shutter, it's not so good. The jumps in the Exposure differential in LRTimelapse were unfixable! Smoother is better, apparently!

So, I've noticed one thing, and I wanted to get your opinion, Gunther. It seems like I had an issue with the waveform graph and the preview image itself on DSLR dashboard app disappearing as I would local/unlock the phone, put it in my pocket, take it out, etc. Everytime I went back to the App, and back into LRTimelpase mode, when I click on to "see next JPG." the preview image was off the screen or really small in the corner, and the waveform was gone. I'm wondering if these were Galaxy S5 issues because the screen layout for DSLR Dashboard may have been built for tablet, but I just wanted to bring it up. Perhaps it's a "screen auto rotate issue" where it's confusing the app? Perhaps mention this to your new best friend and DSLR Dashboard developer?

And of course, it would be my luck to get cloud cover on a 6 month planned trip specifically to get a new moon in summer. for the Milky Way! BAH! But the clouds were kind of fun!

https://vimeo.com/102104791

Hi, I'm not sure how the different devices handle standby mode etc. so I always leave the device on and I don't walk around with it. I just put it beneath the camera in a bag, set the setting in qDslrDashboard to leave the screen on and leave it that way. The battery last for hours, even with the screen on, no problem.

The other thing is, didn't you use Auto-Holy grail? In that case you don't have to adjust frequently because the app will do this for you. And you don't have to press "display next jpg" as well, because this will happen automatically too. Maybe you should watch my video again.