So, I haven't done much with LRT for a longggg time. Now that I have a "new" Sony a7ii, I've been looking to utilize my LRT v4 copy to do timelapses again. I intend on upgrading it to the latest license - again, I only recently bought an a7ii to do timelapse stuff over the past few months. The latest LRT5 improvements appeal to me incredibly, so glad this application has lasted this long!

ANYWAY!

I think this is more of a composition/device setup a7ii issue than a problem with LRT directly.

I am HUGE on astrophotography, lightning and sky photography.

Unfortunately, with my Sony a7ii with a 28mm f/2 lens, there's no way I can do anything without including foliage in the shot at home because my balcony on my apartment has a lot of trees in view.

Night astrophotography shots work out awesome, example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZhTmBkrNng

Now, I have been trying to do a day->night->day timelapse, from the same location.

The following is a video example with the images processed by LRTv4, a portion I captured during a 20 hour session:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j98tRj7rCEA

I added the image sequence to the standard deflicker workflow, because the clip above is really only day->early dusk. The original video had significant issues mainly with the way the trees are essentially vibrating. I tossed the output video through an after effects pixel motion blur filter to try to make the movement of the foliage less of a problem, which helped some, which is what you are seeing in that video, but obviously there is still some flicker.

I am wondering for situations like I am in, if using the spot metering mode on my camera may not be the right option when foliage is involved. It's great for astrophotography however the variations of the amount of light on the foliage, and when clouds are involved in the shot, it can cause dramatic exposure differences when using the spot method.

Should I be using perhaps "multi" metering mode given my situation? There are so many variables to consider.

Shooting in manual mode with static settings works awesome, but without making manual adjustments, as you guys know a day->night sequence will just not work out too well.

For day->night stuff, I have been shooting in aperture priority mode as I have not played around with exposure ramping or any software/device to do that yet. I guess that would be the ideal method. Aperture priority naturally causes a significant amount of variation with the exposure and ISO, which is why I'm wondering about the metering mode, if that could reduce such dramatic changes that spot otherwise would cause when clouds are present.

I really need to play around with silhouetting for the "vibrating" foliage as well. To overlay a silhouette to make the foliage static, when the sky is the primary thing I'm trying to capture...

Any suggestions are appreciated!
Thanks!

Sorry but what's the purpose of spending energy in shooting from such a location (apart from basic practicing, which would be good) if not lazyness? I'd say go to a location where you have a beautiful nature surrounding you and a nice foreground and spend your energy in shooting a really nice timelapse. No great night timelapse was created while the photographer was sleeping. And no great holy grail was shot just automatically by the camera. All great photographers go out, spend the day or night at gorgeous places, experience the nature and shoot our timelapses there. Take a tent with you if you want a nap but don't expect to sleep much. That's where you get the great results.

But to answer your questions: there is a reason, why I helped develop the Holy Grail Feature in qDslrDashboard. With that solution you could shoot in M mode and the algorithm in the app will help to do the right exposure. Timelapse is something the camera metering is not really designed for.

If you want to learn hot to do it right, I would really recommend my ebook: https://lrtimelapse.com/buy/ebook/
There is also a free tutorial on the tutorials page, where I show how to do the holy grail shooting.

Lazy. Lazy... LAZY! I have been called many things in my life but lazy was never one of them. Wait nevermind, it totally was, but only relating to school work.

I'm trying to get back into the swing of things, I totally get where you are coming from about going out to a nice location. 100%.

And a lot of time, I do like to do a bunch of non-ideal timelapses here at home with minimal input from me - not for award-winning stuff, but just for fun. Going out to a site every day is just not practical. But going out to one to capture something incredible is always something I'm looking to do. We have a new moon coming tomorrow, I'm praying it isn't cloudy, I've been waiting over a month to be able to do this.

I want to know how to deal with problems that may arise when I'm out there, by doing what I can to learn about problems like this at home. The last thing I would like to do is spend a lot of time in a nice location and then having something arise that I haven't accounted for, and ruin the timelapse or shots completely.

I'll check out your book. Honestly it *seems* like a lot has changed since 2015. Not really in how you need to operate your camera while doing a day->night timelapse, but mainly with the available applications like qdslrdashboard that now exist to help with it. I know my old camera was not supported at the time back then even though qdslrdashboard was released shortly before I got the camera.

Your youtube tutorials are really good by the way. Very easy to understand, and learn from. Masterstroke.

https://arkangel.dev/pics/DSC01182.sm.png
https://arkangel.dev/pics/DSC01958.sm.png
https://arkangel.dev/pics/DSC02535.ro.png
https://arkangel.dev/pics/DSC03039r.png

Thanks!

This post was last modified: 2021-04-20, 22:37 by Gunther.

A lot _has_ changed since 2015, that's for sure.
And of course you are totally right to practice in your backyard. That's what I also encourage in my book. Often it's not easy to tell, when people post timelapse clips, if it's just practicing or they really mean it ;-)