Hi, I am fairly new to shooting time lapse and using LR Time Lapse and I have frequently run into a problem that I cannot find an answer for anywhere. I notice a flickering in my time lapse clips that happens whenever an object moves into frame, I shoot landscape and cloudscape type of scenes and if a car drives down a near by road, a cow walks through a near by field (not close to the camera), a person appears in the image distant to the camera or some other object a strange flickering happens. It is not simply a case of exposure change otherwise deflicker would be a simple solution, it is the whole balance of the image that changes across the whole frame, darks get darker, lights get lighter in a way that cannot be fixed by adjusting lights, blacks, shadows, contrast etc. I shoot with four sony cameras, 2x A7siii and 2x A7iv and have the same problem with all of them, I always shoot fully manual and set the aperture ring on the lens to lock the aperture in place. It would be so helpful to know if anybody else has noticed this problem and if there is any way of avoiding the issue.

Thanks for any help. Tom.

When you deflicker are you selecting a reference area? Also you may be using tools which introduce such artifacts, have a watch of this it might well help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb6UZsUEpSI

Hi, thanks for the fast response. I get this problem with no deflicker applied, when I view the images as raw files with no adjustments made I can see the issue there already so it happens in camera somehow.

what metering mode do you shoot in ?

usually set to multi but the camera is set to fully manual mode when shooting to aperture, iso, and shutter stay the same

What you are describing is most likely contrast flicker introduced by some of Lightroom's editing tools.
Please watch my expert tips video #5 to learn how to avoid it: https://lrtimelapse.com/tutorial/expert

In the future, avoid such harsh changes in contrast by using an ND filter to get exposure times >1 sec. This will look much better and make editing much easier also.

Thanks for the response, I can see the changes in the raw files before any adjustments have been made at all.

you will always see some luminance changes in the raw files, this is what de-flicker will remove. If you process first as per the video you may introduce contrast flicker, try deflickering using a reference frame and without too much processing and see what you get.

This post was last modified: 2025-10-21, 14:54 by Gunther.

Thanks for the response, I can see the changes in the raw files before any adjustments have been made at all.

You cannot "see" raw files. If you look at a preview, you'll see the image that the camera has developed as preview from the raw. If you look at it in Lightroom, you'll see the Lightroom developement, which already has some processing applied, like camera profiles.

So check out the video I mentioned above, follow those advices and then set a reference are for deflicker to some spot where not objects or people are popping in (sky for example). Deflicker until the curve is smooth, that's the best you can do. But of course, you won't get rid of the distractions.