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Holy Grail button greyed out all the time

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#21 Gunther
The purpose of the Holy Grail Wizard is to level the jumps in brightness, that are being introduced, when you change camera settings (ISO, Exposure, Aperture) when shooting in M mode. It doesn't matter, if you change manually or via qDslrDashboard.

If you shoot in A/Av Mode, you don't need it, since you most likely won't get those "jumps" - just some flicker. In those cases just use the visual deflicker.
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#22 uscholdm
I shot a 147 image sequence and made a few changes along the way, first is was shutter priority, then I changed the ISO, then it was aperture priority. There are numerous jumps where the exposure changed.  Just because I allowed the camera to do this rather than doing it all in M mode, I see no reason for not calling this Holy Grail mode.  I had to go manualy insert the left and right key frames.   How about not insisting on shooting in M mode and using the fact there are numerous jumps in exposure throughout the image. The latter seems to be the important thing. I don't see how it can be true that using HG key frames will have no effect in these circumstances.

This was driving me nuts, before I found this FAQ.

Otherwise, I'm excited by the possibilities this tool offers.

Michael
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#23 Gunther
If you changed the shooting mode, LRT might still not activate the HG-Wizard.

In that case, you have to manually place 2* and 3* keyframes right before and after each jump.
So go to each image before a jump, press "2", and on the next press "3".
This will manually set keyframes there and enable the Holy Grail Wizard too.
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#24 uscholdm
Thanks, that is what I did.  Consider whether it would be an overall benefit if you broadened the criteria for HG mode so that one is not forced to put it into M mode, but that A or Av mode would also trigger it. This would be in the spirit of LTR saving work, not forcing users to manully look for the changes and setting L and R points at each exposure change.  There are lots of them, since they are gradual.  Or maybe if the changes are very gradual, then there is no real benefit of using HG mode and entering the points manually?

Michael
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#25 Gunther
There is of course a reason, that sequence shot in A mode are not processed with the Holy Grail wizard.

If you shoot in A mode, the camera will write exif data in steps of 1/3 stops for exposure/iso/aperture - but in reality it most cameras do continuous adjustments. So the exifdata will not reflect the real brightness of the images. In that case holy grail wizard would introduce some "jumps" instead of eliminating jumps (because there are none).

So the only reason for using the holy grail wizard on sequences shot in A mode would be, that you manually interferred by using the +/- correction on the camera. In those case only, you would then be able to set the 2*/3* manually - then you can use the HG-Wizard for those jumps only - the other adjustments due to the A-Mode will be left alone.

Everything will be smoothened by the visual deflicker at the end.
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#26 uscholdm
Very interesting, thanks for the explanation.

Michael
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#27 jdphotopdx
This is really frustrating. I shoot in a mode, and yes I do the +/- adjustments occasionally. LR time-lapse will not recognize those changes for me.
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#28 Gunther
No, because it cannot distinguish between changes to the camera parameters that the camera does automatically and those that you do manually.
In order to use the Holy Grail Wizard nevertheless, just manually set a 2* keyframe (hit 2 on keyboard) to the frame before you manually adjusted and a 3* keyframe (hit 3) on the next frame, after the adjustment. The should be on adjacent frames.
Now the Holy Grail Wizard is unlocked and you can use it.
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#29 warnerjh
I have to admit that I'm a bit frustrated by this 'feature' as well. I'm currently evaluating LRT4 to see if it will suit my needs, but because of the types of subjects I shoot, I cannot rely only upon ramping aperture and ISO. In other words, for the work that I do, I often need a constant aperture while changing shutter speed, and potentially ISO. For some sequences it is MUCH simpler to just let the camera react to brightness changes itself, rather than me intervening via Manual mode.

I did see your 2*3* approach to manually identifying said exposure changes, but this seems not to work with shutter speed. Also, for some reason when the images are brought back into Lightroom I can see that the 2* ratings were applied, but 95% of the 3* ratings were not applied (in fact, only one was, and oddly it was an 'automatically chosen' HGwizard point, that I cannot for the life of me understand why it was picked, i.e. there are no exposure changes between the 2* and 3* frame).

Anyway, I guess I'm not understanding why the software cannot be enabled to react to changes in Av-mode shutter speed throughout a sequence (although I do understand it's potential effect on the resultant timeline in a time-lapse video). Clearly the software can identify that there was a change, e.g. the Preview and Visual Luminance fields both show the drop in exposure; so why not allow LRT4 the ability to react to these changes? I also understand the potential problems with automatic exposure modes changing the capture settings too frequently when it probably shouldn't (for example, due to a change in brightness due to a cloud shadow getting bigger), but it seems to me that you are potentially ham-stringing your software by not allowing it to react to changes in brightness due to changes in shutter speed in an automatic mode, especially when that adjustment is warranted. I shoot predominately in either Manual or Aperture-Priority, and it seems like your software should work with the latter--rather common--approach, and any of the potential problems you mention being introduced by the HG exposure changes would theoretically be taken care of by De-Flicker, anyway.

Lastly, as an example of why I might want the aperture to remain the same: consider a time-lapse that, for whatever reason, has a shallow depth of field. Currently, it seems that your Holy Grail approach of not allowing automated changes in shutter speed would result in a time-lapse where the depth-of-field was potentially changing between frames, which can be really distracting in a video. 

Since manually-attaching the 2* and 3* Holy Grail jump designators doesn't seem to be working for me, perhaps it is somewhat of a moot point, in my case, though after reading a few of these threads, I'm honestly now not sure whether I should even be able to fix this issue 'manually' using the 2*3* approach. (???)

Thanks for the potentially great piece of software, I've been manually ramping settings between dozens of non-adjacent frames in Lightroom for years (ugh!), and I sincerely hope I can get it to work for my needs.

Cheers!
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#30 Gunther
Holy Grail Wizard and the 2*/3* keyframes are only needed for sequences shot in M Mode. And yes, of course it will detect changes in Exposure (as well as ISO and Aperture).

There are many reasons to shoot timelapse in M and ramp Shutter/ISO/Ap independently from the camera automatic modes - preferably with a ramping solution like qDslrDashboard. This will give you the maximum control about the values (for example go for longer exposure times, have aperture only ramping in a certain range etc.). So this workflow with the holy grail wizard is streamlined to work with M mode. The Holy Grail Wizard only uses the exif-Data of the images to calculate the compensations. This leades to a good result that will further be refined with the visual deflicker.

Of course, you can shoot your timelapse in A mode as well - then you won't need the holy grail wizard, that's why it's grayed out. The reason is, that most of the cameras do smooth transitions for exposure/iso/aperture in A mode that means, they don't only use the defined values that you can set on the camera, but inbetween values too. But they write the (rounded) defined values into the exif data leading to a difference in the capured brightness vs. the recorded exif-data.
Since LRTimelapse's Holy Grail Wizard uses Exif-Data to calculate the compensations, this would lead to quite the opposite effect in this scenario: meaning the Holy Grail wizard would introduce steps instead of removing them. That's why Holy Grail Wizard is not useful for sequences shot in A-Mode.
This is where the 2nd powerful tool of LRTimelapse comes into play: the visual deflicker. If you shoot in A Mode, just use the visual deflicker and ignore the holy grail wizard.
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