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Holy Grail button greyed out all the time

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#31 warnerjh
Thanks for responding!

Neither scenario (HG nor basic Visual Workflow) seems to work for a sunrise sequence I am testing this on. As an example, as the sun appeared behind a ridge, there was an immediate -1 stop change applied to the shutter speed. De-Flicker does not seem to be able to handle such a large change (even two passes), and thus I worked toward trying to 'manually' get the HG workflow to help accommodate it. The changes in brightness can be seen in the Preview and Visual Luminance values, so I guess I just don't understand why LRT4 cannot predict what is necessary to match brightness from these measurements? I was able to do it 'manually'--albeit with a tremendous amount of effort--a year ago when I first produced the sequence, and was hoping your software would allow me to automate the incredibly laborious process.

I get that the 'in between' values that automatic camera modes potentially select could indeed induce some flicker, but it seems to me that that is exactly what De-Flicker is/could be used for. I completely respect your views as both an expert time-lappist and the developer of the software, but I guess there must be some technical reason that you cannot explain for not allowing the software to at least try and normalize the brightness values when shot in Auto modes.
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#32 warnerjh
Gunther, I sincerely want to be able to use your software for my work, but I really do need answers to the questions I posed in my follow-up message that I posted recently (which you chose not to post publicly to this thread). I cannot, using either HG Wizard or Visual De-Flicker, get your software to do it's thing, no matter what I do. I guess I can't understand why I should not be able to enter HG mode 'manually' >>>regardless of how I shot the sequence<<< and assign 2*3* to force the wizard to accommodate my manual changes in shutter speed or ISO. I can see that the software 'sees' the luminance change, but it will NOT make an adjustment for it, which seems to me the primary use of your software. The final answer may be that I need to shoot sequences using ONLY your HolyGrail method, but that is not an answer for the dozens of sequences I've shot in the past.

Is there some kind of technical reason that you cannot allow manually forcing the HG Wizard to accommodate ANY change in image brightness, regardless of it's source? I understand that Visual De-Flicker should handle this, but sometimes there are LARGE automatic changes in exposure settings, for example due to the sun instantaneously peeking out from behind a ridge, causing a 1-stop change in exposure, and VDF seems not to be able to accommodate such large changes.

Respectfully,

Jeff
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#33 Gunther
Hi Jeff, I already gave you an explanation why Holy Grail does not work for sequences shot in A mode and what to do.
I'd suggest that you send me an example-sequence with your edits and then I'll have a look.
Please compress the sequence to into a zip file and send via https://fromsmash.com/ or wetransfer to support(at)lrtimelapse(dot)com
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#34 Aleksankir
Hello, Gunther! What is the fundamental difference between Holy Grail and visual deflicker? Why not shoot in "A" mode and process with only a visual deflicker?
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#35 Gunther
Shooting with the Holy Grail Method (M-Mode, changing Shutter/ISO/Aperture manually or via a ramping device like qDslrDashboard) has the huge advantage that you can freely define the strategy with which you change the parameters. For example prefer long exposure times, change the aperture only so much, don't go highter with ISO like 3200 etc.

Of course you could try combining A-Mode with ISO-Automatic to do the automatic ramping. But it will have 2 disadvantages: A mode will always go for short exposure times since it's designed to be used when shooting handheld. When the exposure times get longer, the camera won't respect your interval - this means it can even happen, that the exposure times get longer as the interval. You have no control about this.
And second: A-mode will use the camera metering wich is not reliable when it gets dark and is easily distracted by any changes in Light which will then possibly cause over or undexposed frames.

Bottomline: if you want perfect results and reliable results, go for the holy grail method. I've developed this over the last years exactly because of the deficiencies of the A/Auto-ISO approach. If you don't care so much, try it out by yourself.

Of course the Visual Deflicker will do a great job for any sequence, but if you have blown highlights, of course they cannot be recovered. And because of the lack in control about the camera settings, you will get short exposure times most of the times, which will introduce other problems.
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#36 Aleksankir
Thanks for the expanded answer. The problem is that I shoot on Lumix gh5. qDslrDashboard does not work with it. Are there any other programs for this camera?
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#37 Gunther
Not that I'm aware of. But of course you could do the ramping manually like in the old days, just by observing the histogram and changing shutter speed and iso if needed.

For serious timelapse work, I'd recommend going for a cheap Nikon. A (used) Nikon D5500 or D5300 will do - it has a buld in wifi that will work with qDDB and additionally a better sensor than the Lumix.
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#38 -Maddin-
Hello Gunther,
since a few month I am shooting timelapses with the Sony Alpha 7iii. Since sadly there is no working software like qdlsr dashboard available for this model I sometimes shoot the holy grail in A mode because I figured that the camera has a nice function (you can choose that first exposure will go up till an certain value and only then the camera starts ramping up the ISO). If there are no extrem clouds the camera does a reliable job in changing the values as if I used a ramper.
Unfortunatley the holy grail wizzard is grayed out even though my sequence has perfect steps. I didn't quiet understand your comment above. Do you mean even when the exif data shows me that everything stays the same e.g. ISO 100, f 4 and the camera graduately swithes form 1/10 to 1/8 to 1/5, the exposure steps are not as shown? Would explain why I can't see the steps in the exposure preview graph (see picture). I don't quiet get it because manually I would do exaclty the same and I would't know how the camera can realize an expsure between 1/6 and 1/5 of a second.

The only solution I could think of in case the exposure steps are as shown is using the EXIF tool to change from A to M so that LRtimelapse will allow me to use the wizzard. I had hoped that I could still use it with a warning shown that one could pass.
Thanks a lot for explaining!
Grüße Martin
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#39 Gunther
Since you don't have exposure steps when shooting in A-Mode, you don't need the Holy Grail Wizard, that's why it's greyed out. The holy Grail WIzard is only useful to smooth exposure steps that are produced when changing settings in M-Mode.
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#40 -Maddin-
Thanks,
I just found the thread again where you explained that the camera does use values in between and alter writes different ones in the ex files. This I really didn't know.
Thanks a lot for the fast answer and all the developping!

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