My first post here, so first I would you thank you Gunter for bringing us LRTimelapse - its just phenomenal! I have just tried the free version yet, but will buy it as soon my wallet allows! You always very detailed and meticulous in your videos and this is also reflected in LR Timelapse software, German engineering at its finest Very good work, keep it up!

When I saw your video using qDSLR dashboard to make a holy grail shots, I got a spark to take up astro timelapses again - its awesome!

Tonight I have planned to do a sunset to milkyway timelapse at a lake in the outbacks here in Australia and I just wanted to see if you guys can give me some suggestions.

I been at this location before, and its not very much light pollution at all. Im using a Canon 6D with the 14mm 2.8 Samyang/Rokinon lens. So now to the question..

With this lens I usually set 42 Sec exposure which seems to be the sweet spot before trailing. What do you guys reckon, should I use higher ISO and shorter exposure? I assume having 45 sec interval will be to long maybe? (for the sunset part) What kind of settings do you use (someone here with same rig here even?).

Thanks and lets the fun begin!

Tobbsie the Swede

Hi Tobbsie, thanks for the compliment! Glad you are motivated to go out and have the conditions to do so as well! Here in Germany it's raining since days...

Anyway - I'd go for shorter Intervals/Exposure times. With the 6D you have a good ISO power, so when I shoot milky way with that camera, I go down to 20secs intervals, 16sec exposure or even lower. This gives you just more material to work with and smoother results.
You can raise ISO with the 6D up to 6400 and still get decent results!

Enjoy!

Ahh its that time of year now, rain and darkness! One of the reasons I left Sweden

I followed your tips and made my very first holy grail timelapse using the qDDB yesterday. My setting were, 15" max, 20" interval with iso 6400 cap. I think it turned out good - but I might have missed something as it flickers a bit? Any ideas?

[Video: http://youtu.be/M7WYsOH5wOY]

Merry Xmas!

Hmm, normally you don't see the exposure adjustments like in your sequence. But its hard to tell, why they are still visible in your sequence. Sometimes when you edit too much in Lightroom using non linear tools (clarity, blacks, whites etc.) this might happen.
You could try editing less and exporting again. Another option would be to run the LRT_* intermediary sequence through LRTimelapse agian, make sure, that no keyframes are set and activate deflicker. Then export and render again.

Hello again Gunther, just had some strange behavior with DDB for a sunrise auto holy grail sequence that I thought I'd run by you.

Before I started the sequence about an hour prior to daybreak, I set iso to ~400, 2" exposure at F1.8 and took a sample shot to confirm it was decent. Then I checked the display next jpeg box, kicked off the tb3 and enabled auto holy grail after the first shot. I noticed that it immediately lowered my iso to lo 1.0 (~50) and left the shutter speed at 2", which drastically underexposed everything. I tried to manually adjust between shots but it kept reverting to the lowest possible ISO. As you know, there are max iso and shutter parameters, but not min. Have you experienced anything like this?

I haven't yet attempted to reproduce this in qDDB, so the behavior may be improved.

Thank you in advance for your time and thoughts on this!

Please don't use the old DslrDashboard anymore. It does not make sense to report findings for that version. It's not that stable and has a lot of issues.
All those have been removed in qDDB and it runs really stable. I've already shot so many sunrises and sunsets without any problems.

This post was last modified: 2015-02-09, 19:54 by Raldi.

Hi,

I realize that this question may have been asked already, in which case I apologize.... I would be interested in the number of the post then ;-)

Recently I have used the app to make the time lapse below. The thing is that with my Canon 7D and iPad Air2, the exposures will not get any longer that 2.5 seconds, even thought I have set the maximum exposure to 6 seconds (with 10 seconds between shots) and the floating average being well below reference number. A little later I have also tried with a Canon 70D (on internal WiFi) with iPad Air2 and had the same problem. This makes me think that I am doing something wrong..... I have watched the tutorial several times and I have set the camera to manual, smallest JPEGs etc. Any thoughts what it could be that I do wrong?

https://vimeo.com/113389486

Regards,
Raldi

The result is not that bad ;-)
You should check the Floating Avg against the Reference value. If you are shooting sunset and the reference is too low, then the whole sequence stays dark. So always make sure to first set the exposure on the camera right, then turn on the Auto Holy Grail. and if you feel, the images get too dark or too bright, then just use the +/- buttons left and right of "set reference now" to just adjust the reference. The auto holy grail will then take care of the rest.

Thank you Gunther, it is my first ever sunset time lapse :-) It is really all thanks to the work done by you and Zoltan!

I have tried what you proposed (the day after I shot the video you have seen) and manually modified the reference number. Unfortunately this did not make the exposure change to anything longer than 2.5 seconds. Once it stops changing exposure, it does not start again. For the times I have used it so far (in cities) I have found that this is not such a big issue, but soon I will be off to the arctic to shoot the northern lights, where I would like to start at daylight and end with the northern lights. For this I will need a (much) longer exposure time....

Regards,
Raldi

This is weird. You should make some tests to confirm this. You can try it during the day as well, just use an ND filter, then set the time to 2.5 secs, start the auto holy grail in sunset mode and then set the reference to a value higher then the floating avg via the +/- buttons, now in the next 3 shots the exposure should be raised. Can you test that?

You can then as well try turning off auto hg and manually set the exposure 1/3 stop higher then 2.5 secs. Does that work?
Make sure, that the interval is long enough to allow the camera to transfer the previews. Set Shooting mode to RAW+smallest JPG.