• 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Night, clouds, stars, auroras & sunrise

Offline
#1 Erick L
12 hours in about 50 seconds. Exposure was 30s at f4 and ISO 6400 for the night part with 35s intervals (5s between shots). As the sun rose, I first changed ISO value, then aperture and when that wasn't enough, I changed exposure time.

I used a Nikon 5100. Changing batteries, ISO, aperture and exposure values were tricky as I had to restart the intervalometer each time. I used a chronometer when changing exposure value to make sure I wouldn't screw up the interval time.

There's a little hiccup when the clouds clear to reveal the auroras. I was doing this during a night shift at work and thought the battery could survive an extra 15 minutes. It didn't so there's 15 minutes missing, or about 1 second of video. Other problems during previous attempts were bumping into the tripod just before sunrise which triggered a long string of curse words, as well as one sequence of 5 or 6 shots that had unrecuperable overexposed areas, which messed up the night to day transition.

Getting the transition is pretty tricky and required quite a bit of processing. All this for seconds. But it was an awful lot of fun. Big Grin

Here it is:

[Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2FRB72-0B0]

For those who wonder, the light at the beginning is from the moon. You can also see the pilot tried to get out of my shot at the end, but was too late... :p
Offline
#2 Gunther
Hi Erick, you made a very good job on this one, thank you for sharing! This is a quite impressive demonstration of how the "holy grail" works! It was definitely worth the effort. I'm going to share this on the LRTimelapse Facebook page.

Keep up the good work!
Best
Gunther
Subscribe to: LRTimelapse Newsletter, Youtube Channel, Instagram, Facebook.
Offline
#3 FailedRenegade
Hey Erick,

That was a brilliant video! Transition was amazingly smooth. Nice work. Just found this via Gunther's post on Facebook. Glad I decided to click on it. Keep it up

Ad
Offline
#4 motleypixel
Very good, way too much settings adjustments for me to keep up with at this point. So you said 35second shutter with 5sec delay for night shots, and the rest at 30 second shutter with 5sec delay?

I'm thinking of doing just a test sunset and for now, my thought is the safest adjustment to make is ISO, so I will try that. Also, do you find that 5sec delay is smooth enough for the star movement? Do you think that's a stretch? I noticed the clouds seem smooth but the stars may "very" little jump?
Roy Niswanger
motleypixel.com
Offline
#5 Erick L
(2012-02-03, 21:57)motleypixel Wrote: Very good, way too much settings adjustments for me to keep up with at this point. So you said 35second shutter with 5sec delay for night shots, and the rest at 30 second shutter with 5sec delay?

I'm thinking of doing just a test sunset and for now, my thought is the safest adjustment to make is ISO, so I will try that. Also, do you find that 5sec delay is smooth enough for the star movement? Do you think that's a stretch? I noticed the clouds seem smooth but the stars may "very" little jump?

- Each night photo is 30s @ f4 @ ISO6400.
- Interval is 35s for the whole video. I often see interval refered as the time (delay) between shots but it should refer as the time between each time the shutter opens, regardless of exposure time. In other words, interval includes exposure time. That's how both my in-camera and external intervalometers work. It's logical and easier to calculate when dealing with different exposures.

So with an exposure of 30s and interval of 35s, there's 5s delay between shots. I read here that 30s to 60s with 5s in between would be "super-realistic". My camera can't go over 30s and I needed a few seconds to change battery once in a while so it didn't take more to convince me. :p I think it's smooth enough.

This was done in september so it's not so fresh and perhaps not perfectly accurate. I think I started reducing exposure about 90 minutes before sunrise. Then change again maybe 25 minutes later, then 15 minutes, and closer and closer as the sun rises. I think I had some parts with only 6 to 8 shots at the same exposure. It's a lot of processing to match all the parts together but well worth it. I followed the "Holy Grail" tutorial step by step. Changing ISO only is not enough. The last daylight shots were something like 1/125 @ f11 @ ISO100. That's a huge difference from 30s @ f4 @ ISO 6400 at night.

Gunther, it's an awesome program you have created!
Offline
#6 jmittendorf
Very good video, and the howto is also great.

Jörg

...also check out: