Hi,

I have problems with getting smooth transitions between holygrail keyframes. It only happens when I'm shooting in direct sunlight. Maybe it's a hardware problem (Nikon d300s w/Nikkor 16-85mm VR DX). I shoot raw files.

Lrtimelapse does a great job of making the overall exposure of holygrail keyframes the same (2 stars, 3 stars). But in the brightest part of the images there is always a very noticeable difference causing big flickering between the two frames.

Yesterday I shot a sunset with 4 changes in the exposure (2/3 EV). The problem occurs on all 4 changes, even after the sun is below the horizon. I've tried to manually adjust the keyframes so they are the same, but no luck so far.

Please look at the two images. It's a 2 star and a 3 star image. Look at the difference in the area around the sun.

[Image: http://www.jorgent.com/div/2-star.jpg]

[Image: http://www.jorgent.com/div/3-star.jpg]

Any advice about how I can fix this? Is it even possible?

Cheers, and thanks for any help!
Jørgen

I found this thread and will see if it helps me:
http://forum.lrtimelapse.com/Thread-holy...highlights

That's because of the clipping in the highlights. Where there is no information in the image, LRTimelapse/Lightroom can't get it back. So just use smaller steps (1/3 stops), underexpose more or avoid the direct sunlight.

Thanks for the reply, gwegner!

Yes, I read about the clipping problem in your post that I found. But it also happens in the areas around the sun where there is information. in my images there is only the sun it self that is blown out (difficult to avoid

I have the same problem after the sun is below the horizon, and none of the highlights are clipped.

[Image: http://www.jorgent.com/div/2-star-below-horizon.jpg]

[Image: http://www.jorgent.com/div/3-star-below-horizon.jpg]

Maybe I would have more luck with 1/3 steps instead of 2/3.

Thanks again!

Are you sure there is no clipping in the last example? I'm not. The red channel clips really fast in those situations - check the histogram!

If only one of the RGB channels clips, you will get a slight color shift.

Shooting the scene in HDR at short exposure intervals might fix the problem, or at least make it less noticable. I have done that a few times with a decent result: I set my camera to aperture priority and let the camera set the exposure accordingly. I shoot in live view and just make sure that the sun doesn't enter the «metering square» (That's probably not the proper name for it, but I don't know what it's called...)

Other than that, I try to avoid changing the exposure when the sun is in the frame as much as I can. Overexpose ever so slightly when you start the shoot, so you don't have to change the exposure during the shoot, and just hope that you can «resque» the final images, which might be slightly dark.

Like you said, the problem occurs even when the sun has set, especially if there are clouds in the sky. Especially the yellows and the oranges suffer. I have managed to fix it by fine tuning the hue, saturation and luminance of those colours in Lightroom, but it's quite frustrating work – I never seem to get it 100% right, but when I watch the clip after I've rendered it, it's hardly noticable, so I choose to call it a success..! :-)

I had the same problem, sometimes it is very hard (almost impossible) to see the very light clipping in the histogram.
I have had success by underexposing quite a bit (e.g. -2.5 to -3EV) to really avoid the smallest clipping.
Of course you'll loose quite a bit of the now very dark foreground. Depending on the camera, you can "save" quite a bit by pushing dark tones/blacks and apply noise reduction (with the 6D, that works pretty well).

Shooting Holy Grail into direct sunlight is the ultimate discipline and does not forgive the slightest error... I'm after that as well and almost there, if just qdd would run stable throughout the whole sequence, but that's another story in another thread.

An alternative is to use bulb ramping, which for me is less prone to clipping, but then you have to deal with a lot of other issues...

I've made only a handful of timelapses where this is a problem, but I've come up with a compromise that works okay: Match the exposure in the '3' keyframes to the exposure in the '2' keyframes, just like you normally do, but increase the clipping in the 3's to match the clipping in the 2's. Alternatively, meet «half way» by increasing the clipping in the 3's a little bit and decrease the clipping in the 2's a little bit. I find that it's more difficult to decrease the clipping in the 2's to match the clipping in the 3's completely.

I had the same problem, sometimes it is very hard (almost impossible) to see the very light clipping in the histogram.
I have had success by underexposing quite a bit (e.g. -2.5 to -3EV) to really avoid the smallest clipping.
Of course you'll loose quite a bit of the now very dark foreground. Depending on the camera, you can "save" quite a bit by pushing dark tones/blacks and apply noise reduction (with the 6D, that works pretty well).

Shooting Holy Grail into direct sunlight is the ultimate discipline and does not forgive the slightest error... I'm after that as well and almost there, if just qdd would run stable throughout the whole sequence, but that's another story in another thread.

An alternative is to use bulb ramping, which for me is less prone to clipping, but then you have to deal with a lot of other issues...

I've made only a handful of timelapses where this is a problem, but I've come up with a compromise that works okay: Match the exposure in the '3' keyframes to the exposure in the '2' keyframes, just like you normally do, but increase the clipping in the 3's to match the clipping in the 2's. Alternatively, meet «half way» by increasing the clipping in the 3's a little bit and decrease the clipping in the 2's a little bit. I find that it's more difficult to decrease the clipping in the 2's to match the clipping in the 3's completely.

+1 +1

I have found the same thing. Limits to dynamic range on sensor means you need to compromise somewhere. I'm still trying to figure out when I should change the exposure.

I've had similar problems with the hue on the horizon changing from a ** keyframe to a *** keyframe. I've checked the histogram, and there is no clipping of any of the channels. Any idea why it would do this? The exposures otherwise match.

If I manually change the hue/luminance/saturation of the *** keyframe, so that it matches the previous ** keyframe, is there a way of telling LRTimelapse to then adjust the next set of frames until it reaches the next ** keyframe? Or do I have to manually change all the frames in between?