This post was last modified: 2023-05-09, 15:06 by kukro.

So here is my first contribution, although I've been doing timelapses using LRTimelapse since several years now.
I was in northern Norway (just south of Kirkenes) in March for a Polar Light journey and captured this day-to-night timelapse. Unfortunately, at around -20 °C, one after the other first my smartphone lost its power, resulting in QDSLR-Dashboard not running and readjusting the camera exposure any more, and then, about half an hour after I had manually adjusted the exposure gradually until the light didn't change any more and made sure the camera still had around 50% battery capacity, the capacity suddenly dropped to zero and the camera stopped completely. I found out about 45 minutes later, when the polar light was already brightly shining and could then capture a timelapse of the polar light with a new battery.
LRTimelapse did a great job in saving the first part, where the exposure was not any longer readjusted, many thanks for this amazing software, Gunther!
The Polar Light timelapse, however, was not processed with LRTimelapse. I used (as for this complete video) Aquasoft Stages, since with 2 pictures per second (in order not to accelerate too much) the motion blur in LRTimelapse didn't give as smooth a cross fading as the fading effect of the slide show program (at least to my taste). As stated in the video (in german), I took pictures of the polar light with 2 sec. exposure time and 2.5 sec. intervals, so the acceleration is by a factor of 5, making the movement of the polar light better visable without changing too much the live effect you experience visually.
I hope you enjoy!

https://vimeo.com/825067451?share=copy

Comments welcome!

Kurt

Hi Kurt, nice capture of the northern lights. Personally, I would have used shorter intervals and made the video a bit faster to avoid the crossfading with the low fps! The editing is well done! Thanks for sharing and explaining what you did.

PS: Remember to clean your sensor! :-)

This post was last modified: 2023-05-10, 08:02 by kukro.

Hi Gunther,
thanks for your input and sorry for the dust :/
This was my first Polar Light shooting, so I still did some experimenting. Unfortunately, I didn't have the possibilities to fully develop my captures on site in order to check which settings would work best or at least give satisfying results. The shortest interval I had tested until then and could rely on with my camera (Canon 6D) was about 1.5 sec, so the 2.5 sec. seemed safe for me. Our guide was also an experienced Polar Light fotographer and 2-5 sec. exposure time were his recommendations. Next time I shall try 1 sec. exposure time and 1.5 (or maybe a little shorter) intervals.
The 2 pictures per second in the video don't refer to the fps (which is the usual 25) - in the slide show program I set the duration of each picture to 0.5 sec and the fading time ("alphablending") to 0.5 sec. too, which results in a rather smooth transition when the program calculates the 25 fps.