I have tried my first sunset with LRTimelapse following the holy grail method. I matched the exposure in lightroom between the holy grail key points. I get these jumps in brightness of the sun, why is this and how can I smooth these out? Any help would be really appreciated. Thanks in advance.

https://vimeo.com/64626372

I have tried my first sunset with LRTimelapse following the holy grail method. I matched the exposure in lightroom between the holy grail key points. I get these jumps in brightness of the sun, why is this and how can I smooth these out? Any help would be really appreciated. Thanks in advance.

https://vimeo.com/64626372

As the sun comes down the scene gets darker so you increase the exposure to compensate (it looks like you are doing this 1 stop at a time). Since sunsets are quite colourful and the sun is bright you often find that a correctly exposed sunset image results in clipped highlights. The clipping will be most apparent when you make your exposure jump. Once you have captured a sequence of RAW files like this there is nothing you can do to correct it. If you shot in jpeg (you didnt say what format you were shooting in but I assume it was RAW) then this problem will be totally unavoidable with sunsets no matter what you do because of the increased clipping.

In future there are a number of things you can do:
- Shoot RAW if you weren't already
- Use smaller jumps in exposure. Most cameras can do 1/3rd of a stop these days. This will make the effect significantly less obvious and is, in my opinion, the first thing you shout try.
- Change the exposure - underexposing the images further, but processing them brighter should reduce the appearance of this effect.
- Reduce saturation and contrast - If you over saturate or add too much contrast in Lightroom it will exagerrate the clipping problem. Low contrast, low saturation processing will result in less clipping.
- Shoot at a wider focal length - it goes without saying that the bigger the sun is in the image the more obvious this effect could be
- Exposure bracket - create 3 identical sequences at different exposures and crossfade between then - this hopefully wont be necessary!

Alex

I have tried my first sunset with LRTimelapse following the holy grail method. I matched the exposure in lightroom between the holy grail key points. I get these jumps in brightness of the sun, why is this and how can I smooth these out? Any help would be really appreciated. Thanks in advance.

https://vimeo.com/64626372

As the sun comes down the scene gets darker so you increase the exposure to compensate (it looks like you are doing this 1 stop at a time). Since sunsets are quite colourful and the sun is bright you often find that a correctly exposed sunset image results in clipped highlights. The clipping will be most apparent when you make your exposure jump. Once you have captured a sequence of RAW files like this there is nothing you can do to correct it. If you shot in jpeg (you didnt say what format you were shooting in but I assume it was RAW) then this problem will be totally unavoidable with sunsets no matter what you do because of the increased clipping.

In future there are a number of things you can do:
- Shoot RAW if you weren't already
- Use smaller jumps in exposure. Most cameras can do 1/3rd of a stop these days. This will make the effect significantly less obvious and is, in my opinion, the first thing you shout try.
- Change the exposure - underexposing the images further, but processing them brighter should reduce the appearance of this effect.
- Reduce saturation and contrast - If you over saturate or add too much contrast in Lightroom it will exagerrate the clipping problem. Low contrast, low saturation processing will result in less clipping.
- Shoot at a wider focal length - it goes without saying that the bigger the sun is in the image the more obvious this effect could be
- Exposure bracket - create 3 identical sequences at different exposures and crossfade between then - this hopefully wont be necessary!

Alex

Hi Alex,

Thanks for replying.

I did shoot in RAW. I have had a look and my exposures go from 1/20 to 1/8 to 0.3 to 1 to 3.2.

This is my first time trying this method so will take on board your advice. Just a shame as that was in Key West and I am now home in UK. I did shoot wide at about 16mm but I cropped in as there was some ugly rooftops in the front of the frame, will try it un-cropped.

Thanks again

I have had a look and my exposures go from 1/20 to 1/8 to 0.3 to 1 to 3.2.

Those are exposure jumps of more than 1-stop (about 1.5 stops in most cases). rather than going something like 1/20, 1/15, 1/13, 1/10, 1/8 etc

That creates way more work in LRTimelapse and may be 'overkill' but it would massively reduce the effect you see.

I have had a look and my exposures go from 1/20 to 1/8 to 0.3 to 1 to 3.2.

Those are exposure jumps of more than 1-stop (about 1.5 stops in most cases). rather than going something like 1/20, 1/15, 1/13, 1/10, 1/8 etc

That creates way more work in LRTimelapse and may be 'overkill' but it would massively reduce the effect you see.

Thanks will do that for my next sunset I shoot.