Hello folks,

I have a project planned, a sunset-night-sunrise Timelapse.
Talking to various photographers they told me the Pro Timer is THE device to use.
Thus I ordered it. Easy and intuitive controls.

Now for the Timelapse project.

I have a safe place for the camera to setup and shoot on its own, so I’d be in bed asleep during the night.
I’d setup my camera in the evening, setting M-mode, F1.8 and ISO 500.
For the timer I’d use interval of 25 seconds, the exposure time to 20 seconds.

For the sunset-to-night transition I do understand I can add a ramping interval.
Let’s say sunset to full darkness is about an hour, I set 60 min.
This will bring the sun down nice and slowly.

Sunset is at about 17:30h, sunrise the next day is about 08:00h. Makes a night length of about 10:00hrs, if I am not mistaken.

But now comes the mystery in my mind. How would a ramping from night to sunrise work? Does it utilise the previous ramping settings?
Thank you for helping me out here.


Kind Regards
Zimtstangerl

You'd need to differentiate between "interval ramping" and "Exposure/ISO/Aperture" Ramping which would be needed to compensate for the changing light conditions.

I'm quoting from the FAQ on https://lrtimelapse.com/lrtpt/faq

Q: How do exposure ramping in qDslrDashboard and the interval ramping in the LRT Pro Timer play together?

Normally, when recording a Holy Grail, you will work with Exposure / ISO ramping at a constant interval. That’s what exposure ramping like qDDB or the TL+ View normally do.
This will deliver a timelapse at a constant speed.
Normally you would set the interval at the beginning, e.g. to 15 seconds. This would allow you to shoot with exposure times up to about 13 seconds. This would be the limit that you set as longest exposure time in qDDB or the TL+ View.

Interval ramping, on the other hand, changes the intervals and thus the speed of the time-lapse during the recording. Movements accelerate or slow down when you use this. This is often not desired.
But if you can live with an acceleration of your footage, or want to use that by purpose, then you could for example shoot a slower sunset (with shorter intervals) and faster stars (with longer intervals).

For this you would start for example with an interval of 8 seconds at the beginning and a maximum exposure time of 6 seconds in qDDB. After the sunset then, when you’d want to make the intervals longer, you use the interval Ramping in the LRT Pro Timer and define for example a transition from 8 seconds to 15 seconds within one hour.

After the hour is up, you can then increase the longest exposure time in qDDB to 13 seconds and qDDB will then start doing longer exposure times. You can even adjust the longest shutter speed during the interval ramping – just make sure that you never set it to a longer time than (current interval minus 2 seconds).

I'd recommend that you watch my tutorial about how to shoot the Holy Grail: https://lrtimelapse.com/gear/dslrdashboard/

And by the way: you should set the exposure time in camera and not in the LRT PT and use Timelapse M mode in the PT for all exposure times lower than 30 secs.

This post was last modified: 2022-01-20, 17:37 by Zimtstangerl. Edit Reason: Smileys not working properly.

Thank you for the blitz reply!

Thank you for clarifying the differences between exposure/ISO/aperture ramping and interval ramping. I had the impression the PT would do this.

Sadly Apple has removed qDDB currently.
I may try using a windows device instead.

I shall give it a try this weekend and return with the found experience and knowledge.

Definitely do some dry tests in your room or on your balcony first before going out. Just speaking of experience...