LRTimelapse Forum

Hello Gunter! Firstly, thank you for such an amazing product as LRT2 and this website! It is a goldmine if information.

I bought your e-book on time lapse shooting techniques but in reading it then comparing information in the forums I seem to have found contradicting information.

In the e-book 3rd edition you seem to clearly recommend the use of ND filters to increase the exposure times in bright light (eg from day to night HG time lapse, etc.). In the forum posts, specifically ones dealing with doing a HG time lapse you say not use them but to adjust shutter speed to achieve correct exposure.

Currently i use a vari ND, and I adjust settings as necessary to achieve the 180 degree shutter rule...

However, my questions are:

1. Will not using the ND filter on the lens but adjusting the shutter speed instead mean having such a quick exposure (shutter speed) initially that it will introduce weird flicker or make the time lapse choppy? (Because To much change from frame to frame?)

2. Are you planning to give a tutorial on the actual process of what settings to use on the camera and how or when to change them?

Any help is very much appreciated!

Than you.

Hi, this is not really a contradiction. It is certainly recommended to keep the exposure times rather long for the said reasons. But when making Day to Night transitions there are some compromises you might want to take.
First: ND-Faders might change the overall appearance of the image because the polarisation angle is changed and so introduce effects that are very hard to match later when compensating the exposures - you might want to test this with your own filter.
Second: I personally don't have much Shutter-Flicker when shooting with short Exposures. Some Cameras have, some not. You might want to test this as well. I can pretty well shoot with 1/2000 or shorter without noticable Flicker, when doing that I sacrifice dragging the shutter but it makes everything a lot easier when matching exposures later. The Holy Grail Shooting sometimes needs a bit of abstraction from the approaches that are generally recommended.

So just try different methods for yourself and then tell us what worked out for you! Especialle the Vari-ND you use and if you can achieve a good matching between it's changes would be interesting for the others and me as well. So please keep us posted!

(2012-10-06, 11:42)gwegner Wrote: [ -> ]Hi, this is not really a contradiction. It is certainly recommended to keep the exposure times rather long for the said reasons. But when making Day to Night transitions there are some compromises you might want to take.
First: ND-Faders might change the overall appearance of the image because the polarisation angle is changed and so introduce effects that are very hard to match later when compensating the exposures - you might want to test this with your own filter.
Second: I personally don't have much Shutter-Flicker when shooting with short Exposures. Some Cameras have, some not. You might want to test this as well. I can pretty well shoot with 1/2000 or shorter without noticable Flicker, when doing that I sacrifice dragging the shutter but it makes everything a lot easier when matching exposures later. The Holy Grail Shooting sometimes needs a bit of abstraction from the approaches that are generally recommended.

So just try different methods for yourself and then tell us what worked out for you! Especialle the Vari-ND you use and if you can achieve a good matching between it's changes would be interesting for the others and me as well. So please keep us posted!

Thank you for your reply. I guess the point of this is to get outside and practice, practice, and more practice! I certainly will post some results when I have tried these techniques.