LRTimelapse Forum

Hi guys,

I'm new to timelapse, and to the forum. I haven't used LRTimelapse yet, but based on what I have seen in the tutorials it appears to be a superb product - and I intend to both use it and to donate.

Last night we wnt out and took some test shots in the local city Cardiff. We were using a Canon Eos 7D. We took an exposure every 5 seconds, in manual mode, at F3.5, 100ISO and at 1/100th of a second. We were using DSLR Remote Pro to do the actual timelapse.

Watching the histogram on DSLR Remote Pro, we chose a point to bump the ISO on the camera from 100 to 200, and carried on shooting. Once the historgram had progressed to the same point again we bumped the ISO from 200 to 400, and then subsequently from 400 to 800 and then 800 to 1600.

Now, Ive read the images into Lightroom and into your program, and I can see that using the technique you outline how I compensate for the ISO shift.

However, once we reached 1600 ISO we felt that the picture was at the limit of what we wanted grain wise so we let it run until one hour after sunset, however because we didn't bump the ISO anymore, the image began to get too dark.

The last shot of the time lapse I shot was accordingly 100th of a second, f3.5, 1600 ISO. I then switched the camera to Av mode, set it to f3.5 and took a further shot. It chose a shutter speed of 1/10th of a second, and the exposure was way better.

Now given the above information, my question is, should I have stopped at, for example 800 ISO and swapped to changing the shutterspeed instead to allow for ever darkening conditions?

Is it practical once the swap is made to 800 ISO to swap to apperture priority to give the camera control of the shutterspeed?

Thanks in advance,

Chris.

Sounds like you pretty exactly followed my approach ;-)

Quote:Now given the above information, my question is, should I have stopped at, for example 800 ISO and swapped to changing the shutterspeed instead to allow for ever darkening conditions?

Sure, I would recommend this. Don't ever change the aperture, change exposure time and ISO to your needs manually, avoid the automatic mode - especially by night...

Good luck! I'm looking forward to see your results in the showroom

Best
Gunther

(2011-08-15, 14:44)gwegner Wrote: [ -> ]Sure, I would recommend this. Don't ever change the aperture, change exposure time and ISO to your needs manually, avoid the automatic mode - especially by night...

Do you know how many stops the effective transition from daylight to night time is?

(2011-08-16, 21:16)ChrisLong Wrote: [ -> ]Do you know how many stops the effective transition from daylight to night time is?

Very interesting question!
Oli

I fear there is no concrete answer. It depends how dark ist gets... In a really dark moonless, cloudy desertnight I fear it would be inifinite stops ;-)

means: we have to test ;-)

It will be different with every different shooting condition...

Ok now I'm suddenly feeling less confident:



Any tips on how to approach this? It looks like a nightmare!

Thanks again,

Chris.

It's a bit of work, but manageable. Use the workflow I demonstrated in the "holy grail" tutorial.

(2011-08-18, 22:33)gwegner Wrote: [ -> ]It's a bit of work, but manageable. Use the workflow I demonstrated in the "holy grail" tutorial.

I'm not sure why it jiggles about like it does... it was on a very steady tripod and wasn't too windy so I'm guessing I've introduced that during my post processing somehow, and the sun flares a couple of times on its way to setting which is quite hard to fix. It may just be a case of fiddling more in PS.

Again I welcome and comments and pointers.

Thanks

Chris.