LRTimelapse Forum

Hello All

So I have not seen anyone talk about these variables when doing a Holly Grail shot

( Im referring to Stars all the way through to a Sunrise or Sunset all the way through to stars) NOT just sunset to city light--I'm talk the most extreme


High ISO -to Low ISO, 3 way Axis ( Pan/ Tilt / Slider ) and to use NDs , Manual Lens aperture adjustments

ISO ? I am usually at 1000 -1600 on my ISO for stars. Of course you don't really want to be that high on a sunrise/sunset. So do you adjust that on the fly along with shutter adjustments? If so then that adds to the frustration of touching the camera?

I feel like touching the camera is the BIGGEST NO NO !!! I hate to touch the camera!!

It's one thing if the camera is locked off on just a tripod, but if your moving the camera on a slider or a pan and tilt, then that's even trickier.

Then what If you want to or need to use ND for the daylight part.

What if you are using a full manual lens--You do have the option of stopping up or down ( again touching the camera) If so how far do you stop? If you stop down too far beyond 5.6-8 then you risk any sensor dirt showing up in the image ( that one nice thing about staying wide open--it works in your favor two fold ( wide open for star light, wide open shows not sensor dirt ) but if you stay wide open then you MUST have NDs --and again--You don't want ND's during the "start light" part !!

Someone needs to make a Matte Box that hat motorized filter trays to drop in the NDs --and be in sync with the camera ( but that just yet one more device in the chain -NOOOOO!!

There just seems to be way to many variables to pull this off with just LRTL--at lease in this extreme type of shooting.

Love to get some feed back or thoughts, suggestions.

Note: I need and want to be more of a voice on here and help out where I can, but if there is not a give and take and just views on the topics, Then that's not a great motivator --I'm just saying So please engage / indulge me friends
I will try and do the same

Well I believe a holy grail sunset till starlight is possible, but you HAVE TO touch the camera to change ND-Filters or to adjust ISO and exposure time.

My solution is to fix a sturdy tripod to the ground and fix the camera well on that tripod (use a good quality tripod with a good quality ball head). I touch the camera many times while shooting and its no problem that way. And I touch the camera for changing ND's, also no problem.

Working with ND-filters is extremely tricky, because every ND-filter will cause a different color cast and different vignetting depending on the filter strength (not for tele but for wide angle). I am working on that problem and I am close to a solution....time will tell.

A holy grail from sun to starlight without ND-filter is ... impossible? Well maybe possible if you have a camera that allows 1/16000 s exposure time.

A motorized vario-ND might be a solution, but even in minimum position it will take at least 1 stop of light, which is annoying when it comes to the stars...

A manual lens is not a disadvantage. Dirt will only be visible if there is one. Anyway if you open the iris during shooting you get increasing vignetting, which will be visible in the video.

Concerning slider....try without first:-)

Okay just in brief: on our last africa trip we did this all the time, holy grails from bright daylight until milkyway and back into daylight.

Starting at 1/4000, ISO 100 down to 20 Secs, ISO 6400 and back.

Some Tips:
- Don't change the aperture! Leave it wide open all the time
- For the sunset: ramp first Shutterspeed until say 8 Secs, then ISO and finally the last shutter speed step
- Don't use ND Filters! Never! You won't be able to match the color casts/vignettes

That's it. With the long intervals it's no problem to touch the cam if you are carefully. BTW: I did this all the time with my cam on the Stage One in combination with the EMotimo. Really fun, just practice

I'll start with i have a lot more to learn and am nowhere near the quality of most of the people on these boards.
But I have done quite a few star to sunlight and visa versa projects without ND filters however there are trade offs made to accomplish it.
While having a 20 second interval between 15 second exposures works well for the night time part of the time lapse, cloud movement and shadow progression across the landscape is not as pretty when you are getting exposures of 2000th of a second with 15 sec exposures but they are still good to look at.
I went a bit overboard with the ISO settings at the start of this one but it is still one of my better ones.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCIKMHeQbNM

Well it appears I don't know how to imbed a youtube video, A link will have to do for now.

With a fast lens (open aperture) and bright sun IN the picture any camera will produce a heavily overexposed picture at 1/4000 s exposure time, or is just my camera doing so?

(I mean real sun, not behind clouds, and lets say 1 or 2 hours before sunset when shooting starts)

In that case you will have to ramp the aperture as well - and accept some flicker that you can later sort out in LRTimelapse.

Quote:That's it. With the long intervals it's no problem to touch the cam if you are carefully. BTW: I did this all the time with my cam on the Stage One in combination with the EMotimo. Really fun, just practice

And what interval time did you use? 30s? cause of 20 sec shutterspeed.