LRTimelapse Forum

Hi guys, I am new to the forum and have a question before experimenting with a HG shoot.

First some background before my question: If I shoot a landscape Time Lapse where clouds are involved, and my interval time between shots are around 25 seconds, I find the cloud movement too fast. If I change my interval time to 10 seconds between shots, I find the TL Video much more pleasing and "smooth". I render my video at 25fps. I'm sure we can agree that by alternating your intervals, you will get different "effects" with your TL right?

Now; I want to shoot a HG Time Lapse, specifically a sunset TL scene. I understand the process and should be ok with the technique. My question is, in the beginning of the shoot, my shutter speed will be around 1/100th of a second, and at the end of the shoot, in complete darkness, my shutter speeds should be close to 30 seconds.

Since the intervals between shots should be equal or more to your shutter speed, do you shoot intervals of 30 seconds between shots from the beginning of your TL shoot, or do you actually adjust your interval time as well during a Holy Grail shoot to get a desired Time Laps video?

I'm just worried, intervals of 30 seconds between shots when the sun goes down will be too far apart, and in the resulting Time Lapse video, the sun will go down "too quickly?

You are right, this is still a challenge, especially when clouds are involved. Even if you ramp the intervals after sunsets to make it longer, this will accelerate the clouds. However normally on cloudy days I don't shoot milkyway - so when there are no clouds you can ramp the interval after sunset or just make it longer - later in post processing you can still cover this up it it is visible.

It gets trickier if you are hooting on a motion controlled dolly or pan head - in that case the controller must allow for the ramping wthout affecting the motion - I've already asked Brian to integrate a feature like this in his Emotimo.

Thanks, that gives me the answer.

I will then adjust the interval between shot as the light gets darker.

Talking about the sun setting / rising, disregarding exposure settings; do you have any prefered ammount of interval times that will give you a smooth sunrise / sunset. As mentioned, I mostly use 25fps when rendering my video, but I have seen some other Time Lapse videos where I feel the sun is rising too quickly. I will play around with it myself as well of course.

PS: Thank you for all the help and information you provide. We are on our way in a week's time to Kubu Island on the Makgadikgadi Pans in Botswana - not sure if you have been there? We are planning some real interresting HG TL shoots.