Locked shutter TL for Jim

[Ben Egbert]

Last night I used a locked remote to do a time lapse. I set the camera to manual at 3.2 seconds, f2.8 iso 640 and 70mm. This is with the R5. Not using time interval or time lapse, but simply a locked up remote so that the shutter would fire as soon as the last image was written. There was a very short interval, but probably not a full second. These setting were used to obtain a good exposure.

This is 793 images shot in raw, then converted in batch in ACR and assembled into a 4k time lapse in Movavi. I ran the new video through Photoshop to make minor adjustments to WB, then rendered and added titles and music and loaded to Youtube.

The clouds were good but no stars. The moon was just a sliver so I don’t think the exposure variances seen at the end are from changes in subject brightness. We conjectured that might have been the cause in my previous night tl.

Side question for Jim. I found the place to adjust volume and add fade to the music in Movav. But I cannot get the video selected. When I go into clip properties, I can switch from audio to video but the audio is greyed out. If I attempt to select the audio clip, the pointer moves to wherever I click, but the clip is never selected. I have linking the audio to the video and then I can do it, but the effect is then applied to the video as well as the audio.

This proves Jims method for night TL works on my camera, but there is still the flicker issue.

 

[JimFox]

Hey Ben,

Glad you see how this works, and that it does work. I don’t see how you can have any flicker of the exposure if you are in complete manual. Technically that would be impossible.

There is one possibility. Are you pulling the images into Movavi as tiff? I did find that Movavi would corrupt random frames when I was pulling in a group of images to have it compile the Timelapse, so I went back to using Photoshop.

(I lost reception before I could send this yesterday, sorry it’s a day late)

 

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks Jim. I will convert to jpg and try again. The one thought I did have was camera overheating. This was 119 minutes of full size raw, not as many frames as 8k video, but 1 hour is the limit for this camera.

 

[JimFox]

Ben, find the offending images, and see if the originals fluctuated in exposure. But first I would open the images back up on Movavi, scroll through and find the individual frames that are flickering, and see if the photo is corrupted. I was getting images that had a large black stripe across part of it.

I am certain at this point it’s not your camera. I believe if you shoot “video” on the R5 it will just stop at 1 hour, it won’t arbitrarily change the exposure.

I really like Movavi, but I stopped importing images into it to make the Timelapse.

 

[Ben Egbert]

I just tried doing jpgs in Movavi but the file is not working right. I will try a Photoshop version.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Ok, Jim, I started over from scratch with RAW files. I batch processed in ACR and renamed. I have found Photoshop has trouble with the naming I use, so a simple sequential rename always works.

I then brought then into Photoshop and rendered. The problem was gone. Thanks for the help. I am going to try this one my previous video.

 

[JimFox]

Good Ben, I think what we are learning is each tool has it's strengths and weaknesses.

Movavi is great for the final assembly of the timelapse or video, but not good for the construction of a timelapse from individual photos or for the processing of the videos (exposure, contrast, etc).

Photoshop CC 2020 is great for assembling the individual photos into a working timelapse that can then be taken into Movavi. And it's super powerful with the Camera Raw Filter to edit (process) the look of videos, it's just super slow in Rendering a Video after that editing.

As a note, I loaded a Trial of Premier Rush, and it does simple editing (exposure, curves, shadows, highlights, etc) really well. But it's limited to just a few simple editing tools, nothing like Photoshop. But it does save (Render) the edited video super fast. Although it's an additional $9.99 a month, for simple edits it might be something to think about it. I haven't gotten it yet, just thinking on it.

Photoshop CC 2021 after several edits of video's and saving (Rendering) them it will crash, and the point it does that it will no longer be able to Render a video. So I am only using Photoshop 2021 for editing still photos right now.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Hi Jim. I am trying to render my stuff at 29.97 fps but PS says its too big, so I have to use 25 fps then it works. I am going to do some digging and find out why. I looked at Premier and decided I did not want another subscription.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Ok, the original time lapse was also fixed. This is one I did as a time interval with all manual but a 2 second interval. It is fixed but runs too fast, I can probably fix that in Movavi.

 

[JimFox]

Yep, you can adjust that speed in Movavi

 

[Ben Egbert]

40% speed in Movavi gets the PS rendered version close to the one originally assembled in Movavi.

I am going to work the math for the image size at 4K and 29-97%. This is the format I use for in camera TL's and it works very well. I would like my time interval images to have the same look and feel.

Today I am going to revisit some of my other videos that have the flickering issue and see if rendering them in Photoshop solves the flicker.

 

[Ben Egbert]

This is a video redo that shows two separate assemblies of all manual setting raw images. The first was shot using interval timing and 2 second intervals f4, 5 sec shutter speed and ISO1600.

The second is shot using locked shutter, 3.2 seconds, f3,2 Iso 640.

Both were rendered to video using Photoshop rather than Movavi. Note that the flickering is gone. I do see that the first one with 2 second interval is jerkier than the locked shutter version.

I tried Photoshop rendering on another set that was done in day ight with faster shutter speed and it still had flicker.

My conclusion is that longer shutter speeds are required to eliminate flicker, and that Movavi was causing some other problem that corrupted exposure and can be fixed when using Photoshop, so long as the shutter is long.

I am attempting a test of my 5DSR with a ND grad and CPL shot at 1/3 second f32, and locked shutter. The files are downloading now. I will see if this solves daytime flicker.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Looks good Ben. The longer shutter smooths out exposure and hence eliminates the flicker. The longer shutter also allows you to reduce the ISO where possible as well.

 

[JimFox]

Good work Ben. It’s great to be getting some of these little issues figured out.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Just so you know, my test with the R5ds failed. It has flicker. A 3 stop ND and CPL let me get to 1/3 second which I guess is not long enough. I would have liked to have gotten to at least 2 seconds, but could not get there even at f32. Hmm, I could put my 1.4 x on and bump it some more.