Timelapse this Week - What's your plans?

[JimFox]

I have 3 sessions I need to assemble, one from Trona Pinnacles and two from Valley of Fire. I hopefully hapgve some decent late sunset into night time transition timelapse videos too, but if not these can be purely night time timelapses.

I am working on the ones from Trona Pinnacles first. I had 3 cameras set up, and for the night shots, they were all shot at 20 sec shutter speeds with no interval, just the Remote Release locked in. I have approximately 3000 images from that session, so I have spent almost the last 24 hours going through them and converting them from Raw to jpg. It's not a hard process, but it's a very time consuming one. So I have my desktop chugging away doing that. I have them broken down into sections with the largest being about 600 images to run through ACR.

And of course after that, it's on to putting them together into a timelapse video which I will do in Photoshop, before taking each of the compiled clips into Movavi for final assembly. I am hoping to get one finished tonight, but I am planning on going out to Death Valley to shoot Deep Space on Tuesday and Wednesday, so I won't be able to process anything during those days.

 

[Ben Egbert]

You are busy, and getting to some neat locations for your time lapse. The weather here is socked in, can't even see my mountain. The forecast says another 2 weeks maybe.

I have been doing some testing. The 5R has auto iso assigned to every in camera TL except manual. And in manual, auto iso is the only way to get exposure adjustment. I shot two last night one for and hour and the other for 30 minutes when the battery went dead, but no matter, it was already dark. The auto iso kept the exposure pretty constant and no flicker.

The two images blended very nicely but the iso was so high at the end that it was noticeable. I had intended getting a still at the end to capture the EXIF which does not show up in the tL video. The dead battery stopped that.

I am going to see if there is another mode I can use, but they will all be auto iso.

I am thinking I need to make two videos and change settings near dark. The test video did not go as dark as I would have liked.

 

[JimFox]

Yeah, for now, I would stop and quickly adjust the exposure at the times where you know it has gotten significantly darker. I have been doing that as I mentioned, and it works well to use a fading Transition to let the different clips transition smoothly between your exposures.

 

[JimFox]

After about 24 hours of compiling stills and edits, I have all of my main clips down for Trona Pinnacles, but it will have to wait until Friday maybe to put together with music and titles since I am leaving in a few minutes for Death Valley.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Good luck, are they going to be able to fix you camera and lens?

 

[JimFox]

It’s $600 to repair the D810. I haven’t asked about the 14-24mm.

I am not sure what I will do yet. Used D810’s are running in the $800 to $1200 range. So I don’t know if maybe it’s best to put that money towards a camera that hasn’t had the fall impact that mine had. There could be issues with circuit boards and contacts that I just don’t know about yet.

Nikon is supposed to release several new cameras this year. Typically when a new camera comes out, all of the used camera prices go down a step. So maybe I just wait For a bit and see if that happens.

The camera does turn on, the shutter works, I held a lens in the gaping hole where the lens mount used to be and it will actually take a photo. I have a hairbrained idea that temporarily I get a cheaper fast fixed lens like a 24mm or so and duct tape it onto the body for now until I see what mew cameras are going to be released by Nikon.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Wow, you already have 4-5 cameras, I normally only have one. I only kept the 5DSR because its not worth much these days.

 

[AlanLichty]

Ben - you might be surprised at how much that camera body sells for right now. Typical pricing I see on a quick search shows $1500-1600. Canon sells a refurbished 5DSR for $1619.

 

[JimFox]

Wow, you already have 4-5 cameras, I normally only have one. I only kept the 5DSR because its not worth much these days.

I am fortunate that I have lots of cameras, I have a few 6 to 12mp Nikon’s I don’t normally use any more but would be available in a pinch.

The problem here is my D810 is my 2nd best camera, with the D850 only being slightly better. The gap though between the D810 and my 3rd best camera the D610 is huge. The D610 has good IQ, but it’s significantly noticeably worse at night where IQ really matters. So I can use it at night, but when I view the photos in detail at home, I see the difference.

My latest brain storm as I drive to Death Valley is to buy a 14mm Samyang again, and use Silicon sealer to glue it on to the D810... that would turn the D810 into a permanent night sky camera for now.

 

[Ben Egbert]

That sounds like a good plan, hope it works for you.

I just had an idea. I can set my r5 to auto iso with a limit of 1600. The shutter and aperture will be fixed. As soon as ISO1600 is hit the scene will start to darken. I am going to try that when I get a decent view.

 

[JimFox]

That sounds like a good plan, hope it works for you.

I just had an idea. I can set my r5 to auto iso with a limit of 1600. The shutter and aperture will be fixed. As soon as ISO1600 is hit the scene will start to darken. I am going to try that when I get a decent view.

That’s a great idea Ben. I like your thinking and hope it turns out nice for you.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Ben - you might be surprised at how much that camera body sells for right now. Typical pricing I see on a quick search shows $1500-1600. Canon sells a refurbished 5DSR for $1619.

For a time the 5DsR was available new for $1499. The stock has run out and most retailers show out of stock. I don't know if Canon plans to continue production and sell it for this price or was it just to clear out the stock. The 5DIV sells for lot more however.

Interesting idea to glue a lens to the camera. A fixed lens 14mm for night use will work.

 

[Graeme F]

i've never taken a timelapse but might give it a go this weekend. is it difficult - going to try something really staightforward like tide coming in or something but is it a case of just taking shots on a intervelometer and then stitching together at its most basic?

 

[JimFox]

i've never taken a timelapse but might give it a go this weekend. is it difficult - going to try something really staightforward like tide coming in or something but is it a case of just taking shots on a intervelometer and then stitching together at its most basic?

It all depends on your camera.

Ben and I came to the conclusion that if your camera can do In Camera Timelapse where it's saved as a video, that's the easiest way to do it. If your camera has that, then you don't need intervelometer, you can set it in the Timelapse Video option in the camera.

If your camera supports Exposure Smoothing, be sure to turn it on.

You will want it to be in Shutter priority or complete manual. The reason being is the Shutter needs to stay consistent or the timelapse will speed up as the shutterspeed gets longer (If shooting at sunset).

If your camera doesn't do in camera timelapse and you choose to take individual photos (like you would do if you did a timelapse at night) that will work fine too. Then you will stack all of the images in Photoshop (I don't know about lightroom) and you can create a video from the timelapse. For Duration, be sure to choose 0.1 sec.

With water at the beach, I found a 1 second interval worked best. For cloud movement we found 3 to 5 seconds worked best. So the beach is the trickiest of the places to do this because the water will move at a different speed then the clouds. And it's only tricky in that what do you want to see move fast during the timelapse? You have to decide.

It's awesome you are going to try this! Ben and I need more people doing timelapse with us.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Jim is right give it a try. You also need a host because you can’t post them direct. YouTube is free, Vimeo has a charge

 

[JimFox]

Jim is right give it a try. You also need a host because you can’t post them direct. YouTube is free, Vimeo has a charge

Thanks for adding that Ben, I totally forgot about needing a host.

 

[Graeme F]

Thanks guys. Delighted that I've chosen the hardest location (ie. The beach) as a first go! I have an intervelometer so will be using that. I was thinking something like 2 sec exposures - is that realistic?