Timelapse techinque

[ebojorq]

Hi, everyone.

I don't know wether this is the right place/forum to ask about this. If not, to the admins, no hard feelings for relocating/deleting.

I was reading the article about timelapse photography to get a few (i.e. a lot of) tips for such a feat. I thought I got it right, but there's something that still troubles me.

I tried (and succeded, to a certain degree) to make a timelapse video of a dawn in my hometown. I think I nailed the timing part making my shots 5 seconds apart... that made up for a 25 video in roughly 50 minutes of shooting (600 shots, to spare you the math).

What troubled me was exposure. I began with a setting I thought was sufficient ok to capture a silhouette at the begining and a nice flare of the sun in the end (the video was actually shorter than planned due to time restrictions (I had to... eeer... work!!)

All in all, my final question is this: what is right to use for a timelapse where lighting conditions are as extreme as in a dawn: a constant exposure set to get a right begining, middle or end?

another one: in shooting a landscape, where you have your focus set to a far away point, say near or past hyperfocal distance for any "normal" aperture (5.6-11), if you MUST change your exposure settings in the middle of a timelapse, which way would you go? changing aperture or shutter speed?

The sample of the incomplete timelapse is here:

(hope this is not frowned upon)

[Sime]

Nice work - I don't know what I'd do... prob shutter speed I think, but let's see what others say.

[wulf]

If you aren't using a manual lens then this is a situation where I might be inclined to use Av mode (because aperture has an effect on focus) and let the camera do the work of keeping a reasonably constant exposure using a combination of shutter speed and ISO adjustments (or, if an experiment along that line seems not to work, just shutter speed - you could manually change ISO, starting reasonably high and stepping down as you notice shutter speed getting very fast).

Another trick might be to intersperse some other sequences, which you could film at a different time; cutting between two or more different scenes will disguise adjustments as you cope with the huge range of light levels across a sunrise.

Wulf

[leviathan16]

ppl usually use filters for increasing the dynamic range.. i think exposure problem will correct itself with the use of filters.. and about the focus.. its totally upto you.. but it is better if u try to keep everything in focus so as to detect any change in the picture.. boost up the iso to the max.. coz noise wont really matter here.. and go for higher f number.. for greater dof..