EX-3 Sunrise Timelapse Suggestions

[Clint Fleckenstein]

Don’t forget to set your focus manually. As light changes, it may tend to “hunt” and ruin the entire thing. I had that happen once. Boy, was I mad. Those silly little oversights can be real buzzkill.

Cf

[Andy Bissonnette]

Thanks for the advice. Yes that will be the first thing I check, I’ve experienced too many minor problems by now to overlook that. An uncalibrated monitor was my latest hang-up…

[William Mims]

Andy: Settings wise, the -3 gain gives a nice rich look. Email me at 77mims@charter.net and I will look up the complete ‘film look’ settings I use and email them back to you. I loaded them into a preset so I forget all the various settings but the look is great and I think you will like it. Test them out before with a sunset if that is your only option (This is Friday AM). I’m not sure a polarizer is a good idea. I shoot a lot of cloud formations at 1fr/1sec and they move pretty fast so a thirty second piece moves fast. 1 fr at 5 seconds is going to move the sun five times faster than that, is that what you want? You can speed it up in post better than you can slow it down-just my opinion.

Mims

[Clint Fleckenstein]

Hey, I got one for ya – BUGS. I got swarmed by tiny little biting gnats during a time lapse yesterday. I hosed down with bug spray from my kit but a couple of the little buggers got onto my lenses later in the day. The XDCAM stuff is manageable, only a couple of spots in the clip, but the footage from timed exposures on my DSLR is going to be a major challenge. These bugs are really tiny, so I didn’t notice them despite eyeballing my gear from time to time. The darkness of the polarizer filters I had on made it impossible to see them.

Trucks driving by caused a lot of dust, but I just kept blowing sideways across the front of the filter and that kept it as clean as possible given the situation. I’ve only eyeballed the footage so far and it looks solid. An example of the DSLR bug(s) can be seen here.

Cf

[Rafael Amador]

[Andy Bissonnette] “My first question is: would you recommend a circular polarizer?”
You can not adjust it without good light.

[Andy Bissonnette] “I think I’m going to shoot at a frame at 5 second intervals”
Shot 1 second interval. You can always speed it up.

[Andy Bissonnette] ” I also will likely use the “slow shutter” or frame accumulationmode”
This will be nice if there are some cloud. Mke them really foamy.

[Andy Bissonnette] “1. Fully Manual, adjusting the iris for when the sun is completely up in the sky. “
this for a sunset, OK. For a sunrise, how you know the Iris to set?
Set it auto. This that you comment about 1 or 2 Fstops less, is very interesting. I would try one.

[Andy Bissonnette] “Also can anyone recommend any picture profile settings? “
I use a PP of Bill Raven. Incredible colors in exteriors.
You can find it here (with the Detail modified):
https://www.dvinfo.net/forum/sony-xdcam-ex-cinealta/110902-picture-profile-recipes-32.html
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Andy Bissonnette]

Thanks for the advice. I just read my post and don’t know how much sense it made. When it says “Full Manual Adjusting it for when the sun is up” I mean that I would set it before shooting, not making adjustments while shooting. I think you understood though.

So you think 1 stop undercompensated with auto-iris on until the begins peaking over the horizon should be enough to avoid overexposing highlights once it is up in the sky?

[William Mims]

Clint: I LOL at your “Bugs” this morning, then later today I was doing what I thought would be a beautiful timelapse cloud shot. You guessed it, when I checked the playback… BUGS!

Mims

[Rafael Amador]

[Andy Bissonnette] “So you think 1 stop undercompensated with auto-iris on until the begins peaking over the horizon should be enough to avoid overexposing highlights once it is up in the sky?”
Difficult to know. I almost always go down one fstop after adjusting. Some times I set two, but almost always after I find that two is too much. You go to have the Slow Shutter too.
Sure with 2 fstops less you will be able to keep the shooting longer, but the beginning will be darker.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Kc Allen]

I did a morning time-lapse over an oil well a year ago. I started off with an auto-iris, and then decided against it and I was glad I did. It partly depends on how long you intend to shoot. If you’re shooting from darkness and that subtle hint of blue in the sky, until the light is well overhead at 11:30 or noon, you’re going to want to set your iris and ND for the expected high light, with perhaps F8 as an iris setting so you don’t end up too closed down. Do it with manual focus as well.

Auto iris may fluctuate too much between shots, particularly at one frame every 5 seconds, and it highly subject to uncontrollable variables like headlights or lens flares from power towers and lines, passing planes, clouds and so on.

Plus, the purpose of a time lapse of the sun coming up is to show the transition from dark to light. If you use an auto iris, the effect is much less dramatic.

Go manual everything. Set it and forget it. You might think about putting a tent or something up low over the camera to help mitigate dew or frost getting on the lens.

My mistake with the oil well was that I didn’t take enough frames. I did one frame every two minutes and I should have done it every minute for the length of video I needed. The sun comes up a lot faster than it goes down.

https://www.allenfilmandvideo.com/timelapse/

KC Allen
Allen Film & Video

“My name is actually spelled KC…really…it is…”

[Andy Bissonnette]

Thanks for the advice, I actually used auto-iris and for the location and purpose I was going for – actually worked quite well. I could see not using it though for the dark to light transition…