Time-lapse sunrise to sunset help?

[Chad Lancaster]

Marcos. To each their own. I find using my Epic for time-lapse under daylight situations to be easier than a dslr. My Kessler cinedrive can handle the weight and I've run it with lenses up to a zeiss 70-200. I try and mix my dslr and red time-lapses just depending on whats best for the shot. For very long shots ya I wouldn't recommend it just from the power needs perspective. I've done a couple 2-3 hour shots with a few paglink batteries from the battery belt clip, which means I don't have to change batteries at all or touch the camera. One of the things I love about shooting time-lapse on my epic is playback and editing. After the shot I can look at it at several speeds to get an idea of what it will look like. Also in editing its as simple as drag and drop, no need to render. I've been working on posting a in-depth guide to shooting time lapses on Red..one of these days i'll get around to finishing it.

 

[Anton Shavlik]

I'm not as big of a proponent of frame averaging as other people on the forum but this is a case where it does get a lot more dynamic range out of the sensor with no downside.

Setting the camera to 16 frame-average means you get 4 more stops in the highlights.

Can you do HDRx and frame averaging?

 

[Owen Rennie]

Chad please make some time to do this in depth guide.... Just make sure you do it "for dummies"

 

[Trevor D K]

Sorry oldish thread I know ..

Did this TL guide ever happen or is there perhaps another guide/link for floundering TL newbies using Reds ?

Many of of us are experienced with DSLR TL work, but would be really keen on some pointers with using the Epic Dragon ?

I tried yesterday for the first time while I had some downtime available in the field. Wow.. it took some getting use to ! After first changing the black shading calibration to 1fps, I gave it a go. Not sure if I had things set up correctly, but I was immediately flummoxed by the EVF not relaying the image in real time, but rather at 1FPS so it was lagging several seconds behind. After a few seconds the image would catch up to what I was framing. Then the exposure was the next surprise, as I had to shut down the iris almost completely and change the ASA down to about 300 and that was for a low light dusk shot ! I presume NDs are the order of the day when shooting TL on the Red in good light or are there other ways around this such as adjusting the shutter speed ?

Surprisingly my first shot looked pretty good, but any suggestions as to how I progress from a floundering newbie would be most welcome ? Presumably I would need to calibrate different black shade settings for different frame rates so another setting would be required for 2fps?

Sure using DSLRs for your main time lapse camera makes sense given the many advantages as discussed in this thread, but for convenience it's great to have both options especially if you are all set up in the field with your Red and you can opportunistically quickly grab a TL shot ..

 

[Mikael Lubtchansky]

Sorry oldish thread I know ..

Did this TL guide ever happen or is there perhaps another guide/link for floundering TL newbies using Reds ?

Many of of us are experienced with DSLR TL work, but would be really keen on some pointers with using the Epic Dragon ?

I tried yesterday for the first time while I had some downtime available in the field. Wow.. it took some getting use to ! After first changing the black shading calibration to 1fps, I gave it a go. Not sure if I had things set up correctly, but I was immediately flummoxed by the EVF not relaying the image in real time, but rather at 1FPS so it was lagging several seconds behind. After a few seconds the image would catch up to what I was framing. Then the exposure was the next surprise, as I had to shut down the iris almost completely and change the ASA down to about 300 and that was for a low light dusk shot ! I presume NDs are the order of the day when shooting TL on the Red in good light or are there other ways around this such as adjusting the shutter speed ?

Surprisingly my first shot looked pretty good, but any suggestions as to how I progress from a floundering newbie would be most welcome ? Presumably I would need to calibrate different black shade settings for different frame rates so another setting would be required for 2fps?

Sure using DSLRs for your main time lapse camera makes sense given the many advantages as discussed in this thread, but for convenience it's great to have both options especially if you are all set up in the field with your Red and you can opportunistically quickly grab a TL shot ..

Hi Trevor

You can do a TL shooting 1 frame every second but keep the exposure at a fraction of this. No need to change FPS to 1 unless you want to do some low light stuff at night ...

Look into menu > settings > recording and change recording mode to 'internal timelapse timer' then select the number of frames to be recorded each time (usually 1) and the interval... optionally set a limit if you want it to stop automatically...

From there you can play with exposure (to avoid sharp / jitter movement in trees it can be useful to increase exposure / lower fps like you did with NDs), play with HDR or explore the frame summing / averaging options. Everything should be also explained in the camera operation guide.

 

[Trevor D K]

OK great Mikael many thanks, seems I need to start again, so plenty to absorb and try out ! Always good to check out the operation guide ,lol !

Would there then be just one black shade calibration setting required for the 'internal time lapse timer' mode, regardless of the frame rate/interval ?

 

[Mikael Lubtchansky]

OK great Mikael many thanks, seems I need to start again, so plenty to absorb and try out ! Always good to check out the operation guide ,lol !

Would there then be just one black shade calibration setting required for the 'internal time lapse timer' mode, regardless of the frame rate/interval ?

The black shading stays related to temperature / exposture time and is not linked to the timelapse mode in itself. As long as you keep your E label in the green you will be golden.

 

[Trevor D K]

cool, got it...

 

[Russ Fill]

One of the reasons I use the Frame Averaging is to get a smoother longer exposure to smooth out some of the typical TL shakes of trees and other things. Similar to putting a ND on a DSLR and having a prolonged exposure.
I know you need to use ND's and I have found that unless you take your shutter and open it to 360 or close to there you kind of shoot your self in the foot. If you don't open the shutter you sometimes get; say your averaging 8 frames and your shutter is set to 180 you could get 8 separate ghost images if something is going through your frame because the camera is averaging all 8 frames so you see the need to open the shutter to not get those artifacts from the averaging. This doesn't always happen but I have found that opening the shutter just cleans up a lot of unwanted effects.
Or maybe thats what your going for.
You need to practice and experiment over and over again to really get the look you want or find new effects you might stumble across.
Good luck.

 

[Mario Gonsalves]

Marcos. To each their own. I find using my Epic for time-lapse under daylight situations to be easier than a dslr. My Kessler cinedrive can handle the weight and I've run it with lenses up to a zeiss 70-200. I try and mix my dslr and red time-lapses just depending on whats best for the shot. For very long shots ya I wouldn't recommend it just from the power needs perspective. I've done a couple 2-3 hour shots with a few paglink batteries from the battery belt clip, which means I don't have to change batteries at all or touch the camera. One of the things I love about shooting time-lapse on my epic is playback and editing. After the shot I can look at it at several speeds to get an idea of what it will look like. Also in editing its as simple as drag and drop, no need to render. I've been working on posting a in-depth guide to shooting time lapses on Red..one of these days i'll get around to finishing it.

Hey Chad, did you ever finish the guide? Also interested.

 

[Chad Lancaster]

It's still in the works but on the back burner at the moment until I can upgrade to weapon. I didn't want to make any conclusions on shooting time-lapse with a dsmc2 camera without actually having one. I'll be doing a video and white paper on the whole process once I can get to it. Since Helium is just around the corner I may wait till then.