D800 Time Lapse

[Greg McCary]

Shot at 6400 ISO which is better quality than some of my first DSLRs at 100 ISO. This is or may be part of a planned bigger project.
The streaks are not shooting stars but jets heading into Atlanta about 100 miles west.

Stars over Lake Weiss from Greg McCary on Vimeo.

[figit090]

very nice, I'd love to get into time lapse work.

[Greg McCary]

Thanks. I still have a lot of work. The tough part for me is more a software issue and just how to put one together. Lightroom is painfully slow.

[figit090]

Thanks. I still have a lot of work. The tough part for me is more a software issue and just how to put one together. Lightroom is painfully slow.

yeah I can imagine, I feel like lightroom is really slow too and I have a SSD drive, 32gb ram, and an i7 processor. Still laggs... I have looked for answers but found no fix right now, using lightroom 3. I want to do a video but i'm not ready to just yet, and have only played with a short manually-fired time lapse that I stood around and clicked myself. Turned out interesting but I want to make a good video like yours someday, keep working on it!

Maybe you need another program than lightroom for such huge batch edit work?

[Greg McCary]

Here is another edit, shorter, smoother and put together in CS6. Who knew CS6 could do time lapse? I do now. It's faster and easier to use than LR.

stars-edit-102 from Greg McCary on Vimeo.

[armando_m]

Very nice Greg, how long does it take to shot this ?
how many exposures in the video ?
Thanks for sharing it

[Greg McCary]

Armando the exposures were 20 sec. I start to get movement in the stars if the exposure gets any longer. They were averaging a picture every 45 seconds counting the write time to the card. I started with around 200 images but trimmed it down due to issues, car headlights ect. I think this is 120 or so images at 10 FPS.

[mattb]

Neat! I love this kind of stuff. I didn't know LR could even do this so I'll have to check it out (although it sounds like it's slow).
Nice job!

[Greg McCary]

Thanks Matt. I always thought I would have to be way out in a desert or something to get this many stars. I am over joyed.

[figit090]

Armando the exposures were 20 sec. I start to get movement in the stars if the exposure gets any longer. They were averaging a picture every 45 seconds counting the write time to the card. I started with around 200 images but trimmed it down due to issues, car headlights ect. I think this is 120 or so images at 10 FPS.

Do you use noise reduction processing in-camera? I'm curious if it's needed.

How did you decide on 45 second intervals?

What intervalometer are you using?

Second video looks good, little jumpy (I'm thinking smaller than 45 sec gaps might transition smoother to the eyes) but I'd say you're off to a great start! I am anxious to give it a try with my new D700.

[samchester]

Really nice

[Greg McCary]

I choose 45 seconds as it takes a few seconds after the exposure to write to the card, yes in camera NR. I used a Pixel intervalometer. I wish I could reduce the 45 sec time as well. I think I will get a faster card and maybe a wider aperture and faster shutter speed next time I try it.
Thanks for the comments, thanks as well Sam.

Do you use noise reduction processing in-camera? I'm curious if it's needed.

How did you decide on 45 second intervals?

What intervalometer are you using?

Second video looks good, little jumpy (I'm thinking smaller than 45 sec gaps might transition smoother to the eyes) but I'd say you're off to a great start! I am anxious to give it a try with my new D700.

[Don Schaeffer]

Neat! I love the exploration.

[figit090]

I choose 45 seconds as it takes a few seconds after the exposure to write to the card, yes in camera NR. I used a Pixel intervalometer. I wish I could reduce the 45 sec time as well. I think I will get a faster card and maybe a wider aperture and faster shutter speed next time I try it.
Thanks for the comments, thanks as well Sam.

You might consider not using in camera noise reduction, if that is adding significant time to the writing. I know one form of noise reduction is to take an image of the shutter curtain without exposing the sensor to light and then it removes hot or stuck pixel noise from the actual photo. This requires an identical length of time, so it effectively doubles your exposure time.

If you can, try not using the noise reduction and see what results you get for a couple shots, perhaps that will cut down the time without introducing any significant noise. If there is noise, try removing it with photoshop. I think quite possibly there is also a way to use a 'dust off reference photo' to apply to all the photos in post, so you don't have to do it in-camera.

Saves you time and gives flexibility. If I was taking one image of a long exposure landscape sure in-camera is perfect, but i you're making a movie I think turning it off would be a huge benefit.