A misty sunrise into a clear sky today, here from my girlfriend’s eastwards-facing rural location. Didn’t actually point at the sun as the main thing of interest was the mist, which I wanted to see swirling and evaporating and glowing orange etc. as the sun came up. Shot time-lapse for about 2.5 hours, this being about 1 hour 20 mins (rounded figures) before and after sunrise.
The result is at http://vimeo.com/30602784
Chose to use manual exposure, partly to emphasize magnitude of the change in lighting (auto exposure would have reduced this impression) and partly because in any case the pre-dawn shots required frame acumulation mode, hence a discontinuity when I inevitably came to switch out of that (to avoid the camera being dazzled).
In the edit (in Sony Vegas), initially straight-cut the differently-exposed clips together (in sequence). But the result, when played, jolted uncomfortably at each cut. Tried smoothing the levels-change, via Levels FX, but didn’t look that great. Imagined an “Iris” effect. Ended-up with the “Iris” transition,which gives the appearance/hint of stopping-dow, exactly as needed here. The next “candy” item was the vignette. Added in post (Sony Vegas) via feathered Mask. Also some video de-noising and finally some text dissapearing into its own “mist”.
It played too quickly – all over in about 30 seconds. I wish I’d shot it one frame every second instead of every 10 seconds. Then again I need copyright-free music of sufficient duration as background music. I found some free 30-second-ish music slips that are free for non-profit use at http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com. Might try stretching this (interlaced) video to (motion-compensated) double-framerate, then half-speed, some other time. Note that Vimeo has its own Music Store for soundracks etc., some of which are free (Creative Commons license).
Rendered to H264 for uploading to Vimeo, using settings advised at http://vimeo.com/help/compression .
Camera settings:
- Time:
- Started filming at about 6am
- Sunrise officially at 7:24
- Completed filming at about 09:00
- Constant settings:
- Gamma STD3
- No particular reason, just looked ok for the extremely dark pre-dawn shots.
- HQ 1080/50i
- Timelapse: 1 frame per 10 seconds
- Too fast – wish I’d used 1 fps
- WB: 6100 K
- Gain -3dB
- Shutter 1/60 sec
- Gamma STD3
- Exposure (manual, varied in steps)
- For pre-dawn darkness at 06:00: f1.9, standard gamma, frame accumulation (64 frames)
- For dawn: no frame accumulation
- At 5 mins before sunrise: ND1 filter (1/8)
- At 10 mins post sunrise: f3.4
- At 25 mins post sunries: f5.1
- At 40 mins post sunrise: ND2 filter (1/64), f3.1
- Subsequently, searched on web to see what other people did:
- Google: [sunrise time lapse]
- http://www.digitaljuice.com/community_forums/tm.asp?m=121804
- Title: “Tips on how to shoot sunrise time lapse”
- Q: I need to shoot a sun rise time lapse. I’m trying to figure out the best way to go about it. Do I use a ND filter from the start? Do I leave in auto iris or do I have to stay by the camera making constant adjustments as the sun rises?
- A1: Depends how long you want the shot to last. I did one the other month that went from 2 hours before sunrise to 3 hours after, no ND, auto iris. Mind you, my camera ranges from F1.9 to f16, so it managed it fairly well. Obviously the sun blew out, but not much else in the scene did, when I ended the shot, everything was exposed correctly.
- A2: I’ve shot probably a hundred sunrises/sets. I generally shot 10-30 minutes and then shortened it to 1 frame a second. Autoexposure will work (I almost always shot this way), but you can get a nice effect going from blackness to light with a locked exposure too.
- http://www.digitaljuice.com/community_forums/tm.asp?m=121804
- Google: [sunrise time lapse]