TSE2012, Ellis Beach timelapse

[alexch (Alex)]

Hi All,

Processing the eclipse footage proved to be a very difficult task and I finally made the timelapse.

http://vimeo.com/54017986

Click here to load the video

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The sunrise and first eclipse sequence are HDR. For the HDR eclipse I used 14EV bracket - 1/4000 - 1 sec at f/4 with Nikon D700 at ISO200 and 35mm lens. I think it resembles the visual experience reasonably closely.

For the close-up eclipse I used Stellarvue 80mm f/6.3 triplet, Canon 40DA, ISO100, and picked 1/250s from my bracketed sequence.

Closing sequence is with 14mm lens set at f/4 and Nikon D3S at 1/15s, ISO 200. Everything was automated with two Promote DSLR controllers and a D3S builtin intervalometer.

I wish I had another 500mm lens with a camera in video mode to get the Bailys beads but it will have to wait until another eclipse.

Cheers,
Alex

[iceman (Mike)]

Beautiful result, Alex. We got so lucky with the clouds!

[Larryp (Laurie)]

That's superb Alex! And the music is an ideal choice

[Paddy (Patrick)]

Excellent video Alex!

[Octane (Humayun)]

Superb.

Was great to catch up with you at the after party, too.

H

[04Stefan07 (Stefan)]

Unreal! I like the music too, suits the video very well!

How man photos did you take all together?

[Zubenel (Wes)]

Great Sequence . Thanks for sharing. I wish and hope to to something similar with the 700 odd shots I took with the 250mm zoom on the canon 550D

[geoffsims (Geoff)]

Hi Alex,

WOW - this is fantastic! The totality shots are just superb, and as others have said, the music is great too. As is evident from the stills you have posted earlier, I really love the HDR technique on the widefield landscape - the focal length is perfect too, to show the landscape as well as a decent sized Sun/Moon.

Am I allowed to quiz you a bit more on the technique? :-)

- how many shots are in your bracketed sequence?
- what is the interval between sequences?

Also, just a general comment - in hindsight, do you think it's better to bracket and get higher dyanamic range, or use a single exposure (and less dynamic range) to reduce the interval between shots?

[alexch (Alex)]

Mike, Laurie, Patrick, Humayun, Stephan, Zubenel and Geoff - thanks heaps for your nice comments. After so many sleepless nights processing the footage I can't say if it looks good or there are some obvious problems.

Cheers,
Alex

[FlashDrive (Poppy)]

Alex ...Very nice ..Thank You ..!!

Flash ..!!

[alexch (Alex)]

Originally Posted by 04Stefan07

Unreal! I like the music too, suits the video very well!

How man photos did you take all together?

Too many - 13600 with three cameras. Only 1800 made it into the timelapse, the rest of the widefields were taken during partial phases in hope to show the decrease in light but it was too subtle to be interesting.

[alexch (Alex)]

Originally Posted by geoffsims

Hi Alex,

WOW - this is fantastic! The totality shots are just superb, and as others have said, the music is great too. As is evident from the stills you have posted earlier, I really love the HDR technique on the widefield landscape - the focal length is perfect too, to show the landscape as well as a decent sized Sun/Moon.

Thanks, Geoff.
I agree, 35mm on full frame worked well for the eclipse (and shots with the Moon I did earlier).

Originally Posted by geoffsims

Am I allowed to quiz you a bit more on the technique? :-)

- how many shots are in your bracketed sequence?
- what is the interval between sequences?

Sure thing .
* 35mm setup was doing 14EV bracket in 2EV steps from 1/4000 to 1s at ISO 200 and f/4 driven by the Promote controller. The bracket was just right - 1/4000 was useful for the diamond ring and 1s - for the totality. Initially I planned to use f/5.6 but seeing the high cloud, I opened the aperture one f/stop. SNS HDR Pro did a reasonable job merging the widefield exposures.
* 14mm setup was supposed to be doing the 9EV bracket in 1EV steps with builtin D3S intervalometer but someone forgot to turn the bracketing on so it was taking nine 1/15s exposures at f/4 and ISO 200. Later I stacked 3 exposures together and was able to reveal the shadows without much noise. My problem was that the interval was set too long - 4 seconds. It turned out to be not a bad technique and I plan to use it for the next eclipse - as little interval as possible at similar shutter speed and then stack a few for each frame in the video.

Originally Posted by geoffsims

Also, just a general comment - in hindsight, do you think it's better to bracket and get higher dyanamic range, or use a single exposure (and less dynamic range) to reduce the interval between shots?

Ideally - both. One HDR sequence with medium wide-angle (35mm) and one ultra-wide with single exposures and little gaps. If I was restricted to just one and had to pick then it would be HDR bracketed sequence because it is so close to the real thing.

What I would do differently though is the long focal length imaging - instead of doing the bracketed sequence there, I would just put the camera in a manual video mode with around 1/250-1/1000 shutter speed and f/6. It would be great to see Baily's beads emerge in video-like footage.

[spacezebra (Petra)]

Alex, always a pleasure to watch your time lapse, and again beautiful work.

Cheers Petra d.

[geoffsims (Geoff)]

Thanks for the info Alex. So just to confirm, the interval on the 35 mm was also 4 seconds?

This could be a problem at the next eclipse, when the duration of totality is only 10-20 seconds :-)

I might try some actual HDR merges of my images, to see how the results compare with manual layer masking.

[alexch (Alex)]

Originally Posted by geoffsims

Thanks for the info Alex. So just to confirm, the interval on the 35 mm was also 4 seconds?

This could be a problem at the next eclipse, when the duration of totality is only 10-20 seconds :-)

I might try some actual HDR merges of my images, to see how the results compare with manual layer masking.

The interval was as short as it could be and was limited by how quickly Promote can set up the exposure time via USB, which is quite fast (less than a second).

Promote and Nikon intervalometer use a different interpretation of "interval". Nikon calculates as "first-to-first" and includes actual shooting time in the interval. Promote calculates it as "last-to-first" and does not include shooting time.

35mm was with Nikon D700 and driven by Promote. I had it set up to do 7 shots (1/4000-1s in 2EV steps) and 1 sec gap (last-to-first). This results in roughly 1.5 shots per second and about 4.5 second interval (first-to-first). With the Sun higher and less cloud, the 1s exposure can be dropped and then the interval reduced to 3 seconds.

I think video is the way to go for the timelapse and Baily's beads in a 10-20sec eclipse. Add another camera in HDR sequence for stills, that would just about get 2 diamond rings and a corona in three series of HDR exposures .

[Peter Ward]

I would have liked to have seen a faster frame rate for a more " slo-mo" look during totality...but hey, I'm nitpicking...it's a very I impressive sequence Alex!

[Jen]

Very cool Alex