Repro Milky Way Time Lapses movie

[gregbradley]

I out together several time lapses and added some of my own music I wrote, performed and recorded.

I also did some processing on them using Adobe Lightroom 4.1:

https://vimeo.com/47928271


Greg.

[Chris.B]

Very nice. Well done.
Music goes perfectly with it .

[bobbyf]

Fantastic stuff Greg. Your others are fab too :thumbsup:
Can you share some info on the shots please, like lens used, exposure and any batch processing you did etc
Cheers

Bob

[gregbradley]

Thanks Chris. I am enjoying this new facet of astrohotography.




Cheers Bob.

Here's the thing. I did very little!! Yeah! normally astrophotography requires hours and hours of intricate software processing of the images.

This is the beauty of this time lapse function in the Nikon D800E. It is also in some other Nikon models.

Nikon D800E on a tripod. I used a Nikon 14-24mm F2.8ED lens at F2.8.
ISO6400, in camera time lapse function, white balance set to 4200K, no noise reductions at all, picture control set to vivid. Image quality set to jpeg fine. Manual focus - autofocus turned off ( I focused on a passing jet using live view the other night and taped it in place with some duct tape). I have a piece of insulation wrapped around the lens to reduce dewing although the last few nights have been dry. I intend getting some hand warmer pads and put them under the insulation next. Lenses sometimes will dew easily especially in winter. Flicker control is turned on.

The in camera time lapse then is programmed for the gap between shots (I used 10 seconds), the number of hours and it calculated the number of shots. Then it does its thing. If it runs out of battery it turns the resulting exposures into a movie next you turn it on with power again.

If you want to stop it you simply turn power off and next time on it makes the sequence into a movie.

I did no processing of any kind on these sequences - zip, nilch!

The first short sequence was slightly different and was my attempting at handling the transition from day to night. It works but it does not then shoot the night sky hard enough using the metering system. I used auto ISO in aperture mode. I set minimum ISO to 100, maximum to 6400. I defined minimum shutter speed to lowest which was 4 seconds (why did they do that?? The thing goes to 30 seconds and some engineeer decides 4 will be enough!).

I am currently checking out an iphone app called Triggertrap that is running my camera. I think it will be more useful for certain things rather than the transitions from night to day or day to night. At this stage anyway.

I also have an intervalvometer to do these things manually should I want to shoot in RAW which I will try at some point to see if it is worth the extra work in the results I get.

Software was Nikon View NX2 and Nikon Movie editor.

On an earlier time lapse I used Photoshop CS6 and Roland Cakewalk for sound. The Nikon is easier to use but unless you shoot in RAW you don't have any processing available. CS6 was better but I was using a trial only and its expired. Perhaps CS4 will do similar, I'll have to try it out.

I am still learning my way round all of this.

Greg.

[Ross G]

A beautiful creation Greg.

You are a man of many talents....well done!


Ross.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Ross. Its a lot of fun too.

Greg.

[DavidNg]

Fantastic time-lapse Greg, and thanks for your sharing setup. I will give it ago too....soon.

[gregbradley]

Thanks David. It has a lot of potential. I want to get the methods and settings all sorted from local time lapses before I go to my dark site.

Greg.

[lacad01]

Nice work Greg :thumbsup: Sounds pretty versatile for the camera to do all that on-board.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Adam.

Yes its a very handy feature but I will still need to do some post processing to get the best out of them. I ordered a copy of Lightroom 4 to do that.

Greg.

[gregbradley]

I out together several time lapses and added some of my own music I wrote, performed and recorded.

I also did some processing on them using Adobe Lightroom 4.1:


https://vimeo.com/47928271

Greg

[iceman]

Nice work Greg, looks good.

The star movement is a little jerkier than I would've liked - how long was the gap between exposures?

The last 5-7 seconds could probably be trimmed too :)

Great start!

[gregbradley]

10 seconds between 30 second shots. Is it part of the video or all of it?

Yes bit slow right at the end but you can just see the moon setting near bottom of screen. Probably not bright enough to leave in.

Greg

[iceman]

Pretty much all of it.
I'd start the next exposure immediately following the previous, especially for 30 second exposures.
Well, at most 3 seconds because that's what is normally required to have enough time to write to the card.

I saw the Moon, but it wasn't a main feature and was pretty small and not bright enough so I'd trim it ;)

[alexch]

Nice results, Greg.

I agree with Mike, the gaps between the frames make it look jerky, I would set the interval between shots to as little as the camera lets you.

Cheers,
Alex

[bobbyf]

Thanks for the detailed response Greg.
I'll have to try some of the things you mentioned
I just use the intervalometer on my D7000. Dont think its got a timelapse function, but i shall be looking!
Cheers

Bob

[strongmanmike]

Wow, that easy? Can I do that with my D7000?

I think you got a few of the big gun Canon time lapse guys worried now :D

Mike

[gregbradley]

Thanks Alex. Do you use 24fps or 30? Does that make a difference if it is run at 30? I used a 10 seconds gap and a 30 second exposure. I could drop that to 3 second gap probably perhaps even 1. In RAW I would need a slightly longer gap of maybe 3. I'd have to time how long it takes to save a 12bit NEF file.



A Chinese Intervalometer isn't that expensive. I got one off Ebay with a wireless remote for $69 including shipping I think.



Sure you can, you just need an intervalvometer if time lapse is not built in.

Thanks for the encouragement!

Greg.

[gregbradley]

I just checked the original time lapses off the camera and its smooth. So something in the processing chain made them jerky.

I'll have to track that down.

Greg.

[alexch]

24, 25, 30 depends on how quickly I want it to run. My D3s and D700 can take a next shot after 0.3s so it must be capable of saving one RAW file while another is being recorded.

[alexch]

Sounds like conversion from 24 to 30 fps or vice versa is to blame here.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Alex.

I'll do a check of the processing steps where that is asked for (at the end when you are about to save it).

Greg.