Timepalse flicker. need an explination please.

Stormchase

No longer a newbie, moving up!
Joined
Oct 6, 2009
Messages
1,191
Reaction score
108
Location
Phoenix Arizona
Can others edit my Photos
Photos OK to edit
This is my first attempt at time lapse. Its flicker at first then about 3/4 of the way through it clears up. Wondering what causes this. I started out with a fast shutter around 1/1000, ended with 8" roughly the time it cleared up. about every 20 snaps I made 1 adjustment on the shutter to keep the light meter where I wanted it. ISO stayed 200 and f/14. I adjusted the shutter speed to compensate light. I used LRcc to create the lapse. 7DII raw files were used.
 
wow I've never seen flicker that bad, looks like a sweet TL though. I will state first that I am by no means an expert on timelapse, but I've read that using certain apertures can cause flicker like that. I think you can clean it up use LR Timelapse (Home - LRTimelapse)

If you're planning on doing more timelapses where you need to do ramping like this, I'd suggest looking into picking up a promote control, or something similar made for that.
 
Am a total news at video also but...
In my PS Premiere it says to hit 'render' and it helps smooth things out. Not sure if this is where to apply that, but looks like a great storm! Hope you figure it out.
 
wow I've never seen flicker that bad, looks like a sweet TL though. I will state first that I am by no means an expert on timelapse, but I've read that using certain apertures can cause flicker like that. I think you can clean it up use LR Timelapse (Home - LRTimelapse)

If you're planning on doing more timelapses where you need to do ramping like this, I'd suggest looking into picking up a promote control, or something similar made for that.
I looked into LRTimlapse, I know there are some, very pro looking, videos out there in which they use it.
Is there a remote that helps this? I do have one I bought but the 7D had it internal. Thats what I used.
 
Am a total news at video also but...
In my PS Premiere it says to hit 'render' and it helps smooth things out. Not sure if this is where to apply that, but looks like a great storm! Hope you figure it out.
I didnt see anything for render. Wish I did!
Whats a shame about this storm is for a 4 hour shoot you kinda dont kow where the clouds are going to be. You should have seen what was behind me. There was a lot of lightning going of on my storm but shooting at 1/1000 there was no chance. I also heard to use a stop filter of some sort. Get longer exposures. Maybe that might help too. Im so very new but want to get into this a little.
 
Again, I'm no expert, but have a lot of friends who specialize in time lapse. You definitely want to drag out your shutter speeds longer if you can, and having some neutral density filters will help you with that. Having too fast of a shutter speed ends up looking a little weird, and 1/1000 is too fast. Also, what was your aperture for this? I read that stopping down too far, like f8, causes problems with flicker because of the blades getting in the way.

And yes, they do make remotes that you can use for bulb ramping, but they can be pretty expensive. Promote is the company I know of that makes them
 
Again, I'm no expert, but have a lot of friends who specialize in time lapse. You definitely want to drag out your shutter speeds longer if you can, and having some neutral density filters will help you with that. Having too fast of a shutter speed ends up looking a little weird, and 1/1000 is too fast. Also, what was your aperture for this? I read that stopping down too far, like f8, causes problems with flicker because of the blades getting in the way.

And yes, they do make remotes that you can use for bulb ramping, but they can be pretty expensive. Promote is the company I know of that makes them


But the user was shooting photos and merged them into a time lapse..? Why would settings have any bearing on the flicker? Wouldn't that be an issue if they shot video and sped it up to be a time lapse? I used iMovie for my last time lapse and didn't have this issue.

Jake
 
I just read that using certain apertures the blades can cause flicker, I don't know anything about it other than what I've read.
 
I shot the whole series at F/14 I tried to load the project into LRT4 but the free version only alows up to 400. This was 906 so it was just done in LRcc. Ill have to keep the shots down to 400. Im not ready to spend more money haha. I just bought the 7D this weekend.. Broke atm lol.
Well I have a remote already. "Neewer" brand. It was about $20. If so I might have to hand it down or keep it around just for a simple remote. I have been reading that a filter is pretty much a must. Its focused at the over all look tho. Streaming clouds and such. Not sure. I did re do the video. I used Jpegs instead of the RAW format. Some reason when I brought up the project, I must have messed up something in the saving process. I had about 50 extra shots of my dog and things in the series. I did notice that a part of the video wasnt flickering. I believe it was the jpegs.
This is unedited with sound. Saved in 480p as well. Could either of those 2 things make the difference?
I guess it has to go through youtube or somewhere to post? oh well.
 
Last edited:
Having an ND filter is partly for smoothing out the actual exposures which looks better, but also so you can shoot with a wider aperture which means less flicker (no idea why, just what I read). I really hope somebody more knowledgeable chimes in here hah
 
That is really odd.
If you use an ND filter the reasoning is to use a longer exposure so that the image is not so detailed .. ie, it has a bit of motion blur in it; assuming you want it that way.

If you use large files the playing of the TimeLapse can get chunky in the playback.
At least that is what I learned of TimeLapse.

I use Lightroom to prep the files then Microsoft Movie Maker to create the TimeLapse.
 
I didn't know movie maker could do it. I did use it to clip out the bad parts. Do you use raw for the movies?
 
I didn't know movie maker could do it. I did use it to clip out the bad parts. Do you use raw for the movies?
I used lightroom to get the photos the way I wanted them, then exported them as JPEG. I shot in JPEG to keep the shooting faster,

I had to do a couple times as I wanted the switch to each from to be fast, and the larger the individual files, the more "gaps" and load time it took. So I kept each individual file at about 700 kb

This was one of my first simple attempts a year ago

my camera was on my tripod with a trash bag covering it except for a hole cut out for the lens. This kept the rain off of it. My SLIK AMT 500 was very stable even with the winds slightly blocked by the garage.

in MovieMaker you can set the time lapse between individual frames.
MovieMaker-TimeLapse-Setting.jpg
 
This is my first attempt at time lapse. Its flicker at first then about 3/4 of the way through it clears up. Wondering what causes this. I started out with a fast shutter around 1/1000, ended with 8" roughly the time it cleared up. about every 20 snaps I made 1 adjustment on the shutter to keep the light meter where I wanted it. ISO stayed 200 and f/14. I adjusted the shutter speed to compensate light. I used LRcc to create the lapse. 7DII raw files were used.

The shutter speed was too fast. That tends to lend itself to flicker. I think 1/30th or slower is suggested. Additionally, you don't want to stop down your aperture as that can cause flicker. There isn't a hard a fast rule on what f stop to use (I'd imagine it varies by lens) but you want to keep it pretty open (doesn't have to be wide open but only adjust down a stop or two). Try those things and I bet you get results you'll like.
 
Thats cool to see that you can make TL on movie maker. Can you get more FPS tho?
I have done the bag thing many times. Rubber bands are good but it has a tendency to move the focus which stinks.

@rap77oh Thanks for the tips. I might just need to get a stop filter to try it next time. I was shooting way to fast if that's the case and at f/14 could have caused a problem too.
 

Most reactions

New Topics

Back
Top