Digital Stills Camera for Time Lapse

These are a series of tests that I have been doing with digital stills cameras in an attempt to produce files that will work for film resolution output for time lapse.

They have all been rendered from the original files in Combustion.

The process was...

capture RAW

convert RAW to TIFF in Photoshop shadow/highlight correction was also applied. This test was reduced from 2546 to 2048 at this stage, test 2 wasn't, all further tests will be :-)

import TIFF frames into Combustion

After that various different post techniques were used.

(As of 2021, the Sorenson compression used for these clips isn't widely supported in browsers, but the downloadable files are playable in VLC or Screen.)

Test 1

slight sharpen (6%)

motion blur (samples 36, phase 100, shutter 15, custom curve)

add 5245 grain

colour correct

Render out to DV and DPX, this took around 1 hour for the 4 second DPX sequence on a 3.2Ghz P4 with 1Gb of memory, Hyper thread enabled.

There are still faults with the tests, dirt on the lens :-) matte box in shot, motion blur isn't right yet (I'm still learning about this)

Setup was G5, internal ND on, Tungsten Balance, Tiffen 85BPola, Harrison NBRA 3, F8 at 2.5 seconds per frame.

/Quicktime/film_Large.mov

The sequence above was compressed in Sorenson Pro 3 from the DV file

4 second QT file at DV res around 19Mb

DPX file of one frame around 12Mb

Test 2

no sharpen

motion blur (samples 50, phase 100, shutter 25, custom curve)

The motion blur used was the inbuilt Discreet one, I've also experimented with Re:Vision reelsmartblur as well but whilst that is brilliant for adding motion blur to objects in frame it's not so good at blending TL frames together.

add 5245 grain

colour correct, this was over exposed by around a stop deliberately, some correction was made in the RAW to TIFF stage more correction and gamma alteration was done now.

Render out to QT at 1/3rd res, this took around 2.5 hours for the 8 second sequence on a 3.2Ghz P4 with 1Gb of memory, Hyper thread enabled.

Setup was G5, internal ND on, Tungsten Balance, Tiffen 85BPola, Harrison NBRA 3, F8 at 8 seconds per frame.

/Quicktime/Overexposed-one_Large.mov

Test 3

This shot was a deliberate attempt to screw up the picture, I succeeded quite well :-)

I know that I could have got an image that I could have worked with if I'd shot on film, here the shadows have gone and obviously the highlights are well blown, this is after a lot of work to try and save it.

All settings as above but with exposure reduced to 2.5 seconds per frame.

/Quicktime/overexposed_Large.mov

Test 4

Using auto exposure for the first time, fully programmed mode. No filters other than a UV.

As I was doing this as a video SD only test I originated at 1600*1200 and then cropped the images in photoshop to 1600 * 900, they were captured as JPEG at the Superfine setting.

Assmbled in Combustion with Re:Vission ReelSmart Blur adding the motion blur this time.

Output to uncompressed video at 1024 * 576

This was then comporessed in Sorenson Pro:-

/Quicktime/sunrise-auto_Large.mov