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This is my first 'proper' attempt at a timelapse video and I'm looking for a bit of a critique plus possibly a bit of help identifying (and rectifying) a problem I've identified with the video.
First a little background of the shot. When I selected the top of Loudoun Hill as a location I had intended to use the monument on the summit as my foreground interest in the composition of my shot. However, unfortunately when I arrived the monument wasn't looking particularly photogenic (being covered in a not insignificant amount of bird droppings), so I was forced to look elsewhere. The only other thing of interest was a solitary tree, but I couldn't figure out a way to make it work due to its position and the surrounding stones and vegetation. Thus, eager to make a start I just decided to use the town of Darvel as my foreground interest (thinking the lights coming on in the town could look quite good after sunset). I chose to shoot in aperture priority mode to automatically handle the large variation in light level and RAW mode to give me the most flexibility should I choose to do anything in post processing. I used a 15 second interval and shot a total of 461 files over a roughly 2 hour period from just over an hour before sunset to just over an hour after it.
So, to the video (click through to the video page, I don't see a way to embed SmugMug videos on the forum here):
Music credit:
New Direction Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
There are 2 things I'd point out. The first is that since this was shot in aperture priority mode the end of the timelapse doesn't look too dark (but you can tell from the length of the car lights on the road to the left that they were fairly long exposures). I considered post processing a number of frames (e.g. the last 50 or 75) to make them increasingly darker to more closely replicate the conditions my eyes were seeing, but for the moment I've left the shots at their actual exposures.
The second issue (and the one I'm seeking advice for) is the strange concentric circular banding which happens mostly in the sky, radiating out from the position of the sun. I believe this is due to the deflickering method I've chosen to use to try and alleviate the problem of exposure flickering resulting from choosing aperture priority mode. I used the TimelapseDF filter for AVISynth in the (default) MFR mode. The original forum thread for the filter discusses this banding issue a number of times, but I don't see a real resolution to the issue. Does anyone here have any suggestions as to a fix (or an alternative method for exposure deflickering) that I could try? I've already looked at this deflicker filter for VirtualDub, but it produces a strange local flickering around the sun similar to what you can see in the middle pane of this sample video. I've tried downloading to implement the filter displayed in the right pane of that video (i.e. Deflicker 1.3b1 Improved), but I cannot build the filter due to a supposed dependency problem with the supplied source code. I may try to chase down a solution to that problem, but in the meantime I'd appreciate any suggestions you could give me.
I'd also welcome any other more general points of feedback about the video. Thanks for reading.
First a little background of the shot. When I selected the top of Loudoun Hill as a location I had intended to use the monument on the summit as my foreground interest in the composition of my shot. However, unfortunately when I arrived the monument wasn't looking particularly photogenic (being covered in a not insignificant amount of bird droppings), so I was forced to look elsewhere. The only other thing of interest was a solitary tree, but I couldn't figure out a way to make it work due to its position and the surrounding stones and vegetation. Thus, eager to make a start I just decided to use the town of Darvel as my foreground interest (thinking the lights coming on in the town could look quite good after sunset). I chose to shoot in aperture priority mode to automatically handle the large variation in light level and RAW mode to give me the most flexibility should I choose to do anything in post processing. I used a 15 second interval and shot a total of 461 files over a roughly 2 hour period from just over an hour before sunset to just over an hour after it.
So, to the video (click through to the video page, I don't see a way to embed SmugMug videos on the forum here):
Music credit:
New Direction Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
There are 2 things I'd point out. The first is that since this was shot in aperture priority mode the end of the timelapse doesn't look too dark (but you can tell from the length of the car lights on the road to the left that they were fairly long exposures). I considered post processing a number of frames (e.g. the last 50 or 75) to make them increasingly darker to more closely replicate the conditions my eyes were seeing, but for the moment I've left the shots at their actual exposures.
The second issue (and the one I'm seeking advice for) is the strange concentric circular banding which happens mostly in the sky, radiating out from the position of the sun. I believe this is due to the deflickering method I've chosen to use to try and alleviate the problem of exposure flickering resulting from choosing aperture priority mode. I used the TimelapseDF filter for AVISynth in the (default) MFR mode. The original forum thread for the filter discusses this banding issue a number of times, but I don't see a real resolution to the issue. Does anyone here have any suggestions as to a fix (or an alternative method for exposure deflickering) that I could try? I've already looked at this deflicker filter for VirtualDub, but it produces a strange local flickering around the sun similar to what you can see in the middle pane of this sample video. I've tried downloading to implement the filter displayed in the right pane of that video (i.e. Deflicker 1.3b1 Improved), but I cannot build the filter due to a supposed dependency problem with the supplied source code. I may try to chase down a solution to that problem, but in the meantime I'd appreciate any suggestions you could give me.
I'd also welcome any other more general points of feedback about the video. Thanks for reading.
