Day-Night-Day unattended timelapse techniques please

[Tobers]

I want to do a day/night/day timelapse of some mountains, stars etc, that goes from 1 hour before sunset through the night and up to 1 hour after dawn.

Kit is a Sony A7III and 16-35 and/or a Leica Q3 (yes I know I’m lucky). I have a solid tripod and a USB powerbank. Both the Sony and Leica have a built in intervalometer and I’m fine knowing how to set them. And now you can turn off long-exposure noise reduction on the Leica at last.

Likely I’ll be going for a 2 minute interval which is sufficient for my needs. I’m not making a video, but want to blend (in post processing) a selection of the shots into a day-night-day sequence in a strip of vertical slices left-to-right to form a single image.

So…how do I best handle the huge change of lighting automatically, as I won’t be sitting there twiddling knobs all night? I’m thinking of something like:

- White balance set to daylight just to keep the jpegs consistent (I’ll use RAWs for the final image)
- Aperture set to something like f/2.8. I won’t have any foreground that needs to be in focus.
- Manual focus on a distant thing.
- Auto ISO with restriction to max ISO3200.
- Auto shutter speed - the Leica can’t be set to have a max shutter speed like 30 sec unfortunately. Not sure if the Sony can.

While I’m sure the dusk and sunrise shots will be fine, my worry is that in the darkest part of the night the camera shutter will stay open too long and overexpose what should be a dark starry night. Also I don’t really want the shutter speed going longer than the 2 min interval.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get this right? Did I forget anything? I’ll pick a clear night with no rain, but should I cover the camera somehow to prevent dew?

Ta

 

[Pound Coin]

Not sure if this is any help, but I attended an online talk by this chap, which was very useful.

It was paid for, so unfortunately I don't think I can give you any tips I got from it!

Travel & Landscape Photographer - Julian Elliott - UK & France

Julian Elliott is an award winning travel & landscape photographer based in both Wiltshire, UK & the Loire Valley in France. Workshops, tours, commercial and stock.

www.julianelliottphotography.com

 

[Tobers]

I did a first test last night with the Leica Q3. Sadly it seems that it decided to not go above 0.6 sec for the shutter speed, meaning all the night time images are way too dark. It also ramped the ISO to 6400 (the max on auto ISO) so they are both underexposed and noisy.

There doesn’t seem to be any way to tell it to allow the shutter speed to go above 0.6 sec which is very odd indeed. I’ve asked Leica to clarify why.

I’ll try the Sony A7III tonight…

 

[swanseamale47]

Did you get any issues with condensation? I've had that shooting at night. Never tried what your doing though. Following with interest.

 

[Tobers]

I did not actually. It wasn’t that cold last night. I do have some of those hand warmer sachets that I can attach under the lens with an elastic band in these situations. They last for many hours and are quite effective.

Despite the poor quality of the images from last night, I’ve been playing with Photoshop to layer them up and mask them in various different ways (vertical sharp edge, vertical gradient, circular gradient, etc). Not sure quite what I’ll settle on yet. I like the idea of many vertical “slices” with sharp edges. Maybe one for every 15 minutes.

A good benefit of doing this in summer is the nights aren’t so long. It doesn’t get dark enough here (Isle of Skye) in June or early July, but is starting to get towards ideal now.

 

[Tobers]

Also, I have found that Leica’s Auto-ISO function allows you to restrict the max shutter speed from 1/2000th to 1/2 sec. It doesn’t let you go longer than 0.5 sec, which is why all my images from last night had such a short shutter speed (it said 0.6 sec so I guess it’s rounding up/down a bit).

This is really stupid and annoying. Why on earth would you restrict the slowest shutter speed to 1/2 sec? I’ve checked the Sony A7III and it allows AutoiISO to vary the shutter speed from 1/8000th to 30 sec, which is far more sensible and bodes well for tonight’s experiment.

 

[swanseamale47]

Just had a thought. Has the Leica got a dedicated night mode? I dont know the camera, but one of my compacts will only go to 30sec in "night" mode or whatever it's called.

 

[Tobers]

Good thinking. Just checked and it has a night portrait auto mode, but that makes everything fully auto, and it doesn’t look like it will override the 0.5 sec shutter speed limit unfortunately.

 

[Tobers]

Reporting back after last night’s test with the Sony A7III.

Disappointing results I’m afraid. Aperture priority at f/2.8, auto ISO with max shutter speed of 30 sec and max ISO of 3200.

Once it got dark, the shutter speed went up to the 30 sec max I had set, but the ISO never went above 250 even though the max auto ISO was set to 3200. This resulted in loads of images that were just black, as it needs ISO of at least 3200 to get a good image at 15 sec and f/2.8 at night.

I tested the auto ISO indoors just by putting my hand over the lens and it jumped up to ISO 3200 as expected. So what was going on outdoors?

I think I’ve narrowed it down to an infra-red light on a security camera I have on my shed. Could the camera be seeing this infrared light and taking it into account when calculating the required exposure? If so, that could account for the camera thinking it was light when it was visibly dark. Anyone know?

I’ll try again with the Sony tonight away from the security camera’s infra red light spill.

 

[Tobers]

Well, I ended up doing it all manually. I spent the night up on top of the viewpoint above the Old Man of Storr, setting exposures frame by frame. Not too much hassle, and tbh I was quite happy not to leave the camera to do its own thing. I wrapped myself in a sleeping bag as a blanket in between wandering around with the non-fixed camera and finding other compositions.

Neither the Sony nor the Leica were able to handle an automated day/night/day timelapse.

In any event, it was a gorgeous night to be out. Not too cold (lowest 5C I think), a very light breeze to keep the midges away, and excellent skies.