Embedded Files
November 2015 (so you know how long ago this was made) - updated September 2016
Applies only to Windows users!
HDR time lapse
So it's great to get a nice "HDR" result for one triplet, but now we have 300 triplets in a time lapse to process! Even with saved settings, there are few people who have the patience to do this 300 times, and again for the next time lapse. Hang on! This is what computers are good at!
Triplet? Could be a doublet, could be a quad or even septtuplet of pictures in the bracket. For Moon over city, with an older camera I was limited to 3 exposures. Thanks to MagicLantern, firmware for Canon DSLR, allows control for both intervalometer and bracketing. Once the Moon is above 5 degrees or so, it requires 12-14 EV difference from the landscape, so in the last 6 months, I have begun shooting a bracketed set of 6X2EV, and I have been creating a 7th by faking a really short exposure because Enfuse works best with a complete range: settings details. If EnfuseGUI is giving you an error, see the note at the bottom of this page.
Shooting at 70mm or more, the Moon's motion becomes visible in 3s, so you have to shoot the bracket of 6 quickly, otherwise you see artifacts; this forces one to use ISO 800 or 1000, to make the long exposure shorter than 1s. Anyway, to avoid a time-lapse that jitters at that image scale, an interval of 5s is required.
A benefit of the Enfuse method is that noise is beaten back a bit. Can it be done just 2 exposures? Requires finicky control as the Moon changes brightness. And when there are clouds, you actually want a full range to catch the partial transparency and glow effects!
Here's the workflow:
- Choose one bracketed set in the sequence; you'll take the HDR parameters from this representative set and apply to all others later
- Use EnfuseGUI to play around and determine the enfusing parameters. Good first start is sat: 0, mu: 0.6, sigma: 0.15, grayscale projection operator: lstar
- Drag & drop the set of images into the interface
- Enter number of images in each bracket/stack in case EnfuseGUI doesn't get it right
- Let it run! 700 sets of a 7-bracket set of 5184x3456 took about 24 hours.
- Drop enfused images into a movie maker
https://vimeo.com/174163270
If EnfuseGUI is giving you an error, your machine may be missing a Visual C++ library.
Download and install the following from Microsoft:
Google Sites
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