Taking a shot of sun rising with GL2???

[Roman Nittmann]

Did anybody shot a sun rise.......what times would you recomend for interval timer?? What would be the best setting of shutter speed and aperture??
Thank's a lot...........

[Boyd Ostroff]

Do a search here, there are several threads. I'm not using a GL2, but the principles should apply. I wouldn't use any sort of timer unless you're attempting something like filming for several hours. I have shot quite a few in the past year, and am projecting some on a 40' screen in our current show here. Here's what I've learned so far, your mileage may vary...

I like to shoot at or close to maximum telephoto. It shouldn't take more than 1/2 hour for the sun to move completely out of frame, maybe less, esp with the GL2's long focal length zoom. You might experiment with a telephoto adaptor if you have one, I got some nice results that way.... I could even make out some sun spots at 48x! Really, I thought I had dirt in the camera or viewfinder, but the dots I saw always stayed in the same place on the sun, even as I panned. Just let the tape run, then speed it up in your NLE. I use Final Cut Pro.

Use common sense pointing the camera at the sun. DON'T BLAME ME if you fry your CCD's ;-) My feeling is that if it hurts to look at the sun with your naked eyes it will also hurt your camera. Use a dense a ND filter. Does the GL2 have builtin ND's? You will probably want to augment them with a screw in filter, or even stack several. My PDX-10 does not have builtin filters so I'm stacking as many as 3 on the lens, depending on conditions. In general I think you want to ND down to expose at ~f4 or thereabouts for the best image. When the sun gets near the horizon it's very dim anyway and you can get some spectacular results since the contrast level is lower.

Here are a few example frames from sequences I shot several months back.

http://www.greenmist.com/nature/10
http://www.greenmist.com/nature/06
http://www.greenmist.com/nature/07
http://www.greenmist.com/nature/09

[Joris Beverloo]

Hi Boyd,

First of all I wanna say that these pics are very cool. Love them...hope to get to shoot a sunset comparable like this once.
Second, thx for the tip of using ND filters. I am will be trying to shoot a sunset myself soon (I hope) And I never gave thought on using NDs. I already ordered a .6 ND, so maybe I should get one extra for this purpose.
My thoughts on using the builtin ND of the GL2.. I am not sure how this works, my guess it processes the signals coming from the CCD in a little different way, maybe changing threshold levels or something. I would think that there is no physical ND behind the lens or in front of the CCD, so probably the same amount of light falls on the CCD as with the builtin ND turned on.
Maybe anyone else could explain about how the builtin ND works...

[Federico Dib]

Hi, I asked the same question about the ND in the GL2 (Xm2 in my case), and got my answers here.

The ND filter is indeed a phyisical device. You can hear it, if you put your ear close in a quite place, and then activate it..

Or even better, you can see it. Just look at the bottom of the inside of the lens.. and push the ND button... and you´ll see the filter.. Is a tiny little thing, so don´t expect a 58mm piece of glass moving in there.

[Vince Skinner]

I've shot several hours of sunset footage. Just use the ND filter on the GL2. It works great and the footage looks great!.

V

[Joris Beverloo]

Thx Frederico,
I tried it out immediatley and I saw this tiny piece moving right in the middle of the lense. and I also heard it. Guess this wonderfull piece of technique keeps surprising me :)

[Roman Nittmann]

Thank you Boyd and all............I still have a question Did anybody used the interval timer? What seting would be good for it or (moving skies) ? Thanks again.

[Joris Beverloo]

Roman, I used the interval timer once, and I did not like it for the effect I wanted. It does not give you a very smooth look over time, very jumpy images. Since it records for about a second and then waits 30 seconds or so to record another second. I forgot the exact times, anyway, in my opnion it is not "fine" enough for a smooth video. Just set your camera up to the sky, set the interval timer and record for like half an hour play it back and see if it does what you want.

Last advice, set the camera to full manual mode so it does not change exposure settings during recording.

If I would shoot a sunset/sunrise I would let the camera record the full time and then just speed it up in post. This gives you full control of how you want the video to look.

[Boyd Ostroff]

I agree with Joris, just shoot normally unless the real time of the shot exceeds an hour. However the interval timer can be useful if you want to record something that happens very slowly. For example, I let my camera run all night filming a snow storm with the interval timer, then sped up the footage even more in FCP. The result was watching over a foot of snow accumulate during the course of 8 hours, but reduced to about a 10 second clip.

For moving clouds however I really suggest you shoot in real time, then speed up. I've done quite a bit of this and find it hypnotic. Depending on the wind you might want to speed things up by anywhere from 5 to 20 times. Even at the 20x factor, you can get 3 minutes of footage from a standard DV tape...

[Roman Nittmann]

Thank's guys. You are right I tried shooting moving skies with the interval timer and it did not look to god after I speeded it up with DV Storm (premiere). Full time is much more better!!