Time Lapse
 

Hello everyone,
I just had a quick question, I wanted to use my XH A1 for a timelapse of a skyline of Detroit (which would last about an hour, from dusk to dark) and wanted to know how to go about this in terms of settings. Should I leave it in full auto so the camera can adjust naturally to the changes in light, or should I set the gain at one level and just mess with the iris as it gets darker? I hope that made sense, any help would be appreciated. Thanks guys.

Alex

Personally, I wouldn't use Auto because as dusk falls, the camera is going to gain up. This will reduce the natural darkening and will increase the gain grain progressively through the video. I'd start with as full an exposure as you're comfortable with and lock it.

You could do quick-n-dirty test recordings if you have a room with a dimmer switch if there is a particular look you're trying to achieve.

I would try an experiment setting the camera in AV mode with a fixed iris setting and a fixed gain and let the shutter change as it will have a far greater range - But I could be wrong

Bob

Thanks for your prompt responses guys. Pete I like the idea of using a dimmer to see where its at. Thank you both for your imput. I'll have to post some stuff when I get it so you can see how it turned out. Thanks again.

Alex

How exactly are you going to time-lapse.

In post?

I didn't think the a1 was capable.

Indeed the A1 has no real time lapse function build in.
What I did, was filming in 25F (PAL) and do the time lapse in post, using Boinx iStopMotion on Mac or any other tool, even an NLE works great.
I used a fixed shutter and and gain setting and adjusted the iris.
Worked great.
Of course a good stable tripod is a must, but you knew that of course :D
I shrunk about an hour down to about 1 minute I think.

I've done this with sunsets before. i don't change the iris, otherwise it doesn't get darker. I shoot about half a stop hot, and if possible get the sun behind some trees or something so it's not just a white hot ball. If the shot is an hour, a simple way to do it is to just hit record and let the tape run out. Then load it all and speed it up--for example if you want the shot to last 10 seconds, make a speeded up clip to last 10 seconds. Looks about the same as time lapse, for a sunset, anyway.

I plugged my A1 into that program and it didnt work! it only read the isight. Is there a a specific camera setting i need to have?

vegas and PC time compression
 

I have used this for taking a 63 minute tape and compressing with the NLE to 1-3 minutes. Works for me.... there are several examples within the films shown within the G1/A1 threads. look at the

http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=101132 in the clips section.