Astral Time Lapse - Mt Fuji

[Mark Watson]

Since getting a 6D, I figured I'd try astral time lapses. I am using the free software program Stellarium to help find better angles to shoot the night sky.

Astral Time Lapse of Mt Fuji, Japan on Vimeo

Mark

[Vishal Jadhav]

Mark,

I like the time-lapse here, the ISO was fine at 5000 i guess the 3.2 seconds exposure for each frame was a bit too fast a shutter for the night sky. In the sky time lapses i have tried so far on my 5DMIII i have used ISO from 3200 - 10000 however to expose the sky and get more stars in it i have used exposures from 13 seconds to 30 seconds which helped me to get more details in the sky. Yes there was some noise however the noise reduction on RAW helped me reduce it.
Normally i keep the delay at 1 second or no delay at all.

May be you can try it next time around, the movement and other timings have worked very nicely in here.

best regards
vishal

[Mark Watson]

Thanks Vishal,

I'll experiment more with longer exposure times. I kept this one short so it would be smoother. My 10 second exposure seemed jerky on playback since the stars moved so much between shots. I would also like to get a little closer and use a wide angle lens. I want to get those colorful galaxies passing through the sky.

Mark

[Vishal Jadhav]

Mark,

The 10 seconds gap between shots surely makes it jerky .

However all the cameras like 6D and 5D can shoot without delay, so in your next try can you make the gap between shots to be nil, and the shot length to be 30 seconds. I have found good success with colour temperature of 3300k to 3500k for the sky to get the deeper objects better.
The increase in ISO will get you more details in the sky. there are quite a few tutorials to process the night skies and reproduce the deep colourful galaxies nicely,

The reason i am so much interested in this one is simple, the mount fuji in the foreground is a amazing object and if you get more objects in the sky it would make it amazingly dramatic, you have chosen the location perfect i may like 15% more sky and that much less of the mount just to get more objects in the sky.

Hope it helps.

looking forward to your next try at this, hopefully around the new moon this month .

Some thing i shot more than a month back
https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.n...1a6b828ee0f36b
This was with 14mm f2.8 with 5DMIII at 2.8 ISO 10000 and exposure of 30 seconds and i am gonna try and improve on this in my next attempts.

cheers
vishal

[Duane Adam]

Nice work Mark and a timely topic for me as I just shot several skyscape sequences with a Kessler 2nd shooter. I was surprised how poor my Nikon d800 was for this and how good my gh3 was. I got my best results with the gh3 with a 6 second exposure but only used iso at 400 so the shots were noise free. the 40 second exposures were amazing but there were tails on the stars and planets. I agree that less mountain and more sky is preferable.

[Mark Watson]

Vishal,

I appreciate the feedback. I didn't like my framing options, planned on using the 16-35mm f/2.8 but it seemed too wide. But I agree, there needs to be more sky. I have shot two more times from the same location and for those, the moon rose later in the night, so I had a darker sky. Makes a huge difference. The last one I did, Friday night, I used a 20 second exposure with the intervalometer set at 22, any less than that extra 2 seconds and it will miss every other shot. I used ISO 3200 and F/2.8. on the 16-35mm lens. I had it at 23mm. I think for my next attempt I'll go with longer exposure and less ISO since I'm getting shooting stars and 20 seconds cuts the length of the streaking light. Maybe 25 seconds will be okay. I'd like to see what I can get from the opposite side of the mountain, too. Maybe there is less light pollution shooting towards the east. Attached shot is with the 23mm framing, then leveled and cropped.
Enough sky?


Duane,

Thanks for the reply. I've seen recommendations to use "the 500 rule" for nightscapes. Divide 500 by your focal length to get the max. exposure time you can dial in without getting star trails. Sounds like the GH3 is a natural for these. I'm liking what I'm seeing after some post noise reduction in PS. Not too concerned about 3200 but think I should not exceed 5000. I wouldn't have tried it with my 7D, just too noisy, but the 6D seems capable. I would like to incorporate my Cineslider to get some of those amazing moving shots, but taking it slowly, plus I am lugging a lot of gear as it is, up an icy slope. That 2nd Shooter has some advantages over a slider. I think you wouldn't need a foreground object in your shot to show movement. How do you like it for astral T-L?

Mark

[Vishal Jadhav]

Mark,

i like the latest image you posted , the composition with the amount of sky giving lot of justice to the stars, suggest you should aim at the north to get the movement of the stars in a circular way, guess pointing it to the north west may give you the milky way , you need to check out Google sky ( App comes free for Android) to see the exact direction and i bet if you get milky way over Mt Fuji, that would be one time-lapse the world would enjoy to see the most.

Its 16th and moon is at 14% or so, hence the next 7 - 8 days might be the once that give you the best results till guess 22nd
All the best buddy.

cheers
vishal

[Duane Adam]

One issue I had with the GH3 is it would complete the sequence ahead of the settings, I think I programmed it for 250 shots and it would shut off around 80. The longer the exposure the fewer the shots it would take. Not sure if it's my camera or they're all that way. I got around it my triggering it with the 2nd shooter but don't always want to lug that rig around,

[Mark Watson]

Recent attempt at another one...

Astral Time Lapse of Mt Fuji, Japan (No.2) on Vimeo

Mark

[Mark Watson]

Shot this Sunday night. I like the combination of the Canon 6D with the Rokinon 24mm f/1.4.

Mt Fuji Night Time Lapse - Easter Sunday 2017 on Vimeo

[Steven Digges]

Mark,

Better every time. The last one is AWESOME!

Steve

[Mark Watson]

Thanks Steve, glad you liked it.

It was supposed to be an astral time lapse but turned out to be more of a cloud-skape.
I tried something different with the editing. I tweaked the look of the photos in camera raw and developed three different looks. Then I cut the video together so that it changes from one "look" to another. It should have been a cross-fade at each transition, but I can clearly see that the line of trees in the foreground are lit up, then go black, rather than a gradual change. So, I must have lost the cross-fade on that one. I prefer to do the photo editing in raw, rather than use Vegas Pro to tweak the saturation, etc. I make a UHD video, then down-rez to HD for the internet.

Mark

[Steven Digges]

I would rather pull my nails out with my teeth than process in camera.....just because of the method. With no fade I thought you were showing us three looks on purpose, it does not blend, as you know.

Clouds and all you nailed it. Beautiful footage. Except it still looks like the horizon line is off to me, even though its not. That would make me crazy!

Steve

[Mark Watson]

Steve,

You are right about the horizon, it is off, mountain leaning to the right.
I'll fix that and see about that cross-fade while I'm at it.
Not sure if I explained it right the first time, but I take the raw images into a photo editor, adjust one photo for saturation, contrast, brightness, etc. then hit a button which applies those adjustments to all the other 1600 photos, then I save that set of raw images as .jpeg images and bring into Vegas and dump on the timeline. Normally, it's difficult to use all the photos because of changes in exposure over time and hard to make it look right for the entire set of images. I repeated the above process two more times, for example, I tried to optimize for the large cloud layer near the last part. Left as was, the highlights would have been blown out. So the only tedious part was waiting for the 1600 photos to save as .jpeg images, three times.

I was hoping nobody would notice the tilt. I spent lots of time trying to nail focus and then forgot to check the damn level! Always something man, always something! Should be an easy fix.

I appreciate the feedback. Thanks again.

Mark

[Steven Digges]

Always something man, always something! How well I know that one!!! I do not know if I have ever gone through post without seeing something I would have changed on the shot after I had to look at it 100 times on an edit monitor.....Bot I am picky, clients almost never see what bugs me. They find something else ;-)

Steve