time lapse, flicker, and nikon DSLRs

F

fr3d

Member
Hi all,

i have been searching around and have found a few references to the problem i am having... but no solutions yet.

i have been doing some timelapse shots with a new nikon D80 and i, unfortunately get slight variations in exposure between frames. played back at 24 or 30 fps, it's quite distracting.

now while the first suggestion that some might have is to lock the exposure, focus and white balance, i can assure you that i have been doing so.

here's a link to one shot where the flicker is quite bad:
http://anaesthetic.ca/movies/sunset.mov

i don't think it's wear on the shutter - it's only a couple weeks old. and, for other reasons, i returned the first D80 i had and both suffer the same flicker. i almost wonder if it's a problem with nikon DSLRs. there seem to be a few references to D70s having similar problems.

any thoughts or suggestions are greatly appreciated!

tony
 
I think the problem is with lack of consistency when the lens aperture closes down to the shooting f-stop. I've noticed some lenses exhibit significantly more flicker than others. You could try some alternate lenses and apertures and see if you have the same problems. There are also some software solutions that can reduce flicker like Red Giant Film Fix.
 
thanks Barry.

i did some testing last night. the lens definitely plays a role in the flicker. stopping down to f5.6 produced much more noticeable flicker in controlled lighting.

however, even when the lens was wide open (theoretically taking the lens out of the equation) the camera produced some flicker... much better but not perfect.
 
I'd still expect some variation from the shutter, since it's a mechanical device, but hopefully these cameras should be consistent to within 1/6 stop from frame to frame. I definitely notice a huge difference between lenses, but we may have to put up with a small amount of exposure variation. I'm going to be evaluating some AE plugins that remove flicker with the idea of settling on a final workflow.
 
Manual everything, including white balance, and my Canon 350d does Ok, not really any flicker....

At the simple end, you could also blend 2 frames in post to smooth things out a bit, but that depends on you shooting frames often enough to not have big frame to frame changes.
 
Just joined the community... I thought I'd revive this thread for my first post. I've been playing with timelapse for many years now (addicted hobbiest) and have simply accepted the flicker that seems to come and go in my timelapse films. Recently I picked up a D200 and I thougt that the ability to go full manual and lock down all the exposure contols would eliminate it but not quite...

re: 20D sample reel: long exposures don't seem to create the problem and thus you don't see any issues in that footage reel.

It seems to be linked to slight variations in the f-stop... In fact I found one discussion where using older lenses and manually choosing the apperature eliminates the flicker so give that a try as well as choosing the largest f-stop so the camera does not 'dial' it.

There is a post production solution in beta from www.gbtimelapse.com that does help if your variations are not drastic.

Let's keep the conversation going!

here's some of my sample work on fuzzy youtube if anyone is interested:
www.youtube.com/milapse
 
i have since found that the lens has a lot to do with the flicker. i agree that slight variations in aperture can happen and cause the dreaded flicker. but, using a new Nikon 50mm f1.4 gave much better results than the sigma lens i was using before, even when stopped down quite a bit.

i have yet to try an old manual lens with an aperture ring but it sounds promising. though the aperture does open all the way up when you mount the lens on the camera - only stopping down to the selected aperture while the shutter is open. as far as i know this is the case with nikon lenses....
 
AE CS3 solution?

AE CS3 solution?

I'm resurrecting this thread from a nearly 2 years ago...

I've been doing time lapse for years now, and finally acquired a DSLR capable of doing it out of the box (D200). I had previously used an old Coolpix 5700 with a DigiSnap 2000 intervalometer attached to it. It produced good results, but it was a pain to set up and the poor little camera eventually died, probably from taking tens of thousands of pictures for time lapse!

Anyway, I was dissapointed by the flicker issue from the D200, so I've been poking around for solutions. I came across a suggestion to use the Color Stabilizer effect built into After Effects CS3. Here is a lnk to Adobe info page for that:

http://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/Aft...WS3878526689cb91655866c1103a9d3c597-7bc9.html

I was intrigued by this particlar sentence:
"Use this effect to remove the flicker common to time-lapse photography and stop-frame animation."

Sounds like a winner! But I haven't tried it yet...anyone here try it? I'll post back with my results when I get time to try it.

Cheers :beer:
Gabe
 
I don't know what particular subjects and scenes you see the flickering but I would think the difference in exposure and/or color would have more to do with using non professional lights that don't have a consistent output or color balance over time than the mechanical shutter varying in speed (these shutters have the ability to to be very precise and have variations within thousands of a second)

If using professional lighting (or if you were using natural lighting) and you are still experiencing the issue, the perhaps a color matching program/plugin would probably be the next best thing.
 
I have that flicker also to some extent on all of my timelapses (shot with Canon and Nikons), I belive it is an aperture issue.

I have toyed about an idea of a Photoshop batch which would check the actual color value of a certain spot in the pictures and automatically adjust all frames to the same value. Can it be done? It would of course only work for timelapses where the light stays the same.
 
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