Time lapse issue

thefilmaddict

thefilmaddict

Veteran
I am shooting time lapse with the canon 5d mark 2. I focus first. Then put it in manual to prevent changes. I also put the camera in full manual - exposure and shutter speed and aperture all locked in. I am using an led light and the Brightness of the light isn’t changing. I am shooting 1 frame every 8 seconds. F4. Shutter 60. Iso 400. I convert the raw files in photoshop - each frame has the same grade — turning them into jpegs. When I play it back in premiere, it flickers. It get brighter and darker at times, not dramatically, but enough to be distracting. What’s causing this? Would my led light that’s plugged into ac power change that much? It’s not an IS lens. Canon zoom.
 
I guess it is the 60 shutter time. Try faster or slower time.

You can also try Davinci, import the (raw) stills and set the timing per still on 0.04 Put all stills in the same order and Davinci automatically will make a clip out of it.
 
Great info guys. I'll try to shoot with the lens all the way open. Next, I'll then adjust the shutter speed up or down. If that doesn't work, I'll swap out the light.

I've shot a lot of time-lapse with my old GH5 and never ran into these issues. I will say, as old as the 5d is, the stills look pretty nice and I love being able to adjust the raw stills before editing.

In premiere, I am just creating a 24p UHD project and dropping the imported image sequence onto the timeline.
 
A long time ago, I used to grade CinemaDNG stills in an old version of Lightroom. And there was this bug in which the exported JPEGs from LR (which would later be put together in a NLE timeline to create motion as you're doing with your timelapses) would have an extremely mild flicker in them if the camera calibration/process was in its default setting for that classic software. I think it maybe also affected Photoshop.

I don't remember what it was and what you had to change it to (people knew about this issue though), and I doubt that's your problem unless you're using a really old version of Photoshop, but I just remembered this when you said you were dropping yours on a timeline too.
 
thefilmaddict said:
I am shooting time lapse with the canon 5d mark 2. I focus first. Then put it in manual to prevent changes. I also put the camera in full manual - exposure and shutter speed and aperture all locked in. I am using an led light and the Brightness of the light isn’t changing. I am shooting 1 frame every 8 seconds. F4. Shutter 60. Iso 400. I convert the raw files in photoshop - each frame has the same grade — turning them into jpegs. When I play it back in premiere, it flickers. It get brighter and darker at times, not dramatically, but enough to be distracting. What’s causing this? Would my led light that’s plugged into ac power change that much? It’s not an IS lens. Canon zoom.
Click to expand...

You didn't mention what lens you're using, but assuming it's a standard Canon lens with electronic connections, it's important to realize that even though you've set everything to manual, between exposures the lens opens up fully, then stops down to take the next shot. The problem is the aperture blades never land in precisely the same position, and the smaller the aperture hole, the greater that small instability is a larger percentage of that overall diameter, hence flicker.

So, use some manual cine lenses, or Nikon lenses dummy adapted to your camera, or you can do the "half twist" mentioned in the link. There's another way, and that is to set your aperture to the correct stop, hold down your DOF preview button, and while keeping it depressed, remove the lens. The lens will retain the aperture you selected. Now put a small rectangle of electrical tape over the left two electrical contacts (when looking at the end of the lens) and remount the lens. Bingo, manual lens and fixed aperture until you remove the tape.

You'd think Canon in their wisdom would allow a firmware update with menu items to address this issue, but not even with their special "Stop Motion" version of the EOSR do they allow the simple solution of simply holding the lens blades steady until the power goes off without attempting to open/close.

https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/...rorless-system/stop-motion-animation-firmware

Regards,
 
thefilmaddict said:
Would my led light that’s plugged into ac power change that much?
Click to expand...

I skimmed this earlier and didn't catch this question... Oh yes, the light can be an additional source of flicker in time-lapse and stop motion animation due to transient and longer dips and surges in the AC current, but stomping out the fluxing iris is first on your list and likely 95% of the problem if not all the full issue. As to keeping power at a constant level, I've got 3 (salvaged from optical printers) constant voltage transformers built in the 60's for the sole purpose leveling out AC current. They are basically to the specs of these modern units...

https://www.galco.com/scripts/cgiip.exe/wa/wcat/itemdtl.htm?pnum=23-23-210-8-HDE

Regards,
 
thefilmaddict said:
Good stuff, guys? If I open up the lens all of the way, do I still have to do the half twist thing?
Click to expand...

No, because the iris isn't shrinking down to take a picture, then going full wide for preview. Again, having a shooting "mode" where the camera keeps the iris constant (basically a permanent DOF Preview mode while shooting) would be SO easy for these manufactures to implement, but this problem goes back to the early days of digital time-lapse with auto/electronic lenses.

Regards
 
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