Time-lapse photographer Matthew Vandeputte has created a dense tutorial on how to create the Holy Grail of time-lapses: sunsets and sunrises, free of flicker.
Time-lapse photography is simple to achieve but incredibly difficult to perfect, requiring a huge amount of patience. Sunsets and sunrises present an extra challenge as the comparatively quick changes to light levels require an additional level of attention. Rather than just setting up the intervalometer and sitting around for half an hour, you have to review your images and adjust your exposure accordingly.
Still simple? Not quite. Each tweak of your exposure creates a noticeable flicker in the time-lapse footage, and removing it can be a huge amount of work. Fortunately, Vandeputte has found a (relatively) quick and easy way to smooth out these flickers using a particular piece of software, LRTimelapse 5. Paired with Lightroom, LRTimelapse churns through the raw files, tweaking the metadata and smoothing out the sudden changes in exposure that create the flicker.
Setting up his Canon 6D Mark II terrifyingly close to the water's edge on an upsettingly small tripod, Vandeputte takes you through the entire process. There's a huge amount of information in this 10-minute video so Vandeputte has kindly put together a written version for those who want to work through his methods at a slower pace.
Awesome. And love the speed you talk & take us through it at. Reduces a 20+ minutes tutorial to the 11+ mins. Bookmarked, now to check out the written version on your blog.