Today I edited the HDR Timelapse sequence of the Las Vegas sunset. I had shown one frame from the sequence over the weekend and posted a larger version previously as well. This is one single tonemapped edit from the HDR Timelapse sequence. (Video link to Vimeo below).
Today I had a real estate shoot cancel, so I got a bunch of past real estate shots edited and then took some time to piece together the Las Vegas Sunset HDR Timelapse. Because I chose to merge to hdr and tonemap that one single image over the weekend (above) using Photomatix Pro, I thought I’d use Photomatix Pro again for the entire sequence. What the hell. Its not for a client so a little over saturation won’t matter here. I made a few mental mistakes in the pipeline because I generally use other apps, but the results are O.K. for government work :)
This was the capture/post flow:
Nikon D3 + Nikon 85mm f/1.4D shot through my hotel window on a tripod utilizing the in camera HDR Timelapse (You can combine a timelapse with bracketing in the D3). I chose to go with a 7AEB with 1EV steps and the camera was firing off that bracket every 15 seconds. Of the 7AEB I killed off the final over exposed image of each bracket. I felt adding that latitude would brighten the image too much. So each merge to HDR was 6 shots spaced 1EV apart. The total number of tonemapped shots was 90. Basically covering a span of 22 mins 30 seconds worth of time during the sunset. Both the Merge to HDR and Tonemapping was done in the batch feature of Photomatix Pro. I then took the tonemapped images into Final Cut Pro for time and color treatment before exporting for YouTube & Vimeo.
Because I shot this sequence in portrait mode, I opted to make slight color correction differences to two versions and post one video with both playing together. I should have pushed on image a lot harder to show variation. Now that I’ve watched it online it seems very subtle.
I also simultaneously shot a HDR Timelapse a foot away from the D3 with a Canon T2i in horizontal mode as wide as the kit lens will go (18mm for that EF-S, but on a crop body). I shot for a full hour with the T2i. About 15 minutes prior to setting up the D3 and the same after the D3 exhausted the compact flash I had in it. It will be interesting to see those results versus the D3.
I’m no expert when it comes to compression/encoding. I can only say that the video looks a hell of a lot better in FCP than online!
Vimeo 720p Version LINKED HERE (opens in a new window)
