Foolography Community

combining the bracketing with either the timelapse or with holy grail would be great.
on each image step of the timelapse / holy grail it should execute a bracketing set of images.
Grüße
Georg

HI, I shoot nature documentaries for television and almost every time lapse I shoot is HDR. It would be awesome if you could shoot bracketed photos in holy grail and time lapse modes with the new unleashed. Either allowing the cameras own drive mode to shoot the brackets or have the unleashed do it would be welcomed. Ideally the unleashed would do it and ramp the bracketing as the shutter speeds grow longer at sunset and changing to single exposure per interval when dark out. This ramping could be done manually if the camera controls the bracketing but it might result in a bumped camera ruining a shot - especially while using motion control. I purchased two of new enleasheds and I think they are awesome! They are way more useful to me than the other similar products out there - I've got them all. Thanks!

Keith

Hi Keith,
I'm glad you like the Unleashed!

We have actually prepared bracketing to potentially work together with timelapse, but it gets wildly complex, with too many edge cases to take care of. Especially if you want to mix it with holy grail, it's even more complicated.
I'm not excluding it as a potential future feature, but it's not high on our list, to be honest!

Hi Oliver, to avoid too complex things and avoid edge cases and, I think for 95% of HDR timelapses, just need the classical bracketing : 3 photos with -2, 0, +2 ev.

yeah, it sounds all simple and "classic" when you talk about it, but under the hood it's extremely complex!
I'm talking about edge cases like:
- what happens when you reach the night limit of Shutterspeed, - should we do the bracket using the next setting? should we reserve 2 extra stops on each limit so we can always do the bracketing part on a single setting, while the algorithm can go from one setting to the next?
- how to calculate the minimum allowed interval to guarantee stable operation? On some cameras we get the exact info when the shutter is open and closed, on others we calculate it, but have to add some buffer time between shots, and on yet others we have to wait for the shots to be done saving to the memory card, then fetch a preview to do the auto ramping calculation on, and then delete the image from ram, sometimes all before we can take the next photo... Sometimes, the cameras are set to do post-processing of images, and in the worst case doing long exposure noise reduction that takes just as long as the shot itself. So, now, try to calculate, or even estimate that for a combination of three (or even more) bracketed shots with varying shutter speeds, in order to be able to tell the user a reliable interval they can set... 😬

And that's just one example of very many things we need to take care of under the hood, to make it "just work" for you 😉

Sure I understand that subject is really complex !

Here are some thoughts I can share :

- I think usually HDR timelapse shooters need mainly daytime / sunset settings, not full holy grail from day to deep night : At milky way settings at Iso 800-1600, HDR timelapse is a pure nonsense !


- The limit for interval should be : 2 extra stops + camera lag.

example : if camera lag is 5 sec (to be really safe) and interval is 15s, then the time value limit should be at 2.5s : 2,5 x 4 for 2 stops + 5s = 15s.


Maybe can mix HDR timelapse during the day and sunset and stop bracketing after time value limit is reached.
For instance, with 15s interval : bracketing 3 photos -2,0+2 ev until 2.5s Tv for the center of bracket (will be 0,6-2,5-10s). Then normal holygrail (no bracketing) until 10s reached, then aperture & iso ramping. But that is really marginal, because needs really complex post processing.

"Simple" HDR timelapse with short time values shoud cover 95% of photographers need at least !

timelapse & bracketing:

I see the timelapse element the leading one.

instead of using the values (Mode/F/ISO etc) from the timelapse menu the bracketing module should be executed with the values set there when the timlapse interval has elapsed.
magic glue fancy foolproof features etc would be perfect ;-) but there're certainly more nuts to crunsch as Oliver described.
So keep it simple. Its the operators responsibility...

if the complete bracketing sequence is taking longer than the interval set in timelapse than error... bad luck.... the operator has to change the interval to achieve a working timelpase/bracket.

so in timelapse mode: when the interval elapsed not the shutter should be triggered, but the bracketing module should be startet.

Liebe Grüße
Georg