TheKyleLife

Turning 1/4 of a century and a surprise visit from my dad is worth the day off, see you next week.  Until then here are some videos from the past few years and even my first one at the bottom, enjoy! 

There are many more than what is posted here, so check them out here, https://vimeo.com/channels/thekylelife/76817322











Here the first video I made...came a long way haha!


Still balding but not bald,
-Kyle

Deflicker Troubles

Settings
This timelapse was taken with a f8 aperture / 200 iso / 1/6 exposure / 4" interval / Processed in Lightroom and LRTimelapse3 / RAW format / Nikkor 18-55mm lens set to 33mm

Technique
So, my focus this week was to learn how to deflicker a timelapse shot using aperture priority mode.  There are two I know of exposing an entire sunset or sunrise, one to shoot in manual and make adjustments to your settings as the light changes or to shoot in aperture priority mode.  Both processes require significant work in post production due to the changes that are either made manually or automatically.

In the case above I opted for the aperture priority option which I consider to have an easier post production work flow.  When I say easier, it isn't easy to master but should not be as hard if I manually adjusted for the lighting during the shoot.  In the sunset here you can see that my deflicker test was a massive failure.  It was not a failure during the actual shooting, but it was a complete failure as I was trying to remove the flicker.  If you watch the sky during the video you will see how the sky has a flicker to it.  The work flow of how to process these pictures after you take them is as follows: upload pictures into Lightroom, save color correcting changes, upload/run exposure diagnostics to color corrected pictures in LRTimelapse, upload changes from LRTimelapse back into Lightroom, the export and run the timelapse.

The step in which I'm failing is LRTimelapse.  As I upload my color corrected images and run the exposure diagnostics I can see how the exposure should be changed to the pictures.  When you save the settings the program should load them into the metadata which is what Lightroom reads.  Once in Lightroom you can upload that metadata for the series of pictures and it should apply the small changes to the pictures.  I see the changes however it clearly isn't staying when I export which is where I'm confused, I will need to just continue with trial and error...

It can be easy to confuse the two programs so below I'll try to give a quick explanation.

Lightroom: This program physically makes changes to the pictures.  If I change the shadows to be lighter or darker you will literally see the picture change.  Lightroom also formats the pictures to a final output that other programs understand.

LRTimelapse: This program is designed to work as an accessory to Lightroom.  Changes made in this program will not change the picture, however all changes are documented in a file called metadata.  If I have a series of 10 pictures that do not have the same exposure, LRTimelapse analyzes would analyze the sky for example.  It decides that picture 1 is correct, picture 2 is too dark, picture 3 is too bright, ect.  Then based on all of the changes it will document that picture 2 is too dark and if the exposure is increased by "given" value it will match picture 1.  LRTimelapse does this for every picture.  Those specific values are what LRTimelapse saves into the metadata file.  Once opened in Lightroom you can decide to read the file and Lightroom will make the physical corrections to the pictures.

Thoughts and What's Next?
I absolutely understand how the two programs work and what they should do, I tried to deflicker this video multiple times and it kept leading to the same result.  The final result clearly does not contain the corrections from LRTimelapse but I do see the exposures changing in each pictures in Lightroom. For some reason during the export it seems to lose the changes.  Not sure why but I'll figure it out.

I'm excited for next #TimelapseTuesday as I'll be celebrating my birthday, I have no idea right now what I'll do but I'll do my best to make it an exciting one!


Still balding but not bald,
-Kyle

Vacation in Barbados!

Welcome back, I traveled all the way to Barbados to bring you a special edition of #TimelapseTuesday this week so enjoy!



Settings
Too many rum punches were consumed to remember the settings.  All timelapses were taken either using a GoPro Hero3 Black Edition or a Nikon d5100 with Nikkor 18-55mm or Sigma 10-22mm.

Technique
It was so nice to finally be in beautiful weather while using my cameras, not having to sit in a warm car while my camera freezes almost seems foreign to me.  I did run into one big problem, at the end of the second day I was removing my Nikon camera from a mini tripod and the quarter inch tripod screw became stuck in the bottom of my camera.  After asking tons of people in our villa I was unable to find any tool that could help remove the stripped screw.  This significantly limited how I could use the camera but definitely didnt stop me.  Since Wisconsin in the wintertime is lacking moving water I felt that Barbados would be a perfect opportunity to work on blurring water.  During the day this can be very complicated.

To blur water you must keep the shutter open for multiple seconds, however if kept the shutter open for say 4 seconds midday your camera takes in too much light and will return a completely white picture.  Fixing this problem requires multiple Neutral Density, or ND, filters.  These filters are essentially sunglasses for your camera, they block sunlight or lots of sunlight as you stack them on top of each other.  The more sunlight I blocked the longer I could keep the shutter open.

Thoughts and What's Next?
The first thought that comes to mind is, when can I go back to Barbados?  Regardless of when I can find time to go back there I came away from that trip with tons of amazing memories and what seems like endless amounts of pictures, timelapses, and video.  I also finally had a chance to just mess around with my camera for extended periods of time.  Being able to setup and start a timelapse then go snorkel, lay in the sun, feed the monkeys, or play Spikeball made the failed timelapses much less painful.  The truth is the main ingredient to progressing is failure.  If you are never failing then you aren't pushing yourself enough to try new things, new settings, or new ideas.

I have one timelapse from Barbados that I left out of the video from above because as stated in previous posts I'm learning how to process videos shot in aperture priority mode.  The goal is to remove the flicker caused by the shooting mode and the start to end of a timelapse should all be properly exposed.  Learning LRTimelapse hasn't been easy so I plan to turn my focus to processing the timelapse.  Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed the trip in motion, I will leave you with my favorite shot of the trip when a monkey played with our GoPro and took a selfie!

Still balding but not bald,
-Kyle