How to get smooth time lapse: Use track from Dynamic Perception.

To record time-lapse scenes of a recent Aurora, Terje Sorgjerd traveled to and around Kirkenes and Pas National Park in Norway - bordering Russia [70 degree north and 30 degrees east.]

Temperatures were around -25 Celsius.


His mission is to record moving time-lapse sequences with still images captured on a full frame DSLR and  3 lenses: - two wide zooms, and one 24mm f1.4 prime.




The Aurora from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.


Here's his camera & Lens kit for his shoot:

• Canon 5D Mark II
• Canon 24mm/1.4
• Canon 16-35mm/2.8
• Sigma 12-24mm

His all-in-one motion control dolly is from Dynamic Perception, 


There's a 814ms delay between the shots, with exposure times that range  from 1 second to 2 seconds.


For power in the cold temperature, he chose a 12v 9800mAh CCTV battery that he gets 50+ hours of juice for the track's motor. His coffee thermos runs out before the battery does.





In Post he: 

Terje Sorgjerd  3 days ago

Converted the raw files to 16-bit TIFF in lightroom. 
Rendered the TIFF files in AE to 4k resolution 95% Jpeg.
Edited the 4K video in Final Cut
Exported to 1080P h.264 using Compressor. 
Uploaded to Vimeo.

The 4K version looks better. :-)

• 
  
  He was out in the cold shooting sunset to sunrise - all night,  warmed by hot coffee, and moving around to increase body temp.
  

  
  

  trondk 2 days ago

  Very nice! Thanks for sharing. But what did you use for battery power in such low temperatures? How long was your longest sequence?
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  Terje Sorgjerd  1 day ago

  12v 9800mAh CCTV battery will power my two motors and camera for 50+ hours. Problem is my coffee thermos running out. ;-)

Terje Sorgjerd  3 days ago

Thank you!

Most of the days I started shooting before sunset, and did not finish until after sunrise. I do not mind -25C, but I mind the wind. A lot of hot coffees, and constantly moving around help keep the warmth.

_______

To set the look of each sequence, the images were graded in Lightroom, then batch processed, followed by export.

Terje Sorgjerd  3 days ago

I use Lightroom for grading.

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  RedHavoc Media 1 day ago

  So you grade every frame separately?!
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  Nino Leitner  1 day ago

  No - batch processing. Grade one and copy the grade to the other frames, then export.

He exported at 30 frames per second.

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  Sebastian TR  3 days ago

  stunning work - the motion appeared very fluid , what FPS did you compile / export at ??
  
  great stuff
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  Terje Sorgjerd  3 days ago

  Hey Sebastian,
  
  This is at 30 frames per seconds.

How to: time-lapse