# Flickering in Timelapse



## rudolfson

Hello!
I am doing a timelapse project and after shooting a lot of scenes I found that many of them have serious flickering in them. Which means that approximately every second picture is significantly darker, which is causing the movie to flicker. This is to me incomprehensible since I shot the pictures with my Nikon D5100 using manual settings. Manual aperture, shutter speed, ISO, white balance and I shot in RAW.
So my question to you is:
*1) Does anyone know why the pictures brightness differ? Did I do anything wrong using the camera?
2) Is there a way to fix this in Lightroom or any other program? I'm looking for a setting that would "smooth" out the differences between the pictures.
*
Here is one of my scenes that this problem applies to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O3CcWJ0sl4

Thanks in advance,
Pontus


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## pAkphOtOgrAphEr

Hi Pontus!

There's a wide range of reasons why this happens. The video shows you used a tripod but which metering mode did you use? What was the time lapse among frames (if it was the same)? Did you cover up your viewfinder?

The project you described requires a very specific technique which doesn't allow you to play around (at least not a lot). I think that if you could provide more specific details (ISO No, type of WB, which aperture, shutter speed, etc.) more people will try to help you.

As regards developing them in Lightroom, depending on the amount of frames the job could be cumbersome (it doesn't look like a simple 3/6-frames bracketing), so think about it before starting and try to plan in advance the way you want to compensate the possible losses (not only brightness) that you have already and those that may come up during the process.

In any case, I think this is not the right place to post this thread, as it's not related to the way you develop your photos in LR. The moderators will tell you if that's the case though.

I hope you found this helpful!

BRs,

pAk


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## Brad Snyder

I'm just wondering if you're importing into Lr with Autotone on?

This could impact the way individual images are displayed, as well.

(See the autotone thread below in this forum)


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## Jimbr549

*Find help here*

Most likely you are suffering from aperture flicker.  If you have your aperture set to, for example, F/8, then each time your camera fires the aperture goes from wide open to F/8 and back to wide open.  Sometimes the aperture closes a little bit more than the time before, or maybe a bit less.  More light gets in, less light gets in and with still pictures you would never notice.  But, with time lapse, it induces a noticeable flicker.   Also, fast shutter speeds can induce flicker because the amount of time the shutter stays open for exposure can vary more than you might believe.  It's best to stay with 1/30th or slower.

There is a great donation-ware program for LR that can help greatly with flicker, and includes several very cool time lapse features.  It's called LRtimelapse and is highly recommended.  

http://lrtimelapse.com/


Everything you need to know about time lapse and featuring a great group of friendly folks can be found here:

http://timescapes.org/


JB



rudolfson said:


> Hello!
> I am doing a timelapse project and after shooting a lot of scenes I found that many of them have serious flickering in them. Which means that approximately every second picture is significantly darker, which is causing the movie to flicker. This is to me incomprehensible since I shot the pictures with my Nikon D5100 using manual settings. Manual aperture, shutter speed, ISO, white balance and I shot in RAW.
> So my question to you is:
> *1) Does anyone know why the pictures brightness differ? Did I do anything wrong using the camera?
> 2) Is there a way to fix this in Lightroom or any other program? I'm looking for a setting that would "smooth" out the differences between the pictures.
> *
> Here is one of my scenes that this problem applies to:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O3CcWJ0sl4
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Pontus


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## clee01l

What processing steps are you using inside LR?  Do you have "Active D-Lighting" turned on in the Camera? Active D-Lighting should only be used with applications that can understand and apply the photo-site adjustments. LR does not.


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## WorkingClassHero

The other option you might try is to use the "Match Total Exposure" function in LR. Choose an frame that you think is correct in exposure as the source, and then select the rest of the images. LR will even out the exposures across the series. I've used it on panoramas I've shot while the light was changing, and it does a pretty good job. I'd be interested to hear how it works with a timelapse sequence.


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