AV mode shutter speed too slow for sunrise timelapse (very low light)

[glimmer33]

Hello all!

Firstly I'm a bit embarressed to ask this as I'm sure its entry level stuff but I've posted in several other forums to work out what the problem im experiencing is and i now have narrowed it down to a simple question... I think..

I am trying to shoot a sunrise timelapse. At dawn when the camera is in AV mode, due to the low light it seems to be frezzing up when i go to take a photo. I realise now its not freezing up its simply tusing a long shutter speed to compensate for the lack of light.

The problem is, I see loads of sunrise timelapse tutorials and they all suggest using the AV mode due to the changing light conditions.  (I had to use manual mode with a low aperture in the end and halfway through once the sun came up my photos were all horribly over exposed)

How can i combat the low light issue in order to use my camera in AV mode for photos with intervals of 4 seconds?

At the moment i cant use it at dawn because the shutter speed slows up so much it makes it impossible to do a timelapse.

Any feedback would be massivly appriecated.

Thanks!

[ebiggs1 · Accepted solution]

OK, here goes.

Av and Tv are really semi-manual exposure modes.  You are fixing the aperture or the shutter and expecting the camera to select the oppisite.  If you selected an Av that requires too long a shutter to take the proper exposure, you are going to get the very long shutter.

You can up the ISO or select a larger Av.

[glimmer33]

Hey thanks for your reply!

I feel pretty stupid. I don't know why I didn't realise what I was doing, it's all clear to me now.
I increased the aperture and put ISO to auto and tested it in a cupboard with the door almost completely closed and the shutter fires away with no problems.

Thanks for your advice mate!

[ebiggs1]

"I feel pretty stupid."  

Oh, really, would you like to hear some of the bone head things I have done?  And I am supposed to know what I am doing!

[RobertTheFat]

I don't see why Av is such a good idea. The aperture is largly irrelevant at infinity focus, so you might as well let it float. I'd try Tv with a shutter speed of one or two seconds (i.e., less than your time lapse interval) and auto-ISO.

Or you could just bag the whole idea of aping the human eye and set a fixed speed and aperture. While it's still very dark, the early frames won't show much, but that's the reality anyway. If it gets bright too fast, you could step up the frame rate.

[glimmer33]

That's cool Bob thanks for the advice. I guess after reading loads of tutorials on these sort've timelapses they all say AV mode is the most effective to reduce timelapse flicker?

I'm off to do a sunset this evening so will have a better idea what I'm doing! Thanks guys!

[ebiggs1]

"... to reduce timelapse flicker?"

You are trying to make this TL with stills?  Not video?   Right?

[glimmer33]

Yep stills. Why what am I missing?

[ebiggs1]

I was just wondering about "flicker".  Are you assembling them in software like Lightroom?  Are you trying to make movie out of the stills?

[glimmer33]

Thats right. About 1900 stills put together to make a film. Currently putting them together in Vegas Movie Studio as Lightroom 5 seems to take forever to export?

I've been using this example as a guide:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_MG_29OrKc