Sunday 2 October 2016

timelapse - Are Intervalometers different for standard Time-Lapse and HDR Time-Lapse


I am a Nikon D90 user and fairly new to photography. I am considering purchasing a wired remote shutter release as intervalometer for taking time-lapses. However since I'm also a fan of HDR, it will be a matter of time before I want to experiment with HDR time-lapse.


My question is, will any intervalometer work the same? Or do I need an HDR-specialized intervalometer?


An example intervalometer I had my eyes on that is relatively cheap and has the full features: http://cgi.ebay.com/130338921382


I have also seen expensive ones mentioning they take HDR time lapse: http://www.promotesystems.com/products/Promote-Control.html


Thanks in advance. :)


EDIT:


I was inspired by Philip Bloom's HDR Time-lapse tutorial and it seems like his intervalometer(s) do more than standard interval with auto-bracketing on camera. Instead of "[ev0] [wait] [ev-1] [wait] [ev+1]...", it seems like his intervalometer(s) are doing "[ev0] [ev-1] [ev+1] [wait]...". Is that right??



EDIT2:


After reading John Rappold's article, I think the reason most shutter releases ask you to set to bulb mode is so it can accurately time the shutter open time. Does this mean if I set "hold time" to 2 seconds, use continuous mode and takes 3 brackets of 0.25sec, 0.50sec, 1sec, it will produce the desired result I seek for??



Answer



Based on the Promote Control page, it sounds like its HDR capabilities are limited by the camera. Some cameras may support a continuous stream of bracketed shots, while others may require a pause between each. I figure that is because some cameras support burst-mode bracketing, while others require separate shutter releases for each shot of a bracket.


Based on Philip Bloom's 'HDR' timelapse video, I'm not really sure I see anything there that probably couldn't be achieved with single RAW frames from a camera with decent enough dynamic range. Most HDR images are not actually physically high-dynamic-range...they are low dynamic range images tone mapped from high dynamic range images. According to DxO Mark, the Nikon D90 has about 12.5 stops of dynamic range, which gives you quite a bit of headroom to eek out a quality "HDR" video comparable to Philip Bloom's with single shots.


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