The Holy Grail Time-lapse technique is a way of shooting your day to
night time-lapses whereby you constantly adjust your exposure throughout
the sunrise or sunset. In this video timelapse tutorial, I attempt to walk you through the entire process from start to finish. That includes finding a location, setting the camera and then walking through the images in post production.
Location: The following are my tips on finding a good location.
1. Get ahold of the local film/photography club and ask for advice.
2. Drive around the city ahead of time.
3. Look for your location via google maps - either via the images search or via google earth view.
Camera Settings:
There are two ways to shoot these sorts of timelapses: Aperture Priority and Manual adjustment. In both techniques I recommend leaving the whitebalence set to auto (although you can lock this as well). Make sure the keep the focus set to manual. In aperture priority mode, you simply let the camera adjust the shutter speed. However, the technique is only great when the sky is clear. Manual adjustment must be done in combination with a program like LRtimelapse
Using LRtimelapse:
I just started using LRtimelapse and am really blown away by how it improves the workflow. I highly recommend it (nobody told me to say that). I suggest watching this short explanation to give you a feel for what it can do. Then, go and download the trial version of LRtimelapse4. It gives you the ability to manipulate 400 picture sequences. That ends up being a 13 second timelapse, so it's a great tool to start with small timelapses. Then, if you like it, you can buy the personal user addition for 100 bucks.
To video