Just wondering whether anybody has any tips for managing exposure brightness in long octolapse recordings.
If I use automatic exposure, I get lots of flickering, especially when printing with materials that contrast with my printbed or extruder. The extruder is dark in color, and if it's mostly in frame, the exposure automatically cranks way up. If I'm printing bright materials, the auto exposure changes as the object takes up more of the frame.
If I use manual exposure, those issues are fine, but if I print from day to night, or overnight, my timelapses end up too dark, or too bright at sunset/sunrise.
Any suggestions, other than blackout curtains? I'd love to find a way to average changes in exposure over time, but haven't found a good way so far.
This is late but there is only one thing that comes to mind if you don't want to create a controlled environment.
You could take a control picture before the print and use that picture as a base. Then when editing all those prints together you can only select the print area as the part that changes per frame (sounds messy but possible). The issue here is that the print subject will be more noticeable to the light changes.
The only sure fire way is to set up a enclosure and wire up some LED's to provide the lighting. This would provide a more consistent lighting effect for your time lapse.
I personally like the lighting changes in light during to the sun as it sorta of shows the time involved but with in reason
Also another tip is to zoom out and leave a lot of room, you can zoom in on the subject in post processing.
While writing this I have had a thought, maybe a test would be to get some LED lights setup up, that way the camera would have a more constant and powerful light to focus on and the out side light would just be more background. This would be a cheap way of doing things as a test!
