Timelapse - Intervalometer/ Shutter speed & Quality issue

[MattWalkerNcl]

Hi everyone,

New to the world of Magic Lantern and really looking to get into it!

I'm having some trouble at the moment - I can't find an answer by searching or days of googling, perhaps I'm not being specific enough, alas...

I want to create a time-lapse of me driving at night, complete with light streaking past my car. My settings on my camera (550D) are:

Manual, ISO 400, F4.5, 4 seconds.

I set the intervalometer to:

Take picture every 5 seconds.

Silent picture - Simple, Hi-Res = 2x1

Firstly, my shutter speed seems to be displaying at 1/25 within Magic Lantern - how come this appears to be the slowest setting? Does this mean I need to use 'Bulb Timer' setting?

And then there is the question of image quality - even at ISO 400 there shouldnt be as much grain as is possible - I can't include an image just yet, cant see how to, but will when I figure it out.

I'm hoping that this is just beginners bumps, but I'd massively appreciate if anyone can give me a hand so that I can get high quality images from the intervalometer/ silent picture features from ML.

Big love,

Matt

[Francis]

Hi-res silent pictures work by using the digital zoom, recording the image buffer, then shifting and repeating to create a matrix of zoomed in portions of the display which are then stitched together. It is a clever concept but usually gives less than desirable results.

The first issue I see is that some images in the time lapse are very likely going to be skipped due to the amount of time required to create the hi-res silent pic. The whole process takes a few seconds. The larger the matrix dimensions, the longer it takes.

The res and artifacts are a result of the image buffer not being as high a quality as what is recorded to file by a normal image and also the exposure length. Since it is not exposing in the traditional sense, it is using display gain to simulate what a 4sec exposure would look like, and thus it looks like crap.

The best way to get what you are looking for is using FPS override. Instead of capturing a series of images, record a video straight away with a framerate of .2FPS. At this framerate on the 550D the shutter will be locked to 5secs, which is pretty close to the 4s you were aiming for. Set whatever ISO and aperture gives you a decent exposure, bump up the bitrate if you are so inclined and record away.

You will be much happier as it will look nicer and save you a good deal of time in post. Come back and share what you end up with.

[MattWalkerNcl]

Hi Francis,

Thank you for your reply - I will check this out today. Is this how
others will likely carry out their time-lapse recording?
I was confused as I have seen stunning footage
recorded within other ML time-lapse pieces.

Thanks again,

Matt

[Francis]

FPS override is useful for some timelapse situations, such as this. However .2 FPS is the lowest frame rate possible so if you needed an exposure time longer than 5s (like for a sunset or some other very low light situations) it is best to use the intervalometer with normal exposures for the best quality.