Street Lights

Settings
This street corner timelapse was taken with a f4 aperture / 1250 iso / 1" exposure / 4" interval / custom WB in Lightroom / no filter / RAW format / Sigma 10-20mm lens set to 15mm

Technique
Here is another go at a night time timelapse, this was taken at roughly 5:30pm so it was very dark outside besides the street and car lights. This was my first attempt shooting in RAW format. There is a large difference by shooting in RAW vs JPEG. Essentially with a JPEG, your camera processes the picture in the camera. It analyzes the picture immediately after you take it, makes the necessary changes and "locks" the picture down to compress its size. When shooting RAW the camera doesn't process the picture, it saves every ounce of the information it captures. This means the picture must be processed on a computer and the user makes the decisions about white balance, highlights, shadows, exposure, noise ect. Think of it as making changes to a JPEG on your computer applies changes to the "entire" picture, whereas making changes to RAW allows you to change individual colors and aspects of the picture without changing everything else. This is very valuable because even with the aperture as far open as possible and a 1 second exposure the lens wasn't able to bring in enough light. For example the grass in the bottom of the timelapse was nearly completely black. Shooting in RAW allowed me to use what the camera stored about the picture to bring out the detail in the grass and sky. I'll update this post later to show the before and after using Lightroom. With this corner being a "T" intersection I wanted to capture as much of the streets as possible in all directions so I used my Sigma ultra wide angle lens. I was roughly 25 feet up a small bank just off the sidewalk.

Thoughts and What's Next?
This is the first time I've processed pictures in RAW so there was a steep learning curve. I was very happy with the end result however I didn't feel efficient. Too much had to be done after the fact to bring out spots in the timelapse I wanted. Had I changed some settings on the camera I may have been closer during the initial shoot with less corrections being made after the fact. Over exposed lights were slightly more of an issue this time vs the moonlapse partly due to the intensity of the light and possibly due to some other settings I do not have correct yet. Unfortunately I've been unable to find out how to solve this but it is still early and I have a lot to learn! It was also significantly overcast last night when I took this timelapse. If the weather was clear or partly cloudy this timelapse may have turned out significantly better. I'll keep my camera in my car in case the perfect night comes around.

The forecast today and tomorrow call for overcast skies and rain, and later in the week will be brutally cold with teens for the highs. I'll likely stay away from the outdoors so this may be a great opportunity to make a timelapse of my commute to or from work?

Don't forget to check out the vimeo channel in the links section.  While I was stuck on the plane coming back from LA I took a pretty cool timelapse with my GoPro of the sunrise from inside the plane! I had nothing to keep the camera still so I tried wedging it between the seat and window and it worked okay. There was still some shakiness which I was expecting. If anyone has suggestions on how to reduce the glare or intensity of the lights while properly exposing the picture at night I'd LOVE to hear and please post in the comments. Otherwise feel free to comment on your thoughts, what you enjoy, dislike, or other ideas. See you next week!

Still balding but not bald,
-Kyle