First Timelapse

[RossHicksPhoto]

I created my first Timelapse last night from the back garden. Focusing on Mars rising in to the night sky. 
I will be attempting another one tonight with a higher frame rate as this was shot over a 45 minute period and rendered at 10fps. I will be aiming for 20-25fps for a smoother result on my next one. 

[inFINNity Deck]

You can shoot at a high rate and afterwards reduce the output using PIPP. Among a plethora of other useful things it allows you to skip frames, to compress them and to run the output video at another frame-rate than the original (both slower and faster). I use it a lot, mainly to reduce the filesize of my time-lapses, a few of which are on my website.

Nicolàs

[RossHicksPhoto]

13 minutes ago, inFINNity Deck said:

You can shoot at a high rate and afterwards reduce the output using PIPP. Among a plethora of other useful things it allows you to skip frames, to compress them and to run the output video at another frame-rate than the original (both slower and faster). I use it a lot, mainly to reduce the filesize of my time-lapses, a few of which are on my website.

Nicolàs

That sounds pretty awesome. I have an intervalometer attached to my Canon DSLR which takes a series of images over a set time. I am heading out tonight again so I will be out longer tonight, getting more images as a result. At least that is the plan
Just researching some locations as we speak. 

 

[JeremyS]

Lovely @RossHicksPhoto!

[Erling G-P]

Very nice - and finally something useful to do with clouds..

[AlexK]

I like its artistic representation of deficiencies in the camera setup. It gives it life.

[AlexK]

I can elaborate to reduce your confusion (no offence just for education).

1. It's clearly out of focus. Mars is not a good focusing target. Get a Bahtinov mask to find the true focus imaging shifted star beams and adjusting to perfection in the center or halfway to the edge. Then use a piece of tape to fix focus and zoom physically. You haven't stated what lens you've got, but many can have the focus/zoom drift just from the gravity when pointed upwards like that (~40 deg per your image).
2. Again, no clue what your lens is, but it looks like it's sitting in the body at a slant or the camera/lens has a defect causing your stars focused differently across the frame. The former is most probable, because the focus gradient is mostly vertical (in combination with the SA center shifted down, which is the top of the camera ), that's common for older type heavy lenses pointed that low (~45 deg). Possibly on the cheap adapter (e.g. a Nikon lens in a Canon body). But some stock lenses might have a collimation issue like that too. So I would research what's at fault here.
3. Your unknown lens has a serious coma and/or astigmatism (could be the above collimation/installation flaw). To reduce that you should close the diaphragm 1-2 notches (depends on the lens).
4. The lens is either dirty, or a bit foggy, or has a scratch(es). The glare patterns from Mars reveal that. Remove the filter and/or clean the optics.
5. The video looks overprocessed by dumb camera CPU algorithms. For better results you should shoot in RAW and use batch processing to convert to video frames. Maybe even with stacking in between (you haven't stated what was your exposure, prob around 5 sec, so even the HDR could be possible).

All of the above is making your work a piece of art due to revealing all these "behind the scene" factors. Making it less a videographing of sky wonders but more of your personal circumstances and effort amusing an observant viewer's imagination 🙃

Edited October 10, 2020 by AlexK