Tutorial:
How to create a HDR time lapse movie using the Acadalus mc1

Creating amazing time lapse movies with the Acadalus mc1 is easy.
This tutorial guides you through the process of creating a simple HDR time lapse movie.
At the end of this tutorial, you will be able to create your own HDR time lapse movies, as well as normal (non HDR) time lapse movies, simply by using your Acadalus mc1 and your Mac.

Tools used in this Tutorial:

What is HDR?

HDR stands for "high dynamic range". It is a technique which allows photographers to capture a greater dynamic range of luminance between the darkest and the lightest area of an image than current techniques do.
In an HDR image, both the darkest and the lightest points of an image are clearly visible while with common techniques, photographers would have to choose, whether to prefer the dark or the light areas of the image.
For further explanations, please refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging

Getting started

First we need to find a good scene for our HDR time lapse movie.
Classic subjects for time lapse movies are:
In this tutorial, we choose our scene to be the clouds moving in the sky.
Even on cloudy days, an HDR time lapse movie can reveal amazing movements in the sky.

Setting up the camera

First, mount your camera on a tripod and point it at your scene. In this tutorial, we used the Acadalus CPS-h1 to fine tune the desired position, but you can use whatever means you like. Make sure your camera is properly positioned and won't move during the time lapse.

Note: We recommend setting your camera to use JPEG instead of raw files, each time lapse movie needs many pictures and therefore a lot of space on your cameras flash drive. JPEG files are smaller than raw files and need less computing time on your computer when you convert them to a movie afterwards.


Nikon D300 mounted on a CPS-h1 and connected to an mc1

You may want to take some sample pictures to make sure everything is set up properly.

We recommend you to set the camera in manual focus mode. Manual focus mode has 2 main advantages to auto focus:

Setting up your mc1 for HDR time lapse movies

After setting up your camera and tripod, power up the mc1 and connect the camera to your mc1.
The mc1 detects then the camera and shows a small camera icon in the top right corner of the screen, right below the battery icon. Select now "time lapse" from the main menu.
Your screen should now look similar to this:

mc1 in time lapse menu
The Acadalus mc1 time lapse menu

For this tutorial, we took pictures for 6 hours to make a 1 min movie.
Use the ">>" buttons next to their respective text fields to change the settings to your liking.
For HDR settings, we recommend a ΔEV value of 2 and a Brackets value of ±1. This tells the mc1 to take 3 pictures for a HDR, each with 2 exposure values difference.
Make sure to have "Autosettings" and "HDR" enabled or your mc1 will take a normal time lapse movie instead of a HDR time lapse.
The option "smooth motions" tells the mc1 to choose the camera settings to leave the shutter as long open as possible, thus creating a blur effect with fast moving objects in the scene. This option can be used to add motion blur to the time lapse movie. In this tutorial, we enabled the "smooth motions" option.

The bottom text field shows you a short summary on the time lapse settings you entered.
If possible, try to keep the interval between 2 photos as high as possible. Your DSLR needs some time to take and save the picture it takes. Modern DSLRs take about 1-2 seconds to save 1 picture. Add this value to the shutter speed the mc1 sets on the camera and one picture easily takes about 3 seconds to take and save on the camera. A HDR has usually 3 or 5 brackets, in our case, we used 3 brackets. Therefore the minimal interval time between 2 HDR images is 10 seconds.

minimal interval time ~= 3 seconds * number of brackets

Once you are content with your settings, hit the "Measure ambivalent light" button to setup your camera for time lapse recording.
The start button then turns green.
Once you are ready, press the start button to start recording your movie.

Converting the pictures to HDR : creating your video frames

Once your time lapse is recorded, you can start converting them to a movie.

Download all pictures to a folder on your computer. Please make sure not to mix your time lapse pictures with others as the software needs them to be in a separate folder.
Name the folder containing the HDR brackets "HDR time lapse jpges".

In the next step, we will convert the JPEG pictures we recorded to an HDR format and tone map them.
The conversion will take the 3 pictures we took for one frame and merge them into one ".hdr" file. This .hdr file contains the accumulated image information of all 3 pictures. Even modern monitors can't display the whole dynamic range of luminance saved in a .hdr file. Therefore we have to create an image that can be displayed by normal displays. This procedure is called tone mapping.
There are many software suits that let you create hdr files and tone map them. In this tutorial we used Photomatix Pro, it is easy to use, gives good results and can do batch operations.
Batch operations are necessary when creating HDR time lapses as we are going to convert thousands of pictures and it would take too much time if we had to do them manually one by one.

Choosing the conversion settings

First, we have to choose the settings we want to use when converting all images. The easiest way to do this is to create one HDR image manually and then use the same settings for all images we want to create

Start Photmatix Pro 4.0 and click "Load Bracketed Photos" to start a new HDR image.

load photos
loading 3 bracketed photos
 Load 3 bracketed photos related to each other.
Here, we took the first 3 pictures in the time lapse. You could also choose 3 pictures from somewhere within the time lapse as long as you make sure they are the 3 pictures


Photomatix Pro 4.0
Photomatix Pro 4.0

Now we can adjust the conversion settings. A good starting point is the "Compressor - Deep" preset. It provides a natural look with good contrast.
Adjust settings

Adjust the settings until your are content with the result. Once you are done you can save the settings by choosing "Save Settings..." in the "Presets:" drop down bar. We recommend saving your settings in case you may want to use them again at a later time.

save settings
Saving the settings

Now that we have chosen the settings, it is time to start the batch process to convert all images.
You can close the preview window, we won't need it anymore. You can save your image when prompted, but it is not necessary.

Click in the Workflow window on "Batch Bracketed Photos" to get started with the batch process.




Select "Generate HDR image" and "Tone map with Tone Compressor" to tell the batch process to first create a HDR image and then tone map it. Click the "Settings..." button next to the tone map field to load the settings we saved before.
Next set the number of bracketed images needed for the time lapse. When shooting the time lapse with the mc1, we used 3 images.
Now we can select the folder containing all images recorded with the mc1. Once you loaded the folder, you should see a list of all images.
Then set the output folder for the converted images. We recommend using a customized location as it can be tricky to separate the original from the converted images when they are in the same folder.
Save the converted images as JPEG. JPEG files are smaller than TIFF and the image quality is more than sufficient for video.
Save the HDR files as "Radiance RGBE (.hdr)"
Select "Remove 32-bit HDR image after tone mapping" if you only want the tone mapped images and don't want to keep the HDR files (we won't need the HDR files to create the final movie).
Select "Start with filename of first image in the set" under "Naming options...", that way the tone mapped .jpg files will use the same number format as your camera. This helps the operating system to sort the images.
 load settings
load settings

converting the images
Converting the images
 Now everything is set up and you can start the batch process by clicking "Run" in the top right corner of your window.

This might take a while, depending on how many images you are converting and how fast your computer can process the images.

Creating the final movie

Once the batch process is done, you can create the movie from the tone mapped images.
First check the tone mapped images and see whether they are converted properly. If you are content with the result move on to the next step, otherwise repeat the last section. Maybe change some settings and rerun the batch process.

Create your time lapse movie with "Time Lapse Assembler"

Start the "Time Lapse Assembler", the program should look similar to this.
create the time lapse movie
Click "Choose..." and select the folder which contains all your tone mapped ".jpg" files. Please make sure the folder only contains your tone mapped images and no other files, especially no other images. Time Lapse Assembler will take all images in the selected folder and create a movie from them. If other images where to be in the folder, it would also add them to the movie.

Set the same frame rate you used on the mc1, if you use another frame rate, the length of your movie will differ from what the mc1 had calculated but your movie will still work.
Set the dimensions to a resolution you see fit.
Common resolutions for movies are:
Select the desired quality (we used high, as it gives a good image quality at still reasonable file sizdes).

Click "Encode" to create your movie and enjoy watching it.