notoldyet

I will be attending Grand Canyon star party in June and want to try time lapse of Milky Way from north rim. Would appreciate software recommendations for making time lapse from still photos. I will be using 5D mk II with intervalometer. I use affinity photo on windows 10.

Fstop12 Loc: Kentucky

First of all, I am extremely jealous of the dark sky you will have at the Grand Canyon. As far as Time Lapse I would think that the Affinity Program would be able to do that for you. From a quick Google search, I found many videos on Time Lapses with Affinity. I am a Photoshop guy, and it's fairly easy to create time lapses in Photoshop. I would think that you will be among other people at the Star Party that would be able to help you with this process. I wish you the very best clear skies for your Star Party and please let us know how it all turned out.

nikonshooter Loc: Spartanburg, South Carolina

I have two software programs to recommend.

It has a price but is absolutely without a doubt, out of this world, software. It is called LRTimelapse and it does require that you use Lightroom by adobe. With this software you can add the "Ken Burns" effect - eliminate flicker.....in short produce brilliant TL videos. Gunther Wegner developed this about 10 years ago when he was in his early 20's...a brilliant photographer. He updates it several times a year.

https://lrtimelapse.com/

The lowest cost decent software option I have used for quick TL vids is "QUICKTIME". The Pro version has an option under FILE to load a sequence of images into a TL ....the only control you have is framerate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiKtYyTAWAw

There is a free version of QT but it does not have the TL option, unless they have included it recently.

I know there are a lot of other TL programs - probably some free.....but these are the two I have used

Sound like a great place to image! Good luck and clear skies!!

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

For star trails I use this software:
StarStax is free and very easy to use.

Here's how I do it:
Take about 200 pictures. They can be raw. Import them to Lightroom. Edit the one of the images in the sequence with only a few modifications. I usually stick to White Bal, sharpening, noise, and Lens Correction. Then select all the images and copy those settings to all the images that you've imported. Then Export them and rename all in a sequence starting with a prefixed name with 001 at the end so that you have something like Milkyway001.jpg for the first image and Milkyway200.jpg with the last. Then you open them with StarStaX and play with the settings until you get the desired result. It don't take long to put them together.


For Milky Way time lapse I use Lightroom. Simply take about 200 pictures of the milky way, import them to Lightroom, so the same editing to one of the images as I said above for star trails, then select them all and go to the Slideshow module. In the playback drop-down make the slide length 0.1 and crossfades to 0.0. Hit the Preview button to see the movie. Then on the bottom left tap the Export Video button and give it a name. Now you've got a mp4 video you can play. Very easy to do.

nikonshooter Loc: Spartanburg, South Carolina

Good to know about LR. Thanks for sharing!!!

notoldyet

Thank you for the response and the kind wishes. I’m really looking forward to the event. If I get a time lapse, I will post it. I will check out the Affinity time lapse videos.

notoldyet

I will check out Quick time tonight. Thanks for the advice. Much appreciated.

notoldyet

Don’t have Lightroom. Trying to get the hang of Affinity. Downloaded star stax about 6 months ago, but didn’t have much luck with it. Will have to take another swing at it before I head west.