Merging my decades-old still photography skills with my growing videography skills is an exciting process. I consider each of the 24 video frames that get linked into one second of video as a still photograph and thus get to use all the skills I’ve acquired (composition, f/stop, white balance, focus, ISO, exposure time, etc.) to build up the video.
The TLDR version is that I shoot video with my camera in manual mode. This approach avoids flickering in the video but introduces a problem if the lighting changes rapidly. And while the changes in illumination experienced during a sunset or sunrise might seem slow and graceful in timelapse photography, it’s anything but.
As I climb the learning curve of videography, my current solution is to shoot a brief sequence, thirty seconds of timelapse, for example, with the camera set to initially underexpose during a sunrise (increasing illumination) or overexpose during a sunset (diminishing illumination. After thirty seconds, I’ll stop recording and tweak the exposure settings to again, under or over-expose the video frame. I then use a three-second cross dissolve during post-production to bridge the two sequences. The effect is noticeable but would be even better with shorter-duration video sequences.
This video cross-dissolves five sequences, and the effect is pretty surreal.
Click here for more timelapse videos.