timelapse flicker in manual mode

im trying to hunt down the reason for flickers, everything including white balance set to manual. only thing i havent tried is covering the eye piece, do you guys have similar experiences, where covering the eye piece solved the problem when there arent other obvious ones?

I was under the impression that the slight discrepancies in aperture between shots, allowing differing amounts of light to the sensor, was the reason for flicker in time lapse. Try to disengage the lens, yes as if you are removing the lens, but only just enough to prevent the camera opening and stepping down the aperture on each shot. That should give you constant amount of light each shot and eliminate mechanical tolerances of the aperture, which is the main cause of flicker, shot to shot.

i have read that before, but i didnt know that its necessary for flicker-free time lapse.

Each time you take a shot the aperture opens fully then steps down to the desired setting. Each time it does this, there are slight tolerances in the aperture. In individual shots this isn't a problem, it becomes an issue in the form of flicker when you stack shots for video, where the sudden bright frame jars with the one before it and the one after it.

Have you any lapses to share, I am getting interested in them at the moment

A good reason to use manual focus lenses, the aperture is fixed to whatever you set it at. It doesn't open and close.

maverick75 wrote in post #17759877
A good reason to use manual focus lenses, the aperture is fixed to whatever you set it at. It doesn't open and close.

Well you learn something new every day, thanks

The flicker comes from the camera's light meter not being perfect. So if you're in Aperture Priority mode and shooting during sunset you'd like to see the shutter speed to do this on successive shots as the sun went down:

1/60, 1/50, 1/40, 1/30

Ideally the shutter speed would linearly decrease, creating a smooth transition from light to dark when played back as part of a video.

However, what it usually does is this:

1/60, 1/50, 1/50, 1/60, 1/50, 1/40, 1/50, etc

So the variation in shutter speed causes the flicker when you play it back as part of a video.

You can use Manual Mode which solves the problem. However, if the light is changing (sunrise/sunset) this doesn't really work. The Manual settings that are correct for 30 minutes before sunset aren't correct for when the sun's on the horizon. It'll be well exposed 30 minutes prior to sunset, but really underexposed at sunset. You can try changing the manual settings, but this introduces other problems like moving the camera slightly (making for shaky video) or jumps in the video because it took you a minute to change the settings.

One solution is to use software that compensates for it. We (Digital Anarchy) make one called Flicker Free, but if you google 'time lapse flicker software' there are others.

Cheers,
Jim

The one golden rule of time lapse is consistency. I thought shooting everything in manual mode is the only way to go ? ? ?