Long exposure downtown Los Angeles 4 seconds

Paul Galvez · Mar 8, 2016

I shoot this with 85 pictures of 1.6 second exposure. Let me know what you think! The whole timelapse is 4 seconds!

GizaDog · Mar 8, 2016

Paul Galvez said:
I shoot this with 85 pictures of 1.6 second exposure. Let me know what you think! The whole timelapse is 4 seconds!

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Very nice. I did not know we could shoot 1.6 sec exposures.

Paul Galvez · Mar 8, 2016

I think you could shoot up to 4 second long exposures

Tom Sanderson · Mar 8, 2016

Paul that's fantastic! Would you mind sharing a bit about how you did the whole thing?

Paul Galvez · Mar 8, 2016

Thanks Tom! Of course I'll share:
I did this using the litchi app with these steps:
1. In excel I made 90 gps waypoints separated by exactly 2.5 meters (the app requires a minimum of 2 meters between waypoints)
2. Then to each waypoint I added a 1 second wait to stabilize, then a 2nd action to take picture and a 3rd action to hold for another second just in case to prevent shaking.
3. Then batch color corrected the dng raw pics in Photoshop, export them to Jpeg and imported them to fcpx.
4. Then in fcpx I combined the pics into a 24fps timeline, and used lock and load to stabilize ( which btw needed lots of stabilizing and rolling shutter correction, even now I'm not extremely happy with it)
Let me know if that makes sense

Tom Sanderson · Mar 8, 2016

Thanks for the detailed reply, Paul!! When you say you added a 2nd and 3rd action, I assume that you mean in Litchi? the program has that functionality? Thanks!

Tom Sanderson · Mar 8, 2016

By the way Paul, I just watched your sunrise to sunset clip on Youtube - very impressive!

ADSSER · Mar 8, 2016

Paul Galvez said:
Thanks Tom! Of course I'll share:
I did this using the litchi app with these steps:
1. In excel I made 90 gps waypoints separated by exactly 2.5 meters (the app requires a minimum of 2 meters between waypoints)
2. Then to each waypoint I added a 1 second wait to stabilize, then a 2nd action to take picture and a 3rd action to hold for another second just in case to prevent shaking.
3. Then batch color corrected the dng raw pics in Photoshop, export them to Joey and imported them to fcpx.
4. Then in fcpx I combined the pics into a 24fps timeline, and used lock and load to stabilize ( which btw needed lots of stabilizing and rolling shutter correction, even now I'm not extremely happy with it)
Let me know if that makes sense

How long did it take for you to do steps 3 and 4?

Paul Galvez · Mar 8, 2016

Thanks Tom! yes you can have actions within each waypoint on litchi.
Adsser steps 3 and 4 were the fastest to do. maybe 30 minutes to 1 hour

Tom Sanderson · Mar 8, 2016

So Paul, if I may take a guess - I'd have to say that for the sunrise to sunset video, you flew a waypoint mission for the sunrise portion, and saved it. Then you flew the saved mission again for the sunset portion. Even so, I'm thinking it must have been a heck of a lot of working lining it up in FCPX, right??

Paul Galvez · Mar 8, 2016

Yeah that one was harder, I did exactly as you said 4 different times, and none of them match very good, I got lucky with those particular shots. Yeah it was a lot of work

Tom Sanderson · Mar 8, 2016

I think it turned out very nicely, Paul! Great work!

Beverly Hills Aerials · Mar 9, 2016

thats awesome.... well done.

The Editor · Mar 9, 2016

Paul Galvez said:
I shoot this with 85 pictures of 1.6 second exposure. Let me know what you think! The whole timelapse is 4 seconds!

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

I won't comment on the legality or safety aspect - will leave that to others but well done on the long exposure shots.
Extending this skill you can move to hyperlapse.
For those who haven't experienced what that is.......

Bryan Conover · Mar 12, 2016

Paul Galvez said:
I shoot this with 85 pictures of 1.6 second exposure. Let me know what you think! The whole timelapse is 4 seconds!

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Sure at least one City of Los Angeles UAV ordinance was broken in this flight. LAPD has a large helipad just north of downtown off the 101 at the 10 interchange. Hospital helipads south of this location.

seanmclean · Mar 19, 2016

Great shot, and thanks for the workflow behind the capture. Too bad we can't get through this without the drone police being involved.

Bryan Conover · Mar 19, 2016

seanmclean said:
Great shot, and thanks for the workflow behind the capture. Too bad we can't get through this without the drone police being involved.

No drone police...but encouraging the under informed to recreate these shots can lead to trouble especially at night. LAPD is taking this quite seriously as UAV pilots now have the balls to fly near their helicopters.