Monday Night Dinner

[Gerlinde]

I am still trying to figure out how to use all the functions on my GoPro camera. So I thought our weekly Monday night dinner would be a good candidate to try some timelapse.
I mounted the camera above head level, hoping nobody would notice it But no such luck. My stepdaughter saw it first thing she came in. But fortunately, once the food was on the table everybody forgot about it.
I set the camera at a 10" interval, 11mp wide mode, spot metering on, AWB. Next time I will probably set it to 5 or even 2 sec interval. I missed the beginning of the dinner due to operator error
I don't know if AWB was a good choice. The light in our dining room is not optimal and I had a hard time with color correction afterward. I was surprised that the camera takes pictures always in 4:3 format even in wide setting. I spend a good time in Lightroom to crop all the pics to 16:9 ( which was really easy and fast ). But the color and exposure correction made me pull my hair out after a while. I was not able to get rid of all the flickering especially towards the end of the clip. I also corrected the fisheye distortion to some extent. LR has a preset specific to the GoPro. I chose to do this manually since I liked to keep some of the distortion.
I ended up with 461 pictures. I used PRE 11 with a DSLR 1080p30 setting, 2 frames per picture.

[Ron]

Use the "ID" only, Gerlinde. (no URL, it's just the way the code in the backend works)

[Gerlinde]

Thanks Ron, I figured it out the moment you posted your reply

[Steve Grisetti]

What fun, Gerlinde! Nice job!

[Dave McElderry]

This stuff is always fascinating. Amazing how even a family dinner can be made interesting with time lapse. I'm sure it will go better next time when you set your WB manually. I've dealt with the same flickering issue when using AWB indoors.

[momoffduty]

Fun stuff, Gerlinde! I liked the choice of music too. The fluctuating white balance will cause flicker, but I don't think it was really that noticeable. Setting the timelapse to a lower interval may help on the flicker too. We are having a bunch over soon and I may try a timelapse too.

[sidd finch]

Those little GoPro's are downright addictive Even the most ordinary of things like eating dinner together can be fun with a GoPro.

I like the portion while folks were eating. To me it looked like everyone was doing some sort of dance.

Keep up the good work. (I knew you would get the GoPro fever... )

Sidd

[Chris B]

For reference the gopro software from their website will take the footage from time lapse and automatically concatenate it into a movie file for use in an editor. You can control frame rate, crop and other such things. It also has quite a passable lens distortion correction tool.

And if you turn off the led flash it's a lot more discreet...

[Ron Hunter]

I loved it! When your family members are older and your Monday night dinner doesn't happen as often as it once did, you will be glad you have this. The music was a perfect choice for the hurried feel the time lapse created.

So the flicker was created by AWB? Can WB be changed in the GoPro? (I have the older Hero2 so I think I'm stuck with whatever the camera chooses.) When I did a "dinner" time lapse with my Rebel T4i I had flicker but I presumed it was due to automatic ISO adjustments. I haven't re-performed the time lapse with locked ISO but I should do that as a test.

Lightroom makes editing photos for time lapse a breeze, yes? Well, it makes synchronizing settings across the photos a breeze, but if you have errant frames with challenging WB/color it is still tedious.

[Ron Hunter]

Gerlinde, did you produce the photos and video on your desktop or laptop? I reviewed your system specs (impressive!) after my last post and it occurred to me you could use either platform for photo/video editing.

[Gerlinde]

Thank you all for taking an interest into my little movie.

Steve I'm glad you liked it.

Dave, there is only a limited control over WB. I can choose between auto, 3000k, 5500k and 6500K. I guess 3000k would have been the right one?

Cheryl, I think your camera might work better for that situation. From what I have red it performs better in low light situations than my older model.

Sidd, I wish I was as good as you with the GoPro. But you are right, it is kind of adictive

Chris, thanks for the tips. I came already across the GoPro Studio software. I recorded my first video in Protune mode and I used it for the color presets. Lightroom has also a distortion correction for the camera. I did not know that I can turn off the LED lights

Ron, I checked the manual for your camera model and I did not see anything that you can choose different settings for WB. I really don't know if it would help to avoid flicker. The light in my dining room did not really change, I think when people started moving around that's what caused the color shifts. Maybe I should not have used spot metering in that situation.

Lightroom makes editing photos for time lapse a breeze, yes? Well, it makes synchronizing settings across the photos a breeze, but if you have errant frames with challenging WB/color it is still tedious.

Yes, I agree. The first 300 pictures were a breeze to correct, but then there were about 10 frames with a complete color shift. From there on I had to go back and forth a hundred times to even it all out.
I did this little project on my laptop. It worked like a breeze. My desktop is upstairs and for convenience reasons I use my notebook even I have dual monitors on my desktop.

[Dave McElderry]

Dave, there is only a limited control over WB. I can choose between auto, 3000k, 5500k and 6500K. I guess 3000k would have been the right one?

Ah, okay. I know nothing about the GoPros. I agree that 3000k would be the start point to try for the indoor work. I'd be interested in how it works out.

[momoffduty]

Gerlinde, the light in the room will shift when people are moving in the room and blocking some light. Setting the camera to a lower interval may help because it would then be a gradual shift of light. I am only guessing and over-thinking again.

Yep, you got the GoPro bug like Sidd suggested.

[sidd finch]

And that bug appears to be ling lived

Sidd