Well, I learned a lot on my first overnight time-lapse.
I learned that an 8 second exposure isn't worth doing. Luckily this was just a backup (second camera) option that I figured might be worth doing in parallel with my CHDK shoot. It wasn't.
I learned (from this thread) that whatever exposure length you're using, the camera (unless told not to) will do an equal length exposure with the shutter closed for noise difference reduction.
I learned that if you turn off the noise reduction on a 32 second exposure, you get a noisy image :-) Quite a lot of red and blue pixels scattered around (I know they're not stars/planets because they don't move).
I learned that there's no perfect solution for that noise problem. I either miss 50% of the action because I'm busy exposing for noise half the time, or, well there is no or. The noisy images aren't much use at all. I did see something in the RAW options about "first time". Maybe there's a way of taking one reference noise shot and applying it to all subsequent images. Will need to investigate, unless someone here can tell me that's not what that is.
I learned that after an all-night shoot (about 8 hours worth), the uncropped video I made from it using virtual dub was 65 gigabytes. Not exactly youtube friendly. Xvid compression makes the movie not worth looking at, although size wise it's nice. Lots of options here though, change image size in camera, resize, crop [and pan for dolly effect].
I learned that next time I'll use a 64 second exposure. Quite a few of my meteors weren't caught in one single (32 second) image. Plus I think twice the brightness would be nice.
Anyway,
here's a 7MB animated GIF of some of the highlights.
This has made me even more impressed by some of those fantastic time lapse sky movies you see on vimeo made in the desert. Those guys really have their techniques sorted (and aren't using a Canon S3 iS either
). A nice F1.8 lens would be lovely, but I don't justify buying myself expensive camera equipment, I'm not good enough to deserve it
