Shots per Interval: Can we just set the desired interval, or this does something else?
That's great that you got it working!
You can keep this at 1 normally. It's actually the number of
un-delayed shots per interval. I designed it for longer intervals where you want to do a shot or two to get the exposure right. Try setting the interval to 10,000 with 2 shots per interval, and you'll see what it does.
Focus: What does this do? Does it mean that for being able to focus on something not too far away we have to experiment with this value with numbers between 0 and 1 to find the correct focus? or is it enough to manual focus the camera before starting the script?
For sunsets, I always set it to 1. The script will calculate the "hyperfocal distance" and focus there. This is the closest you can focus and still have infinity in focus. You don't have to worry about focusing then, and foreground objects should be in focus as well as the sunset and clouds. It works pretty well.
If you set it to 0, the camera will do autofocus on the first shot, and hold that focus.
Smoothing and Glitch: I was confused about these but found some explanations in your previous post.
Show Meters: I set this to 1 but nothing happened during the shooting, screen was black between shots (tested with 5 sec, 2 sec and also 1 sec intervals)
What this does is write lines on the first shot to show the metering areas. The first shot uses the camera meter for exposure, so it's usually overexposed on sunset time lapses. Writing the meter areas on it ruins it as a picture, but it's a good record of the meters.
If you want to see the meter areas on the screen while shooting, press the RIGHT key.
Meter Areas: I think I roughly know that we can set 4 areas to be metered before starting the script, I'd appreciate if you let me know how exactly these areas work, for example, does is help if I put an area for ground and a separate area for sky? and maybe an area containing the places that sun will move on the frame during sunset?
This is one of the most powerful features of the script. It looks at all the meters and picks the brightest so no area is overexposed. My early time lapse test of sunset over the city resulted in the city lights being way over exposed after the sky got dark. Skip to the very end of this video to see the effect:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQah7sksQaw#wsBut in this video, I put one of the meters on the a part of the city where I knew the lights would get brighter. I held the first frame so you can see the metering areas at the beginning. Then skip to the end and see how different the city lights are after dark.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhkVtBtY3t0#wsThis last one is one of my favorites for using the meters. I put one meter on the sky and another very small rectangular meter on Willamette street. The small meter took over after dark and I zoomed in on the street to see the cars better (with movie software). At the very end, I showed the metering area by stopping the script and immediately starting it again to take a picture with the metering areas, and then stopping it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pozFliELR4w#wsShutter->ISO (msec): ?
The script will vary the shutter time until it gets to this value, using the minimum ISO. Then it holds this value and varies the ISO until it reaches the maximum. Then it goes back to increasing shutter time until that reaches maximum.
by the way what is the reason for the first shots that is overexposed?
The exposure of the first shot is set by the camera. If the shot meter area is the same as the camera meter area, they would be exposed the same. Usually, I put the shot meter on the brightest part of the sky, so the 2nd shot gets a lot darker.
The bvDelta parameter is the amount of underexposure at -500 (night). It starts at +500 (day). A change of 96 is 1 fstop, so 192 is 2 fstops underexposed after it gets dark.
I have to say it's a really good script and I figured out that you've done something with core CHDK that enables it to take shots faster than normal scripts, and set exposures more accurately between shots, I can't exactly understand some of the technical stuff that you guys talk about here but overall it looks great! As soon as I can figure out how to set it up I'll take a sunset time lapse with it and will post it here.
Don't forget to set up the camera before starting the script. I usually use Av mode. Turn everything off that you can, especially "safety manual focus." Make sure it's in continuous drive mode also. It's faster, and the pictures will be visible on the screen.
I look forward to seeing what you come up with. Good luck.
