Nevada night sky time lapse video:
Aurora Borealis and Eta Aquariids meteor shower
©Cynthia K. McCahon
The project: Create a time lapse video of the northern lights
The northern lights were happening! In May of 2024, the Aurora Borealis was expected to be seen as far south as California--a very rare event, indeed. I had never seen the northern lights in person, much less from such a southerly location. What an opportunity! I decided to photograph the event as best I could. Even better, I wanted to attempt a time lapse video of the night sky as the northern lights were happening. A potentially very fun project, with a good learning curve, was suddenly born and the clock was ticking.
I was a little late on the uptake, as I couldn't get on the road until the day after the lights had appeared. Media reports suggested the lights might still be visible for a few days, so I packed up my photo equipment (and dogs) and drove to Nevada.
I camped that night along the shore of Pyramid Lake, a dark sky region. I was expecting the lights to make an appearance around 11pm, which was the time frame reported (by those who were more prepared) the night prior. I arrived before sunset and, while standing at the shoreline with a camping neighbor just after sunset, suddenly the lights appeared in the northern sky. Seeing the lights in person, and that far south, was electrifying and mesmerizing. But I hadn't yet set up my camera equipment! I snapped a couple of quick phone pics and ran to get my equipment. By the time I looked up again, the lights had disappeared and did not return that night.
I stayed the next night, hoping to catch something in the sky before the lights were completely gone. Media reports had been that the lights might still be visible. There's no cell phone reception that far off the grid in the desert, so I didn't really know what to expect. Not wanting to be caught flat-footed again, I was super ready by nightfall...with possibly no lights to be seen.
At about 10pm, with the sky truly dark, I began taking experimental images to test exposure settings. Wow, the sky was so, so beautiful. Even if I didn't capture the northern lights, I was still very glad I made the drive. After deciding (more like best-guessing) on exposure settings (f/1.8, 13 second shutter speed, ISO 640), I set my camera's time lapse settings to take one image every 17 seconds: 13 seconds for each exposure, 2 seconds for camera processing to save the huge image files, and 1 second for luck. Then I started the automated time lapse sequence. I watched in the viewfinder for a while to make sure everything was working.
After I was mostly convinced the settings were o.k.(ish) and the time lapse was triggering, I poured a glass of wine and watched the night sky from a camp chair at the edge of the lake while my camera continued to automatically take images every 17 seconds. Being by yourself off-the-grid can be exhilarating, especially with the night sky lighting up the heavens. The show was spectacular.
The next day I was up at sunrise to check my images. The camera battery had died in the early morning hours, but the images seemed pretty good. Even stunning, from what I could tell without a monitor. As I played back the individual images in the camera's viewfinder, I saw white streaks going from west to east across the night sky. Airplanes? No, too many streaks to be planes, unless I slept through an aerial invasion during the night. I zoomed in more closely on the images and I realized those streaks were meteors. I'd captured a meteor shower. I later learned these were the Eta Aquariid's, a meteor shower that happens the same time each year in the part of the sky my camera was pointing toward. A lucky coincidence that I wish I could say was planned, but no. The northern lights also made appearances all night long, although not as strongly as I'd hoped.
When I returned home, I couldn't process the images for a week or two because, well, life. But when I found time, I was happy with my rookie result. Next time I have a chance to capture the northern lights, I'll have my notes-to-self (see below) in-hand to improve the outcome.
Notes-to-self: 1) As soon as you hear in the media the northern lights will be happening, grab your gear and get on the road. Immediately. 2) Use a dual battery setup, or just power the camera from a battery pack to not miss the darkest and best part of the early morning night sky. 3) Make friends with the nice folks in the Facebook Time Lapse group and pay attention to their comments. There's a learning curve for both shooting and processing time lapse videos. 4) Check the night sky in a sky app such as Stellarium to know what exactly will be up there. 5) Select a lens millimeter that captures more than you need. Shoot in 4k and crop in post-production, if necessary.
This project was a lot of fun. I camped at a remote desert lake in a dark sky region of the country. I was challenged to think through new workflows and try different solutions. I shot and edited images and video, a process I adore. I did math to figure out timings. I watched the northern lights in Nevada.
Project outcome: On my project scale of Effort/Outcome, I rate it as SF (Super Fun). Can't wait for the next Aurora Borealis media alert!
Here's the geeky stuff:
Equipment
Processing
There may be an easier workflow, but this is what I did to go from RAW images to an editable video clip while maintaining the highest resolution possible (within my camera's possible image settings).
The workflow:
Lightroom > DaVinci Resolve > Topaz Video AI > DaVinci Resolve
The northern lights were happening! In May of 2024, the Aurora Borealis was expected to be seen as far south as California--a very rare event, indeed. I had never seen the northern lights in person, much less from such a southerly location. What an opportunity! I decided to photograph the event as best I could. Even better, I wanted to attempt a time lapse video of the night sky as the northern lights were happening. A potentially very fun project, with a good learning curve, was suddenly born and the clock was ticking.
I was a little late on the uptake, as I couldn't get on the road until the day after the lights had appeared. Media reports suggested the lights might still be visible for a few days, so I packed up my photo equipment (and dogs) and drove to Nevada.
I camped that night along the shore of Pyramid Lake, a dark sky region. I was expecting the lights to make an appearance around 11pm, which was the time frame reported (by those who were more prepared) the night prior. I arrived before sunset and, while standing at the shoreline with a camping neighbor just after sunset, suddenly the lights appeared in the northern sky. Seeing the lights in person, and that far south, was electrifying and mesmerizing. But I hadn't yet set up my camera equipment! I snapped a couple of quick phone pics and ran to get my equipment. By the time I looked up again, the lights had disappeared and did not return that night.
I stayed the next night, hoping to catch something in the sky before the lights were completely gone. Media reports had been that the lights might still be visible. There's no cell phone reception that far off the grid in the desert, so I didn't really know what to expect. Not wanting to be caught flat-footed again, I was super ready by nightfall...with possibly no lights to be seen.
At about 10pm, with the sky truly dark, I began taking experimental images to test exposure settings. Wow, the sky was so, so beautiful. Even if I didn't capture the northern lights, I was still very glad I made the drive. After deciding (more like best-guessing) on exposure settings (f/1.8, 13 second shutter speed, ISO 640), I set my camera's time lapse settings to take one image every 17 seconds: 13 seconds for each exposure, 2 seconds for camera processing to save the huge image files, and 1 second for luck. Then I started the automated time lapse sequence. I watched in the viewfinder for a while to make sure everything was working.
After I was mostly convinced the settings were o.k.(ish) and the time lapse was triggering, I poured a glass of wine and watched the night sky from a camp chair at the edge of the lake while my camera continued to automatically take images every 17 seconds. Being by yourself off-the-grid can be exhilarating, especially with the night sky lighting up the heavens. The show was spectacular.
The next day I was up at sunrise to check my images. The camera battery had died in the early morning hours, but the images seemed pretty good. Even stunning, from what I could tell without a monitor. As I played back the individual images in the camera's viewfinder, I saw white streaks going from west to east across the night sky. Airplanes? No, too many streaks to be planes, unless I slept through an aerial invasion during the night. I zoomed in more closely on the images and I realized those streaks were meteors. I'd captured a meteor shower. I later learned these were the Eta Aquariid's, a meteor shower that happens the same time each year in the part of the sky my camera was pointing toward. A lucky coincidence that I wish I could say was planned, but no. The northern lights also made appearances all night long, although not as strongly as I'd hoped.
When I returned home, I couldn't process the images for a week or two because, well, life. But when I found time, I was happy with my rookie result. Next time I have a chance to capture the northern lights, I'll have my notes-to-self (see below) in-hand to improve the outcome.
Notes-to-self: 1) As soon as you hear in the media the northern lights will be happening, grab your gear and get on the road. Immediately. 2) Use a dual battery setup, or just power the camera from a battery pack to not miss the darkest and best part of the early morning night sky. 3) Make friends with the nice folks in the Facebook Time Lapse group and pay attention to their comments. There's a learning curve for both shooting and processing time lapse videos. 4) Check the night sky in a sky app such as Stellarium to know what exactly will be up there. 5) Select a lens millimeter that captures more than you need. Shoot in 4k and crop in post-production, if necessary.
This project was a lot of fun. I camped at a remote desert lake in a dark sky region of the country. I was challenged to think through new workflows and try different solutions. I shot and edited images and video, a process I adore. I did math to figure out timings. I watched the northern lights in Nevada.
Project outcome: On my project scale of Effort/Outcome, I rate it as SF (Super Fun). Can't wait for the next Aurora Borealis media alert!
Here's the geeky stuff:
Equipment
- Camera: Canon R5
- Lens: Canon RF 35mm prime (next time I'll try a 24mm lens at a slightly bigger f-stop)
- Images: RAW, Full Frame (8192x5464)
- Mode: Manual
- Aperture: f/1.8, the widest possible for this lens. I've since learned about the 'coma' distortion effect, a concept new to me. Coma occurs at the edges of an image when you have a lens wide open. You can see star trails, which then adjust to pinpoints as the stars move toward the center of the image. I could try f/2.0 or f/2.8 to prevent this effect, but I'm somewhat more concerned about gathering enough light with a smaller lens opening than I am seeing the coma effect. No one is really looking at the corners of the image. They're looking at the center of the image, where the stars do not have a trail and are very sharp. The coma effect doesn't really bother me. Hmmm.
- Shutter speed: 13 seconds per exposure, 540 exposures, which ultimately turned into a 0:53 second video (that I stretched in post prodution by about 25% for a smoother meteorite trail)
- ISO: Manual 640 ISO (next time I'll try auto ISO and see what happens)
- Shutter mode: I used a Canon camera, which has an electronic shutter limit of :05 seconds so I used mechanical shutter
Processing
There may be an easier workflow, but this is what I did to go from RAW images to an editable video clip while maintaining the highest resolution possible (within my camera's possible image settings).
The workflow:
Lightroom > DaVinci Resolve > Topaz Video AI > DaVinci Resolve
- Import all raw images into Lightroom for basic image processing
- Select one image that's a good representation of all the images. Make edits to the one image, then apply those edits to all of the images. Here are the edits I made, then applied to all:
- Lowered the contrast to see more black sky and make the meteor trails stand out
- Increased the saturation slightly to see the aurora colors more clearly against the dark sky
- Export all of the images (with edits applied) as TIFF images (smaller file size than RAW and a loss-less compression that's good for video editing)
- Select one image that's a good representation of all the images. Make edits to the one image, then apply those edits to all of the images. Here are the edits I made, then applied to all:
- Import all TIFF images into Davinci Resolve to assemble the video
- Importantly, the images should be imported as a Sequence rather than individual frames. This will convert all of the images into a single video clip that magically appears in the media bin as a Sequence after import. You can then easily drop this Sequence clip into the timeline to edit. Otherwise, I would have had 540 individual images on the timeline
- You'll find the Sequence setting here: Davinci Resolve>Import>Frame display mode>Sequence
- Drop the single Sequence clip onto the timeline
- For the Project settings, I kept the same image settings as shot, so as not to confuse DaVinci or myself
- Without making any edits, export the timeline as a Pro Res file to use in Topaz Video AI (I used 24fps)
- Importantly, the images should be imported as a Sequence rather than individual frames. This will convert all of the images into a single video clip that magically appears in the media bin as a Sequence after import. You can then easily drop this Sequence clip into the timeline to edit. Otherwise, I would have had 540 individual images on the timeline
- Pro Res file into Topaz Video AI to sharpen
- Export the sharpened clip as a Pro Res file
- Pro Res file from Topaz Video AI back into DaVinci Resolve to edit the video
- Replace the original TIFF Sequence clip in DaVinci Resolve with the new Pro Res file from Topaz Video AI
- Finish editing the video in DaVinci Resolve
- Export the video in its native frames-per-second and resolution, in this case 24fps as a 3840x2160 QuickTime movie, which I used for the video on this website page (hosted on Vimeo--looks good!). I also exported a low res square resolution version (ugh) for Facebook and Instagram. I dislike the low resolution limitations on FB and IG. In both FB and IG, you can upload the video at its original ratio, which, if other than square, generates enormous black bars above and below the uploaded video. Which are awful, after all that workflow to get the best image possible. Oh well, when in Rome. Best to watch it on the website :)