I'm planning to find my way into the path of totality, and be there with a bunch of GoPro gear. I've been asked many times how to shoot this event with a GoPro, so here are my thoughts. Disclaimer: this is my completely unpracticed opinion on shooting a total solar eclipse with a GoPro.
Some basics. The whole transit from start to finish, somewhat depending on your location, is about 3 hours. That is pushing the average GoPro a little beyond its battery life in a time-lapse mode, even more beyond in regular video mode. As three hours likely produces pretty boring video, time-lapse is the way to go. If you intend to time-lapse the entire transit, you can use any USB power brick to extend the GoPro's run time; I've done a week long time-lapse via USB power. If you intend to shoot on battery power alone, on a full charge I typically get about 2 to 2.5 hours of time-lapse on a HERO5 Black with a 5-10 second interval. Plan to start your time-lapse about 1 hour before totality.
Timing. Time-lapse interval for two hour capture, my best estimate is 5 seconds. Which will be a 48 second video when played at 30p. A shorter video to share would be better, yet if you are lucky to have two minutes of totality, this interval only gets you 24 frames (0.8s) of time in the totality. If you intend to work on the video with a speed ramp for the less exciting bits, then a 1 or 2 second interval might be better, but watch out for your battery life.
Framing. As you know the GoPro lens is very wide, forget about getting any close-up views -- well without mounting the GoPro against an eyepiece of a telescope, which I will be doing in one setup.
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| Practicing: A video frame extracted from GoPro through the eyepiece of a sub-$200 4" telescope with a solar filter. |
Filters. A GoPro will not be shooting through those safety filters, those are for your eyes and telescopes etc. Using a solar filter on a GoPro will give you a very small orange dot that moves across the frame, if you are lucky -- don't do this. If you have ND filters, you can use them or not, modern GoPros are used to shooting images that also contain the sun, the sun's image is too small on the sensor to do damage.
Exposure control. In most cases a GoPro is an auto exposing camera, this is a good thing for those in the path of totality as the camera will adjust for all lighting conditions, give you a good video throughout. The downside for those not in the path of totality the auto-exposure will reduce dramatic level of changing light level. On a Hero 4 Silver and on HERO 4/5 Black, you can lock the ISO to 100 and set a fixed shutter speed, but only in the video modes with Protune enabled, so you will be left to process a lot of video into a timelapse in post. You will also need ND16 or ND32 filters to make locking the exposure work for a correctly exposed image at the beginning of you capture.
Time-lapse video vs time-lapse photo vs Night-Lapse photo. Time-lapse video (TLV) is the easiest by far, producing a small MP4 that is ready to share, as soon as the cell service recovers from the network load of millions of eclipse chasers filling small country towns. The downside of TLV is there are no Protune controls, it is all automatic. The other two time-lapse modes will produce JPGs (and GPRs if RAW is enabled) and you can have Protune level controls to set the look (GoPro vs Flat), white balance, ISO, sharpness etc. If you are in the path of totality, choose Night-Lapse, it will still work during daylight, but will take much longer exposures as needed for the dark few minutes.
My Recommendations: For those willing to do color correction and post assemble a time-lapse: Night-Lapse, Auto shutter, 4 second interval, Protune Flat, Native White balance (or 5500K for simpler color correction), ISO Min 100, ISO Max 800. I will enable RAW. This will produce 1800 images over 2 hours, one set of JPGs and one set of GPRs, using about 18 GB for storage. If you want a fast easy time-lapse, use Time-lapse video with a 5 second interval.
9 comments:
Thanks David!
Thanks David! Using your settings above, I am unable to enable RAW in Night Lapse Photo mode.
Also, what do you recommend for Sharpness?
I will be in 97% totality, and can't wait to make a cool video.
Eric, do you have the GoPro updated to latest firmware? Night lapse Raw mode was enabled in a relatively recent firmware.
Thank you David. Im using a Hero4 Silver. Happy shooting 😊
What if you plan on having your GoPro on a motion slider set up for a 2 hour left-right movement? Will there be motion blur at a 5 sec or higher interval?
Does this also apply to Hero Session? I only saw references above to the non-session GoPros.
For any of you post processing video down to timelapse:
ffmpeg -i GOPR0175.MP4 -filter:v "setpts=0.008*PTS" -an small0.MP4
Will take roughly 2 hrs down to 1 min.
Using a smaller value than 0.008 will shrink it further.
Source file GOPRO175.MP4 output small0.MP4.
Based on these settings I was not able to capture the eclipse. Only sun moving through time.
My video from the eclipse https://cineform.blogspot.com/2017/08/after-my-last-post-here-is-follow-up.html
Outside of the totality, there is little you can do without a solar telescope as the sun's brightness will conceal the change in shape. I did use these settings as shown in my follow up video. I had only 1 minute of totality, so the dark sun was brief, but perfectly clear within the time-lapse shots. I also learned it would have be cool to have some regular video just the film the reactions of people around you for the minute before and during.
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