How to make an HDR time-lapse

Summary
Create a very high resolution, high dynamic range time-lapse movie. Using HDR software to blend bracketed exposures of the same shot you can create an image that better resembles what the eye sees compared to traditional photography techniques.
Capture
· Shoot with a tripod
· Set camera to bracket shutter speed. Shooting in aperture priority is a good approach. For most scenes you can either take 3 or 5 shots(depending on your camera’s bracketing options):
o 3 shots
§ #1 - 2 EV
§ #2 normal exposure
§ #3 + 2 EV
o 5 shots
§ #1 - 2 EV
§ #2 – 1 EV
§ #3 normal exposure
§ #4 + 1 EV
§ #5 + 2 EV
· Shooting high quality jpegs is fine but if you can capture RAW you should
· Use an intervolometer to repeat this 3 or 5 bracket capture sequence at a regular interval
Batch HDR Rendering
· Determine ideal HDR settings
o Use your favorite HDR software… Using Photomatix click “Create an HDR image”
o Pull in a full bracketed sequence (3 or 5 photos) from near the middle of the time sequence.
o Play with all the sliders and options to determine the ideal settings for this set of images
§ Good starting points that I gravitate towards are
· Strength 90
· Saturation 80
· Light smooth high or very high
· Black point (somewhere in the first quarter)
· White point (somewhere in the second quarter)
· Batch process your HDR Images
o From Photomatix click “Batch Process”
o Choose the folder that contains all of the images from your capture
o Tell the software how many images are to be combined to create an HDR image (3 or 5 in this case)
o Choose a destination folder
o Photomatix will remember your last settings you choose for your last image, or you can pull up the settings dialog to pick what you want (but you do not get the visual feedback so that was what the last step was all about)
o At the end of all this you should have a folder of high resolution sequenced HDR (tone mapped) jpegs that will be the individual stills for your time lapse movie.
· Color Correct & Crop
o Import the folder of high resolution HDR images into Lightroom or Aperture
o Perform any batch corrections (color, spot removal etc.)
o Batch crop the group of photos to a 16:9 aspect ratio
o Batch export the images to 1920 x 1080
o Now you have a folder of color corrected, cropped sequential images that have been down sampled to a full HD (1080P) resolution.
· Create your Time-Lapse Movie
o Using Quicktime Pro start a new image sequence by choosing ctrl+shift+O
o Choose the folder of images and pick the first image for the sequence
o Choose 30fps for the frame rate (as a starting point)
o (optional) Save the movie as a self contained file (it will be big!)
o Export the movie a .mov file using .H264 compression
o (optional) Set playback settings to automatically play full screen when opened
o You now have a self contained video file that is 1920 X 1080
· Burn a DVD that will playback full HD quality in your Blu Ray player (such as a PS3)
o Using Roxio’s Toast 9 product on a Mac…
o Click on the 3rd tabfor video
o Click on the Blu-ray video option (you will need the additional HD/BD Plugin
o Drop the .Mov file that is your time-lapse in the main window
o Choose DVD from the bottom right corner drop down
o (optional) Create a custom menu by dragging a photo to the DVD menu dialog