Why can RAW long exposures shift color between shots, and how can I keep timelapse color consistent?
Asked 3/5/2019
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I’ve noticed that some night photos change hue between exposures even when the scene is essentially unchanged. For example, on a Canon EOS 1100D, a 20 s and 30 s exposure taken about a minute apart at the same ISO, aperture, and focal length show not just a brightness difference, but a slight blue-to-purple shift across the whole sky. I’ve also seen similar behavior on other Canon bodies.
The files were processed from RAW, so I’m wondering what causes this. Is it a long-exposure sensor issue, white balance behavior, or something in RAW conversion and gamma rendering? For timelapse work, how can I keep chromaticity consistent while exposure changes over time, such as during twilight?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
7y ago
2 Answers
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How can I compensate for this to get some color continuity for time lapse animations where scene brightness dramatically changes in time (e.g. twilight) thus requiring different exposures?
When linear raw values are converted to gamma corrected values not all are multiplied by the same amount. A curve is applied to mimic the way human vision responds to varying levels of brightness. It's basically logarithmic, but there are "shoulders" at the brightest and dimmest values that get flattened out in the opposite direction from the main logarithmic curve.
When you shift the raw values recorded by the sensor higher by exposing longer, after raw conversion not everything in the scene will be equally brightened compared to the darker image because all of your values will fall at different points on the S-shaped curve applied in gamma correction. The midtones will be more or less all boosted by the same amount. But there are very few midtones in your example photos. Almost all of the values are bunched up on one end or the other. The darker values will be brightened more, comparatively, in the longer exposure than the midtones. The midtones will be brightened more than the brightest values that approach but do not reach full saturation (those already blown out can't be any brighter than they already are in the darker image).
Answer before the OP clarified that these two photos were not taken during twilight, as implied in the question:
Short answer: you can't when mixing two light sources that are that different in the type of light they output and one is staying a constant brightness and color while the other is dimming and shifting in color.
Brightness isn't the only thing in the scene changing during twilight. The color of the light from the sky shifts rapidly during twilight as well. If you correct to maintain the same color sky, your artificial light sources will shift. If you process to maintain the color of your artificial light sources, then you'll have to accept that the color of the sky is changing.
In the case of your two example images, you also increased exposure as the sky darkened. This changed the ratio of the influence of light from the sky to light from your artificial sources because the sky is not as bright when the second image was captured - but the artificial sources were just as bright before you exposed them for 50% longer.
Even if you used identical white balance settings to develop both images, one would expect the color to shift as more of the light in the second image is from the artificial light sources and less of the light is from the sky, which is also changing color as well. This is because there's more light from the artificial sources in the second image, due to the longer exposure, and less of the total light is from the sky.
Originally by user15871. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user15871
7y ago
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The most likely cause is inconsistent white balance being applied during RAW conversion, not the exposure time itself. In your case, using per-image camera WB coefficients (such as LibRaw cam_mul) can make color shift from shot to shot, especially if the camera was set to Auto WB. Those coefficients can vary between frames because they reflect the camera’s JPEG/WB choice, not a fixed RAW color reference.
A second factor is that gamma-corrected output is non-linear, so brightness changes won’t look perfectly proportional after conversion.
To keep timelapse color consistent:
- Use a fixed white balance for all frames, not Auto WB.
- In RAW processing, use a constant WB/reference (for example daylight or one manually chosen WB) for the whole sequence.
- Compare and grade frames in a linear workflow before gamma/tone mapping.
There can also be small sensor temperature effects in long exposures, especially when the camera warms up, but the frame-to-frame hue shift you describe is most strongly explained by changing WB coefficients.
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