I present you one shot from my upcoming drivelapse tutorial 🙂 To be precise, it’s a combination of a classic drivelapse and a motorized slider mounted on the back seat. It’s a nice solution to make every trip look awesome 😉 Check out the shot and a little description below.
This is a shot from my 52 Timelapse Project. You can check out the details of the project or full list of the shots.
I’ve already told you that I’m working on a drivelapse tutorial. That’s the reason why I won’t cover the whole technique behind the car timelapse. Instead, I’d like to say something about adding extra movement to this kind of shot 😉
Of course I wouldn’t reccomend adding a slider to your car timelapse at your first try. I suggest you to shoot some simple drivelapses with camera stationary mounted in a car first. That way you’ll find out how fast you should drive, if your camera is stable etc. Same as with other techniques, your experience is quite important here.
With a slider shot I had some problems (as always…). First of all, some slower cameras have problems with short intervals, like 1 sec. The pictures sent to the SD card are not saved fast enough, which slowers the camera. If it stays stationary on a tripod it’s not that big deal, because there would be just slight difference in the intervals that viewers won’t even see. With a slider it’s much more important to keep the camera working as planned.
Interval
When I shoot with a slider, my camera is released from the intervalometer built in the slider controller. Of course I’m using shoot-move-shoot mode. So, if camera didn’t saved the last image to the card (it’s a little simplification, because the camera can store some images in the buffer), it won’t be released. The slider controller doesn’t know it should wait for the camera, so it moves the camera – without taking a picture. That will appear as jumps in your final video.
That’s why I had to increase the interval to get the movement smooth, without skipped photos. I set 2.5 sec interval and it was enough for my old Canon 550D (T2i).
Mounting
With mounting the slider you’ve got to be creative. It’s always possible, just don’t give up 😉 For this shot I removed the slider legs from one end. That’s the part visible in the picture above – after removing it, the rail perfectly fitted the center console of the car. The other end lied on the back seat cushion. For better stability, I put a tripod with some weigth on it in the trunk (it’s a combi, so it wasn’t that hard ;)) and I mounted the slider to it.
You’ve got to have in mind, that some sliders are designed to work only horizontally. It’s better to try that before mounting the slider into the car 😉 You should know your equipement, its advantages and disadvantages. That will let you work more efficient 😉
Have you ever tried similar technique? Let me know in the comments. Share the results on the Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/timelapse.hyperlapse/.See you next week 😉
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