Ski Lift Timelapse [4 of 52 Timelapse Project]

This is one shot from my 52 Timelapse Project. You can check out the details of the project or full list of the shots.

There is still pretty much snow in my city, so I decided to shoot something on a slope 🙂 The ski lift shot was something I’ve got in mind for a long time. Finally I’ve got a chance to do that (I mean this project encourages me to go out there and shoot;)). So, in this article you’ll learn how I decided to accomplish that shot and what I did to stabilize it.

I’m not visiting a ski slopes very often, so I wasn’t sure how smooth the lifts are. Also, I didn’t want to spend to much money to try it for a few times 😉 My first idea of a camera mount was to use a handheld 3 axis stabilizer. I still think it could work fine, however it’s harder to accomplish by myself and I didn’t have anyone to help (I’ve got two handed gimbal). Finally I used a clamp mounted to the protection rail. I didn’t know what’s the diameter of the rail and I couldn’t check that before, so I just take a risk. Luckily, my clamp mount fit the rail and I was able to shoot the timelapse 😉

I’ve got to set-up the camera before I got to the lift. The route isn’t very long, so I didn’t want to loose any time. It was shot with:

• Panasonic GH4 w/ speedbooster and Sigma 10-20mm @10mm,
• f/15, shutter speed 1/5 sec and ISO 200 (base ISO of GH4),
• Filter ND64 (6 stop of light loss)
• 1 second interval between pictures.

Using longer shutter speed for this kind of shot gives you a really smooth feel due to the motion blur. You can find more information in my article Motion Blur in Timelapse. Thanks to the closed down aperture the sun in the shot has a star shape.

Interested in Timelapse, Hyperlapse and Stop-Motion? Feel free to join the Facebook Group, where you can find BTS content of my tutorials: https://www.facebook.com/groups/timelapse.hyperlapse/

It would be probably good place to mount an action cam like GoPro, however it’s much harder to achieve long exposure with that, and inb my opinion the motion blur is what makes these kind of shots look good 🙂

Some parts of the lift route was preety smooth, however some were really bumpy. For sure it will be different on every ski lift, I have to trim the clip to cout out the impossible to stabilize parts. Of course the stabilization was mendatory for this shot. I did it in three steps (inside After Effects):

1. Warp Stabilizer with default settings
2. Delete track points that were on the chair in front of me (inside Warp menu: Advanced > Show track points)
3. Use one point Stabilize Motion feature and apply only the x axis movement (after Warp the camera was panning a little during shot)

That’s all, pretty simple, right? Now I hope to see your shots! As always, please leave that in the comments 😉 Don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter or like my fanpage. See you next week 😉

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