Time lapse photography... Company?

[kennysarmy]

We're having a building project at my place of work starting in June for about 12 weeks.

I've been asked to organise a time lapse video of the build from start to finish.

Is this something that requires specialist help or specialist equipment?

Concerns are weather proofing equipment and security of such I guess.

Editing of stills to make the video.

Comments and thoughts welcome.

 

[bazphoon]

http://www.trail-camera.co.uk/Time-Lapse-Camera.htm

 

[Alastair]

Concerns are weather proofing equipment and security of such I guess.

Local Sainsbury's put a wooden shelf on a scaffold tower during their build to protect the time lapse gear from the elements.

Would have been more interesting if they'd left it up after the build was finished, the footage of the structure subsiding over the following 18 months would have been very interesting to see

 

[Sharky]

Specialist help depends on budget surely? A trail camera as Bazphoon noted might do the job, another rung up is a Gopro with external power (think a £20 usb powerbank from Amazon, 2 so you rotate them each morning for a fresh one) or if it's important get a company in to design a rig with higher end cameras / lenses and watch the bean counters cry at the cost.

 

[alfbranch]

You need a fixed point to shoot from and software to stitch it together.
The software that came with my Olympus camera will stitch frames into a timelapse. The Oly will shoot and stitch timelapse in camera.
Fix a tripod head in position and put the camera in place daily firing on a set interval and put together later.

Here is a SOOC timelapse

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkeeSTinx2U

 

[momoka]

Better if we know what the budget may be.

DSLR, in boxes, with PSU, memory cards sufficient to take enough images between card changes, intervalometer, (some cameras have these built in). Secure to a fix point. Consider position to take account of sun position, security lights lights etc to avoid flare and directly shining in to lens. If you can vary the position maybe even better. If you can have more than 1 camera running at a time maybe even better still.

Software. Lots of apps out there to do it. Lightroom is good for batch editing, it can compile the shots into timelapse sequence too. Photoshop can compile timelapse sequence also. LRTimelapse is very good and may help even out variances in sequences of shots.

I've said that but unless you want a straight sequence of all shotys you might also need to edit the compiled sequences so another editor like Premiere Pro or After Effects would do that.

 

[kennysarmy]

Specialist help depends on budget surely? A trail camera as Bazphoon noted might do the job, another rung up is a Gopro with external power (think a £20 usb powerbank from Amazon, 2 so you rotate them each morning for a fresh one) or if it's important get a company in to design a rig with higher end cameras / lenses and watch the bean counters cry at the cost.

It's a high profile project so I could maybe convince those with the money to part with up to say £1.200 for a professional multi-cam final short film.

My worry about doing it ourselves is something going wrong and how to secure the camera from theft!

 

[StewartR]

Chad Higgins is one of the few guys who does time-lapse for a living.
If I were you I'd be contacting him.

http://www.chadchud.co.uk/