Five week time-lapse

B

Bowen

Active member
I have a job coming up part of which is to make a time-lapse film of a 5 week interior construction project. If someone has done a long time-lapse shoot like this before, maybe with the 170, then I am concerned about a couple of aspects.

One being the camera being connected to power for 5 weeks. I am thinking that power to the camera should be turned off each night?

Then there is the concern with bumping when switching off etc, though pressing the "joystick" down should be okay. I have not checked yet if this can be done using the remote. Then power off at the wall outlet? It will make a difference to the cost obviously if I need to attend the camera every day.

Also what sort of time interval might be used for a good result? It's an 8 hour construction day x 5 days x 5 weeks. The final movie can be whatever length I choose. I'm thinking maybe 4 minutes which would give me an interval of 1 frame every 2 minutes.

Naturally I'll be doing some experiment, but if someone has a few pointers from their own experience, I'd appreciate a few clues so I'm not re-inventing the wheel.

Thanks for reading
 
Definitely check on that camera as much as you can(the very least at the beginning and end of the workshift). If it's a paid gig it's rather important. Might be wise to get a gopro camera to cover your a$$ just in case. Make sure the power you are connected to is isolated from the construction workers' power. Construction work can cause a lot of electrical breakers going off, which would screw your shoot if the power goes down. Put orange cones or police tape around your tripod so know one bumps it, or comes anywhere close to the cam. Also put plastic over it as a emergency wetness protector. This is why you may want to be there as much as possible, anything can happen on a construction site.

As far as intervals go, I might shoot more frames per minute, you may find an hour during lunchbreak that is boring or an hour of an inspector staring at a beam(also boring), then you may find a process that would benefit from more detail in its action. Also, turn off the red tally lamp so you dont get construction workers timing themselves to smile or wave at the camera. I filmed a bamboo floor going in once and had workers scooting around the floor and spinning at one point. Anyways, best of luck to you, I know my advice is a bit overprotective but I get that way about 4000dollar investments. Hell, if it were me I'd ask them if they needed any laborer/grunt work so I could have an eye on my cam at all times and make another paychecl!!!! peace out
 
Thanks for that - esp. re shooting more frames etc.

The longest single clip I have shot was three hours for a concert, and the P2 cards can get pretty warm. Anybody know is it safe for the camera and cards to leave them connected to the power and running for 8-10 hours a day?
 
You may be better off going with a dslr for this job. Maybe look into a used gh1, or t1i, for three hundred bucks, (doesn't need to be hacked for this) with an intervolometer. You can set it to snap a pic when you want it to. For five weeks, your most likely not going to need as many pics as you would say of a sunset where you would need a pic every second or two. Heck for five weeks, you may be able to get away with a pic every five minutes or so. Make sure to test before you do anything, im not a timelapse guy, so please don't take this as gospel, im brainstorming to try and help you out.

To be honest, I wouldn't want to leave my hvx200 un-attended at a construction site for five hrs, never mind five weeks if you know what I mean. There's all kinds of potential HAZARDS, that could cause a broken or lost camera. Power surges could be an issue. So make sure you always use a surge and spike protector. You may want to consider making a wooden box with a window, this would help with the dust factor, not to mention having it stolen, or knocked over. Just an idea to keep the camera protected. You could even put a small fan in there to keep the air moving and keep it running at a lesser temperature. I would outline where the box sits on the ground, this way you can put it in the exact same spot every time you need to get in there to get footage from the cards.

Also, make sure you charge accordingly, this is going to be a lot of work. Cutting this will take a good amount of time. Plus the wear on the cam, is something to consider. Good luck with the shoot, I hope some of what I posted can be useful, if you haven't already thought of these things. Make sure to post the finished project, im curious to see how a five week timelapse will look.
 
I work int he Solar industry and we use plant cams for our time lapse of the installs. http://www.cleanairgardening.com/timelapse-plant-cam--.html. You can set the interval you want. You can even set them to automatically turn on and off at the end of the day. Its designed to make a time lapse of plants growing, but works great for construction as well. It runs on batts that last quite a while so its pretty much set it and forget it. At the end of your time you just need to use software to stitch the pictures together at the desired frame rate. (Quicktime pro works pretty good for this) Even pretty low MP is above HD video quality so the plat cams are fine for an HD video. At 80-90 a piece, its a time lapse bargain. Its also water proof and can handle being doped occasionally.

I would NEVEr use a hvx 200/170 for extended time lapse. Assuming a 5 day week and 8 hour days you would be putting over 200 hours on you hour meter. IMO based on camera cost and expected life each hour is worth $1.70 so using you 200 would basically cost you 340 in camera life. Even a dslr is susceptible to a lot of damage on a site and is a bit more expensive.

We recently used 3 of the 80 dollar plant cams with 8 gb sd cards for a commercial project that took 3months to install. Cards needed to be replaced every week, but we were shooting 12-14 hour days at 30 sec interval. We would off load to exturnal hard drives. One we were done we stiched all the pictures into 3 movies. For the final product we used avid's multicam editing and some super fast frame rates to come up with a 10 min movie. The DOF is pretty wide but the plant cams do decently well in almost nay lighting. They are 100% auto so you cant fine tune them, but they still do pretty well.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, But I'm pretty sure The hour meter should not go to 200hours, unless the camera actually filmed 200hrs. Should count how much footage that was actually captured. good call on that wingscape cam, thanks, RVE!!!
 
As long as the camera is on the operational meter clicks up. I'v only done 4.5 hours of actual recording on my hpx170 and the operational meter says 10. That includes set up time, offloading time etc. Good luck with the windscape cam...they work great for us.
 
Wingscapes "project-cam"

Wingscapes "project-cam"

Thanks for the tip Richter Video Equipment. I have studied the "project-cam" at the web-site you linked and it sure looks like it might be a great answer. I have just sent them an email to see if they'll ship to Oz and we're in business. The project is a good way off so there's plenty of time for testing.

Thanks again - it really looks like it's made for the job and saves all concern about the 170 etc. If it works as good as it seems then I owe you a beer!
 
lol, i hope it works for you. I mean, the optics certainly are not as good as a 3ccd hpx 170, but it will prob work. if windscapes doesn't sell direct you your area, check amazon or google shopping, they have tons of resalers.
 
@ Richter: As far as mounting the Camera in a place and way that it will not change the focal points or framing: I have done something similar several times in the past. Keep it super simple here. Find a place where you can make a permanent mount. An I-Beam in the plant or on location is usually a great place. It isnt going to move or go anywhere because it is part of the structure. If you can, have someone help you fabricate a fast pan/tilt mount out of a couple Solid Metal L brackets. If you bolt them to the I-Beam, you can get your camera setup and bolt it all down. If you build it right, you will make access to the battery and Card without having to unbolt anything. Think out of the box here. Look for a place you can bolt your camera down permanently, and reverse engineer the mount-up, from there based on your needs. Im doing some stuff in my backyard with a year long time lapse sequence. I cemented a 4x4 post into the ground, and fabricated a mount out of scrap steel. (lots of L brackets with various holes drilled in them) To Date, my shot has not changed in over 5 months and I dis-mount the camera every day for other uses. (actually, it did shift a little due to all the rain we have been getting in Ohio, but you get the Idea) It also helps to use an SLR with a Prime on it. Less chance for focal/framing changes over the period of time it is setup.

Hope this helps.

David
 
for huge solar projects we need to move them every few days so the area your working on remains in frame. we used standard tripods. for a construction job like the OP mentioned a more permanent mount would be better. The windscape cams have a tripod mount on the back and bottom so mounting is pretty flexible. You can also mount to a tree if there is one nearby.
 
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