Short Ride in a Fast Machine

(Again, a version of this video has been seen on my other blog. Sorry. This won't happen again!)

I had to try the old time-lapse-movie-from-a-moving-vehicle schtick. I took my camera to work with me with the plan of recording the trip home. I spent my lunch hour trying to decide how I'd set up the camera.

I put the camera on my tripod and stood it on the floor in front of the front passenger's seat. It seemed to be very wobbly there. So I considered the back seat. I moved the front passenger's seat all the way forward and set the tripod in the space between the seats. It seemed rather wobbly there, too. I hadn't brought anything to tie it down (and I haven't figured what I could have tied it to anyway).

I ended up putting it in the back seat.

I set it to take a picture every 7/10ths of a second. I started the camera, got in and took off.

As I drove, I looked in the rear view mirror to see how the camera was managing. It was wobbling but there was nothing I could do. I went around corners rather gently to keep the tripod from tipping over.

I pasted the frames together at 24 frames per second. I was happy with the result. The wobbling isn't terribly apparent in the finished video. I especially like the stop-and-go period just before I got off the freeway. I wish I had had more of the stop-and-go. Maybe I'll try this again some Friday evening when all of San Diego heads north.

This version of the video is slightly different from the one I posted earlier. I didn't put a title at the beginning. And I uploaded a higher resolution version. You can play it in HD! Just select the 720p HD item from the little menu at the bottom right corner of the player. You can expand it or even watch it full screen. Yowza!



When I do this one again I will try to figure out how to secure the tripod in the front seat. Having more of the road visible and less of the car's interior would be more interesting. And I need to remember to set the white balance to something other than auto (I'm getting better at it but I forget). I also forgot to cover the viewfinder. The sun was shining in it as I went down the hill at the beginning and made mucked up with the exposure a bit.