How To Build a Programmable Time Lapse Motion Control Platform For $150
Aug 6, 2015
Allen Mowery
Allen Mowery is a Nationally-published Commercial & Editorial Photographer with over 20 years of experience. He has shot for major brands as well small clients. When not shooting client work or chasing overgrown wildlife from his yard, he loves to capture the stories of the people and culture around him.
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Time lapse videos are incredible beasts, especially when coupled with dynamic angles and camera movement. However, purchasing a motion control rig for creating time lapse movies is not always in everyone’s budget. But creating one typically is! In this detailed and uber-awesome tutorial, the geniuses at Make show us how to build a self-contained, motorized platform for panning your camera throughout a long time lapse sequence…for $150!
While the tutorial relies heavily on some technical know-how, the finished product is absolutely beautiful and functions flawlessly.
The idea here was to create a device that would allow a photographer to better control the panning of their time lapse footage without breaking the bank. While a kitchen timer can work great for a DIY panning platform, it is limited to no more than one hour, and you can’t change the rate or speed of the pan.
Using an Arduino micro controller and keypad interface, this device allows you to control the speed of the panning motion while setting the duration for periods of time up to 12 hours. Running off USB power (including those power sticks to energize your drained cell phone in an emergency), this pretty much allows you to set thing up and leave it alone knowing that it will keep chugging away on its own.
As I said, this tutorial is a bit on the heavy side and involves a lot of drill press precision. But, if you have the tools on-hand and the expertise necessary, it sure beats spending a fortune on a similar apparatus.
Head on over to Make to get the full tutorial and to download the templates for the project!
[“Build a Motion Control Rig for Time-Lapse Photography” by Make]
Allen Mowery
Allen Mowery is a Nationally-published Commercial & Editorial Photographer with over 20 years of experience. He has shot for major brands as well small clients. When not shooting client work or chasing overgrown wildlife from his yard, he loves to capture the stories of the people and culture around him.
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5 responses to “How To Build a Programmable Time Lapse Motion Control Platform For $150”
The Arduino platform is useful for all kinds of interesting camera control. You’re only limited by what your camera can accept as commands by USB / WiFi.
Joep Hoeijmakers
Cool and thorough tutorial. Arduino is pretty awesome if the time is taken to learn it (something which I didn’t do)
That being said, this is quite a bit of work and a fair amount of skill is required to build something that you can only use for timelapses consisting of photos taken with fast shutter speeds. A true timelapse motor stops between each motion to allow a sharp photo to be taken. For just panning, I’d much rather just get something like the Alpine Labs Radian or a CamRanger MP-360 for a bit more and have crucial features like mobile control, bulb settings, ramping, and proper pan and stop shooting.
With another cable, an opto-switch, and a bit of programming this system could provide all the functions you mention.
Read my mind