Satlapse Uses High Flying Drones For Bird’s Eye Timelapses

Here is something we have not seen drone’s do yet. A timelapse. Photographer Jamie Brightmore used a “GPS enhanced” DJI Phantom 2 to put a GoPro Hero 4 at a constant position in the sky and take timelapse sequences from a constant position. He calls this project SATLAPSE. While this is an experimental project, he results are quite interesting.

There is an inherent advantage to shooting timelapses vs. expediting video footage, the main one is the ability to use long shutter speeds, or even add an ND filter and gain long exposure on sunny days.

Jamie shares a short explanation on the technique:

Why is it called Sat­lapse? Using wide angle cam­eras, facing down, at 350-400ft in the air cre­ates shots that look like satel­lite images. A coin­cid­ental nicety; in order for a small remotely piloted air­craft sys­tem (RPAS) to main­tain a stable hover, it uses dir­ect com­mu­nic­a­tion with satel­lites in Earth’s orbit (GPS).

So what’s dif­fer­ent about this tech­nique? Firstly, the shots are com­pletely static with any sign of sta­bil­isa­tion elim­in­ated as much as pos­sible. No mean feat con­sid­er­ing the fact it’s all shot using a small RPAS hov­er­ing in one spot for sev­eral minutes! Secondly, this is true timelapse, in that you are tak­ing frame-by-frame images as opposed to speed­ing up video foot­age. This allows the shut­ter to be dragged using ND fil­ters as is prac­ticed in reg­u­lar timelapse work

Jamie also advises to make sure you are flying at a safe (and privacy friendly) height and at a location that will pose no danger:

Here is the question, when will we have a battery technology efficient enough that a viewpoint like this would sustain in air for more than a few minutes. Maybe a device like Fotokite is the obvious solution here.

[SATLAPSE – Aerial Timelapse Cinematography | Jamie Brightmore via SATLAPSE ]