Embedded Lab

Tyler Winegarner and Chris Bordeleau have posted great instructions on their build of Arduino-based motion control rig for time-lapse photography on Makezine Weekend Project section.

If you dig around in your camera’s settings long enough, you’re almost assured to find that it has a mode to create time-lapse videos — those magical, time compressing movies that can turn any hillside or street corner into a lightning-paced dreamscape.

Time-lapse videos by themselves are easy enough to make, but if you do enough of them, you’re likely to get bored with the motionless camera framing. But what can you do here? Having a moving time lapse means moving a camera very predictably, and very, very slowly. You can build a simple panning rig out of a mechanical kitchen timer, but that’s only good if your time lapse is an hour or less, plus, the camera will rotate the full 360 degrees in that hour, further limiting your control.