Time lapses are increasingly common in today’s social media/YouTube culture. They make great b-roll for a video and a visually interesting ways to show a landscape or product, but they are time intensive to create. This is why it is best to use multiple cameras to simultaneous film different angles or subjects at the same time to reduce your total filming time.
When I go out and shoot time lapses, I generally use two or more cameras. That way I get more shot options when it comes time to edit and filming does not consume hours of a day.
If I am feeling ambitious, I will also get some time-lapse footage with my Mavic Pro. I have been impressed with the ability of the DJI drones to hold position well enough to capture smooth time lapses from the air and, since audio is not important for a time lapse, I do not need to worry about the sound of the rotors being picked up by the other cameras in a shoot.
Here is the full list of my time lapse kit:
- GoPro Hero 4 Black and Hero 6 Black
- SanDisk Extreme and Extreme Plus Micro SD cards (mix of 64GB and 32GB cards)
- Extra GoPro Batteries
- Canon G9x Mark ii
- 2 Wasabi Power extra batteries
- SanDisk Extreme Plus SD cards (64GB and 32GB)
- Joby Gorilla Pod Large and Joby Gorilla Pod Video with magnetic feet
- Time-lapse rotating tripod head
- Joby mobile phone tripod adapter
- Polar Pro ND filters
- Microfiber cloth and lens cleaning wipes
- Field Notes notebook and Uni-bal Jetstream pen