Someone asked me recently if I’d spent my weekend making time-lapse. When I told them I’d become bored with it, they gasped. The truth is, I’ve been in a bit of a funk since I rented a Canon 7D in December. I’ve gone back to using my point-and-shoot and can’t capture the detail and range of DSLRs.
This is why I’m grateful to Luke Shepard for making his video of Paris at night. After watching this video, I went out the next day to see if I could make something similar.
Shepard’s camera seems to float around the city without the usual constraints of a dolly or crane. The frame rate is about 15-16 fps which works with the small imperfections of movement. Shepard goes into more detail in an article for National Geographic Intelligent Traveler:
I had the camera on a tripod in order to keep it stable and to keep a consistent height. I would aim at one specific spot for an entire sequence. For example, for Notre Dame, I aimed at the center of the big circular window in the front. That spot stays in the same place the whole time. Having that focus point for the image sequences allowed me to stabilize them in post-production. When capturing the images, I took them on specific, pre-calculated intervals of time and distance.
After my first attempt, I can vouch for the need to focus on one point. A spin around a fountain is too much for my usual video filter to handle, so I have to manually align some images.
This is great! Thanks for posting this, I’ve become so bogged down in learning the high end techniques that I may have forgotten to have a little fun. I love the shots in this video, and best of all it looks pretty easy to do. Wonderful technique for traveling long distances with the camera.