Hey, this is Scott of Photography Banzai.
Today we're gonna look at a 3D printed motion time-lapse device.
Tried it out quite a bit.. See the examples in this video. My friend Pat printed
this out for me. So thanks to him we're gonna get a chance to check this out.
It's on Thingiverse, the username "print fail". Let's see... his actual name is
Fernando Rossi. He has a few examples of his own. It's comprised of two pieces. One for the
GoPro style mount, and then also one to hold the egg timer. Which you have to buy
to use in this. I have a link in the description to the one that we used in
this example. You also need a 608 bearing. You can find those with skateboards or
just any type of online.. on Amazon. I don't remember the exact one in this case but
they're pretty easy to find. There are some quirks with this device. It could
use some revisions with the print. I'm gonna read off what my friend Pat had
issue wise. Said the biggest problem he had printing was with adhesion between
the layers. Especially on small spindle for the camera. That's where the bearing
attaches to. He said it would break at the very base of the stem with little to
no effort. He said do not try to wind the lapser with the two pieces connected
together. Wind it itself and then attach them afterwards.
Otherwise you'll have a good chance of breaking something on here.
He also mentioned with the bearing you want to have a piece of electrical tape
wrapped around this connection point. Because it is a little loose. Just
something there to make it a little tighter so it doesn't wobble when it's
moving. A few quirks I've noticed so far is that egg-timer make some noise, of
course. It clicks while it's rotating and it also does the buzzer thing.
I tried putting some tape around it, but it didn't really help a lot. You're just
gonna have some noise. I also already cracked one of these connection points
with the GoPro mount. It is 3d printing. There's not a lot of flexibility to this
type of plastic. So you have to be careful when you tighten up the
connection point. Of course I'm going to fix this with some glue,
but just things to keep in mind. So I did quite a few examples with the setup. It
was fun to take out and use. Of course, you do have to invest it's quite a bit
of time to doing time lapses... Because it takes some time. In this case I have my
Momba ME10 action camera. It's just a generic third-party action camera. I
have the full-size photos in this case. But I did render them in 1080p with
ffmpeg software. Let's just go over the software a little bit. I was using ffmpeg.
It's a command line tool it's relatively easy to use once you have the command
set up. Of course, I'll show you that on the screen. The main thing to keep in
mind with this command is how many frames you want to use per second. So in
this case I was using between 18 and 24. Depending on how many frames I had of
the time-lapse itself. So depending on how many frames I was able to take with
this time-lapse setup I would use either 18 or 24. With action camera itself I was
using three second intervals. That does not have any relation to ffmpeg in what
frames per second I was using in that. Really I just tried out three seconds
for the first initial time-lapse and it worked pretty well so I just wanted to
stick with that for these examples. Of the description page of the 3d printed
device, he says that it is a reduction ratio of four-to-one so one hour of
time-lapse can rotate 90 degrees. I took this device out three different
times. A few different examples for each one. For the first outing I took it to
Peace Park one of my favorite little parks in (the) Rockford area. To get some
action.. get some motion. I know there's a large road.. quick fast road that I
thought would be good. It did work out pretty well with the angle that I found.
I didn't have any type of way to mount this on a tripod, which is something to
really think about in the future. Because I was using a lot of lower angles.
Getting roadways in this setup, in this situation, is not ideal. But in this
specific case it worked pretty well. And thankfully there were a lot of clouds
that day that were really interesting looking and it added a lot to that
specific time-lapse. For the second outing I did quite a few time lapses on
this one. Some of these really didn't work out too well but we're gonna get to
that. The first one I was at a Sonic Drive-In, which is basically a restaurant
that you can park at and you can eat your food in the car. In this case I had
the time-lapse in my car facing a busy street again. This actually worked out
better than the first one I think. Because you could see the.. cl.. the
cars up close and there's just a lot of action. So that's pretty interesting!
In the second one I was trying to again get some motion with cars. But in this
case it really didn't work out too well. This thing really does need some type of
tripod connection. I probably be taping it to a tripod head in the future just
so I can get that functionality out of it. So in this case I was on the ground
in a brush area. And the angle was not correct so it just looked kind of goofy,
but it is what it is. Definitely good practice. For this next one it was
similar to the previous one in that the device was on the ground, but in this
case the clouds looked more interesting. And I was in the frame for some of the
beginning. But I could see that being pretty interesting for doing some type
of photography outside. You're in the frame the entire time. This last one was
my favorite of the day. There's a large structure at this Park. There's a huge
open window. It's just basically a hole in the structure I could put the device
on. Just leave it there. Has a really nice view. I got the full extended time lapse
in that set up. As long as the clouds work out it could be really interesting
right there...
For the third outing I have two different time lapses that are very
similar. The first one I messed up how the cog was placed. So I didn't get the
full extension. The clouds were really nice in that..rig.. that first time
lapse at the Rock Cut State Park. The second one is basically a follow up with
an adjustment to the device so I could get the full extension. And very similar, but
we're going to put some music on that one you can check out...
Biggest takeaway here is trying to find good spots for time lapses. In this case
with this specific device I really want to mount some type of tripod connection
to it. Tripod head... I'll just tape it on there, whatever works. But I really want
that extension. I don't want to put things on the ground all the time, and I
want to level it off so that it is straight with roadways and whatever else
I'm trying to frame in the time lapse. All that's it it's a fun little device.
It's relatively cheap to try out if you know someone that has a 3d printer. See
if they can make it for you. This thing does need some revisions in the print to
make it perfect, but with a little effort.. a little TLC, you can make it work well
enough. Again, thanks to my friend Pat for printing this out for me and the person
that made the model. Really interesting low-cost device to try out with the
motion time lapse stuff. It's fun to add that extra dynamic to those time-lapse
videos. Hope you enjoy this video. I'm Scott of Photography Banzai. If you did
enjoy the video, please consider subscribing. That helps me out a lot.
Likes and shares help out a lot as well.
Thanks again!
As I mentioned you're gonna
spend a lot of time just waiting for the thing to work, and I did some Pokemon Go
in that area because that's a big hot spot for that stuff. So a good area to do some
Pokemon Go and also motion time-lapse.