Today’s photo is of my GoPro camera setup for my first long-term timelapse production I’m doing for the Habitat for Humanity of Hopkins County. They’re building a duplex and I’m shooting a timelapse on the whole project that will be shown at their fundraising banquet later this year, and other locations I’m sure.
I’ve done short things before, but this is my first long-term project. So far the camera has taken about 22,000 still photos that have been combined into a total of about 9 minutes of video. With the exception of bad weather, (crews don’t work), that represents 8 days of shooting from about 7am till about 3:30pm everyday. Tomorrow is the last day of the blitz, where they get the duplex built, under roof and most of the exterior building work. There’s been a group here called “Care-a-vaners” that go around the U.S. spending two weeks at different Habitat sites doing this. They’ll leave this weekend and local crews will take over from where they leave off.
Since most of the work is moving into the inside, I’ll be placing another GoPro camera inside one of the duplexes to shoot sequences of the inside work as well.
For those friends of mine that are wondering about how I powered this camera for so long without using AC power, it’s because of the battery you see on the pole here. It’s a Allpowers 20,000mah Power Bank Universal External Powered Backup Portable Battery Charger that’s designed to charge cameras and phones using a USB cable. I bought it off Amazon for $25 and it does a fantastic job of keeping the camera and WiFi batteries fully charged as the camera works through-out the day. It has five LED lights on it to indicate it’s power level left and I think the longest the camera ran for was 9 hours straight and the lights only dropped to three, which indicates that I still had 60% of the power left. If you use a GoPro to do timelapse and are looking for an alternate power source, this really works. However, the battery isn’t waterproof. I covered the battery with heavy plastic on the days rain was in the forecast. I used a underwater housing from GoPro and had to modify it (cut and opening) so I could plug-in the USB cable from the battery. After plugging it in I wrapped duct tape around the plug to insure that rainwater didn’t get into it. It worked like a champ as it’s rained on the camera and battery several times during the shoot so far.
Here’s a link to the battery: Amazon
After all the shooting is done and the video is edited, I’ll be sure to post it here on my blog.
Photo shot with the iPhone 5s and post processing was done in Snapseed.
