Time lapse from the windshield

Yesterday I had an all-day meeting in Mt. Union – about an hour and ten minutes from here. I managed to put together a quick-rig to keep my DSLR on my truck’s dashboard and decided to try shooting a sequence of images during the drive.

My dash-mount rig:

The “mount” cost me all of about $5 ($1 for the sponge and $4-ish for the sticky-mat that I put underneath it). I cut out a notch for the DSLR in the sponge to give it a somewhat ‘safe’ seat for the drive and I lashed it to the sponge with a piece of para-cord I had.

My trip TO Mt. Union was my first-chance at a driving time lapse. I set the camera to shoot every 5-seconds. I was disappointed when I managed to export the shots into video format:

I decided to adjust and try to shoot a time lapse on the way home, too, so I set it to take a shot every 2-seconds this time, hoping for a more ‘fluid’ time lapse.

It’s definitely more “fluid”, but still needs some refinement.

What I’m learning:
I think I need to put the camera back on “auto” settings as far as shutter speed – it’s amazing how much the light-changed outside in just an hour-drive! By the time I got home last night the images were super-dark.

I also think 1-second intervals for something like driving is necessary to achieve the best results. This makes me nervous, however, because I captured nearly 2000 images for the trip from Mt. Union to Shippensburg and that was with shooting once every 2-seconds. 4000 images for an hour+ time lapse will probably max-out my little 8GB SD memory card.

I’m definitely still learning and can’t wait to use this method next week as we decorate the church again this year for Christmas!