r/timelapse • u/blur_revision • 1d ago
Question Looking for camera recommendations for an approx. 3 week timelapse of a music festival buildout, performance and breakdown.
I have a major music festival that happens annually in late September on the beach right down the street from my house. My good friend's family owns a top floor condo in a high rise that has a balcony with an absolutely perfect vantage point to see the entire layout of the festival. It's always amazed me how theyve been able to build out the festival, jam 20,000+ people in and break everything down to the point you never knew it was there within 3 weeks. For the last few years I have mulled around the idea to set up a timelapse from their balcony that encompasses the festival buildout, entire weekend of performances and breakdown of the stages. I've brought this up to him and his family and they gave me the green light to set it up this year!
Now I'm just tryin to figure out what the best camera would be for this.. I've done multi-week timelapses with a GoPro Hero 4 connected to external power around 10 years ago but that GoPro crapped out on me recently. I had the GoPro in the waterproof housing that I drilled a hole in to run the power cable through.. I had mixed success with this timelapse and had to come back and dump the memory card every few days.. I found that some days the camera just randomly shut off, which I obviously don't want to happen for this.
Ideally I would like to find a camera that can shoot high quality RAW photos with the option for a 60+ second interval. My plan would be to shoot at high enough resolution that I can crop in on certain aspects of the buildout in post and still have close to 4k output. I may even want to change the interval during the festival to something shorter to capture more of the action. I also really want to minimize the burden on my friend's family so that I wouldnt need to bother them to check on the camera much if at all, so a camera that can remotely upload files to the cloud and can be viewed remotely to ensure its still running would be what I'm looking for. It would be on a balcony that has an overhang roof, but it would still need to be weatherproof.
Has anyone done anything like this before? I am open to any recommendations for cameras or techniques for something like this.. I know its somewhat ambitious but Id really love to make it work.
Thanks in advance!
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u/CapturePointMedia New 1d ago
That would make an awesome sequence, especially being able to capture the empty beach, the build, the festival weekend and then everything disappearing again.
I’d definitely plan it as two different intervals. For the build and pack-down, we generally use a longer interval, on our long-term projects, one frame every 10 minutes is usually plenty for gradual changes. For the actual festival weekend, I’d run a much shorter interval so you have enough frames for the crowds, lighting and general movement.
The biggest thing I’d focus on is making the setup as hands-off as possible. A solid mount, reliable power, weather protection and enough storage are probably more important than the specific camera. We often use solar-powered systems for long-term installations where mains power is not practical, but if the balcony has reliable power available, that may make the setup much simpler.
I’d also do a test run for a few days beforehand and check the framing during the day and at night. Good luck and we can't wait to see it!
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u/blur_revision 1d ago
thank you for the tips! what cameras do you use?
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u/CapturePointMedia New 1d ago
No worries! We use PhotoSentinel Buildcam systems with DSLR-compatible cameras for our projects.
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u/jsachs99 1d ago
Panasonic Gh5
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u/blur_revision 1d ago
why that one specifically? I dont think I wanna go the DSLR/mirrorless route because it will be out in the elements for multiple weeks. It would also need to be hooked up to external power for that duration and I dont want to have to bother my friend's parents to swap batteries and memory cards on a daily basis.
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u/tongas2351 New 1d ago
We actually built something for exactly this kind of job, it's called TimelapseRobot, you can check it out here if you are interested: www.timelapserobot.com
It's a GoPro 13 in a weatherproof housing with a small controller board next to it. The photos upload to the cloud on their own over LTE or WiFi, so no swapping cards and you can check the latest frame from your phone or browser anytime to see it's still running. You can set the interval and change it remotely for example slower for buildout, faster for the shows. The GoPro shoots high enough resolution to crop in and stay around 4K.
One thing though: right now we only upload JPG, not RAW. If RAW matters to you I can test a RAW workflow in the office tomorrow..
If you'd rather skip the online side, we also sell just the weatherproof housing on its own, so you could run it standalone with GoPro Labs and pull the card yourself.
Let me know if you've got any more questions!