Getting new results with new techniques with equipment already in the gear room

Over the winter I had time to go through and play experiment with the equipment in the gear room. I wanted to test different gear that I already owned in ways that were new to me, especially if I hadn’t seen it done before. Capturing time-lapse footage is something that never gets old for me whether it’s a long term time-lapse mounted on a high rise building or just grabbing a quick time-lapse with my iPhone.

While in Nepal I had the idea to run this but was missing a piece of gear and over this winter I finally was able to make this idea come to fruition! The footage above was captured in the studio as a test to see how the DJI Ronin-S would handle in conjunction with the Rhino Evo Motion Slider. Both systems I can configure to run programs and did some tests before setting up the Nikon Z7 to shoot a time-lapse of individual JPG.

The DJI Ronin App allows you to set points and a duration which allows me to pick different points in a scene for the camera to capture. Take for example in the video above, I can pick the window and then gear shelf as points in the app and it will move the gimbal from point 1 to 2 (you can pick a lot more points than just 2) The slider it’s on will move the 24 inches in a smooth continuous motion adding a lot more depth and giving it a kind of parallax feel to it.

There are systems you can buy to create this effect specifically for time-lapse and I have used them in the past and don’t currently have one right now. The results look spectacular and it only took a few minutes of setup time once I learned the in’s and out’s of this rigging.

What equipment have you tested in a new way that you already own?

Enjoy the studio + edit suite tour!