Time lapse of indoor construction site
 

I am looking for some ideas about how to shoot the renovation of a building for 16 months, the length of the construction. My client wants to shoot the progress of the construction. I was thinking of installing some cameras to capture this. Anyone have any ideas of how to accomplish this?

Re: Time lapse of indoor construction site
 

I put a Canon Rebel in a plastic mailbox with the back cut off, and had a intervalometer snap a photo every 20 (?) minutes. I ended up (manually) deleting all the photos between 6pm and 7am when there was no work going on. The camera battery would last about 6 days, I changed it out Monday mornings and it would die Saturday afternoon, but I'd leave it dead over the weekend (this also helped cut out photos I'd have to manually weed out). This was 6 years ago, and just when miniature solar panels were becoming a thing. If I did it again today, I'd probably rig a solar panel to charge a camera battery, and then rig the camera battery to the camera, so the camera would run even without sun, and the battery would continuously charge. If you could get that to work, you would theoretically never have to visit the site, because a huge memory card and never-ending power would get you through 16 months.

That's the technical part.

The psychology part is that nobody cares about your goofy timelapse, they will unplug your extension cord, move your scaffold, block your shot, attempt to steal your camera, and knock over the enclosure not because it was in the way, but for the sheer joy of watching the enclosure tip over and explode into pieces. I had it written into the contract that the client was responsible for security and replacement. I'd recommend that. Also, the once-a-week visit mitigates risk and allows you to make friends with the supervisors and examine images. I didn't know what to charge for it so I basically charged for what I thought months worth of weekly visits should cost, and they didn't balk, so that's what it cost.

Re: Time lapse of indoor construction site
 

Some great advice. Thanks

Re: Time lapse of indoor construction site
 

I'm in the midst of a 3-year long timelapse on a rooftop. I built a waterproof enclosure out of a Pelican 1300 case (which is the perfect size for a 5D.) I also built a custom intervalometer using an Arduino, so I could schedule the shots to not trigger on weekends and at night. Power is house power going into a 12 volt UPS using a marine deep cycle battery, although if I had more budget I would have gotten a large solar panel to charge the battery.

Re: Time lapse of indoor construction site
 

How often do you check on it? I could have figured out something to make mine go longer than a week at a stretch, but I was paranoid that 4 hours after I left something bad would happen and I'd loose a month's worth of shots.

Re: Time lapse of indoor construction site
 

I have the property manager's assistant going up every 2 weeks to download cards for me. I gave her a tutorial on how to do it. I've lost 6 days of shots so far when the GFCI outlet it was plugged into tripped and she didn't notice until the battery went flat.

Weekly or bi-weekly visits should be fine. I go in person about every month or so for mine.

Re: Time lapse of indoor construction site
 

Edward Im sending my drone up looking for your timelapse rig, Im in valley village

Re: Time lapse of indoor construction site
 

The camera is actually downtown shooting the 6th Street Bridge construction. That's why I'm glad I have someone downloading cards. I don't want to drive down there more than I have to.

Re: Time lapse of indoor construction site
 

Hi,
Any interest in selling me a intervalometer?

[QUOTE=Edward Carlson;1915237]I'm in the midst of a 3-year long timelapse on a rooftop. I built a waterproof enclosure out of a Pelican 1300 case (which is the perfect size for a 5D.) I also built a custom intervalometer using an Arduino, so I could schedule the shots to not trigger on weekends and at night.