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Rochester Public Utilities (RPU) contacted me about creating a video to show the water tower cleaning process. Cleaning a tower is slow work with each tower taking the better part of a day. A time lapse would be a perfect way to show the process. This video condenses one evening and two full days of cleaning into one and a half minutes.
Not knowing what to expect, I brought multiple cameras, housings, lenses and mounts to the first site. I immediately noticed a place I could mount a camera looking straight up. I placed a Brinno TLC 200 Pro in the weather resistant housing and pointed it to the sky, this made for an interesting angle but the camera was too wet most of the time to get much usable footage. The other angle had to from the side but the kit lens is much too wide. I did use the kit lens for the wide angle view at 1:10.
For the close-up view, I decided to use the Brinno 18-55 zoom lens. My final set-up looked like this with the Brinno Pro, 18-55, mounted using a Delkin Fat Geko clamped to a 2x6 and held in place with two sandbags. I ran a strip of gaffers tape from the camera to the board to prevent minor wind shake.
The time lapse cameras were set to capture one image every 5 seconds which I ended up speeding up 200% for the final edit. The climbing views and tower top were shot with a hard hat mounted GoPro Hero 3+ Black. The GoPro footage was also sped up to closely match the pace of the time lapse.
This was a fun project and is a great demonstration of the Brinno's ability to condense time into an interesting video.