Recently I bought a GoPro Hero 4 Session. It was a no-brainer over the Hero 4 Black or Silver costing twice as much, and because I mainly use it on my head while mountain-biking so a lighter camera is always a plus. Regardless, I wanted to try it on the roof of my car. It came with an additional flat mount, and I already have it on my helmet, so I decided to use it and make a time-lapse. I’ve never really done time-lapses (don’t know why), but I’ve decided to give it a go.
The Setup
I set up a camera to take 8 Mpx images every 10 seconds. On a previous time-lapse (Zagreb to Pirovac) I’ve set it to take 5 Mpx images every 30 seconds, with a wi-fi turned on. After exactly 4 hours, the battery was almost dead, so I didn’t want to take a risk setting it up to 5 seconds. To my surprise, when I got to my destination, I realized that the battery is half full.
The mount survived the speeds up to 170 km/h with no fuss, but the only problem were the bugs (you can see the spots on some following photos).
The result as you see is nothing out of the ordinary. A simple two and a half hour drive, mainly on a highway watching the sunset. But what is rather interesting are the snapshots on that ride. The camera took over one thousand images, and here are 24 hand-picked and developed in Lightroom with a custom preset I usually use for my photos.
On The Road Again
Born to be wild…
Actually, that caption works better with this one.
Buses can be quite annoying on the road.
Where to go?
In the tunnels camera automatically goes to ISO400 and prolongs the exposure to 1/30, which is perfect for panning shots like this.
Highway tolls – a perfect place to clean the windshield.
First pit-stop (not including the gas-station).
Road that leads to town Senj is a pretty perfect driving road with lots of tight corners and hairpin turns.
Second pit-stop. You can’t see it very well, but the guy on the bike has a predator helmet.
The last beams of sun getting trough the tree branches.
And the Grand Finale: I temped my arrival on the Jadranska magistrala (the main road that goes along the Croatia seaside) around the time of the sun setting down.
And finally, my entry in Novi Vinodolski at 8:35 PM.
Bonus
Off course, I’ve made a few stops once I pulled from the highway. The lens-flare is real BTW.
Conclusion
So what we got here is IMHO an exciting format of content. You can look at it as an entirely automated, boring workflow with a photograph every 10 seconds; but on the other hand, you can see it as an element of luck combined with just a few variables of right timing. Isn’t that what photography is all about?