A panning or moving shot in a film can add so much more interest over just a static scene. This is especially true in timelapse movies but getting smooth movement over an extended period of time can be tricky. Moving by hand is out of the question so some sort of motorised set up is usually required. After doing a few timelapses recently I decided that I really wanted to add some motion so it was time to lever open the wallet, head off to the internet and do some shopping.
The prices for a motorised pan head range from really cheap home made affairs using a kitchen timer all the way up to “How much money have you got?” After some on-line research I decided on the Movo MTP-20 ( right ) which was a reasonable £70.
In the kit you get the unit itself with a ¼” UNC thread for the camera, a USB power cable, a mobile phone mount and a GoPro mount. It weighs about 400g and can take cameras up to 2kg. Power is from either 4 x AA batteries or from an external 5V supply via the USB cable.
Settings are basic – you select the number of degrees to rotate through, the time interval for the rotation and the direction of rotation. After that press “start” and it rotates. There’s also a continuous rotation mode at seven different speeds.
Example
Because of the overcast weather I’ve only had one outing with the unit so far but I managed to come up with one video that I was happy with:
This is at Burry Port harbour and I was initially only going there to get some cloud movement in the sky. However by chance the incoming tide was just at the right point and so I got some very interesting effects in the water as well. ( It helps to live on an estuary with the 2nd highest tidal range in the world 🙂 ) I used an 8 stop ND filter to get the shutter speed down to ¼s and the whole movie consists of 500 shots at 2s intervals. It was late in the afternoon and quite overcast so the light is a bit flat.
Comments on Operation
There’s not a lot to say about the operation as there are very few controls and they’re all perfectly logical. The only problem I found is that the LCD field of view is not very wide so with the unit set up low to the ground as on the right you have to get down near to the floor to see the settings. The obvious way round this is to tilt the tripod head forward so that the LCD can be seen, set the values then set the head back to the required position. Associated with this problem is the fact that the only feedback when you press the “start” button is that the time display starts to count down which is difficult to see. An audible “beep” or flashing the power LED while the unit was rotating would be useful.
There are markings every 10° on the top which helps in determining the rotation angle. It would have been even more useful if these had been numbered as it’s tricky to count the number of marks while also checking the view in the camera display. I suspect that a white Sharpie pen will fix this problem though 🙂
One thing that initially caught me out is that, as the unit is mounted on top of the tripod head, then it needs to be perfectly level in all directions. I missed this at first and while the movie started level the horizon slowly tilted as the unit rotated. Fortunately the camera has a built in level indicator so checking at the start and end points of the rotation when doing the set up is quite easy.
Verdict
After one outing and some experimenting at home the unit works fine. It has a simple job to do and it does it very well! There are a couple of usability issues that I’ve mentioned above but in reality these are very small and fairly easy to overcome. At this price point I’m not going to complain too much.
From my internet research the best way of doing this sort of movement is to sync the motion and the shutter release so that the camera is stationary when the picture is taken. However this means that your camera and the rotating unit need to be compatible and, anyway, my compact camera doesn’t have a cable release, it’s all done via Wi-Fi. The second best way of doing it is to use a DC motor rather than a stepper motor so that the rotation is smooth but this of course needs some sort of position encoder which will add to the price. Like all cheap units the Movo uses a stepper motor but it looks smooth enough to me. Because of the nature of timelapse movies I find it hard to differentiate jerky movement with what’s happening in the scene but I may experiment with a “normal” movie as well to see if there are any obvious problems.
The unit seems to be well made with the turntable and body made out of metal and the buttons have a reasonable quality feel to them. So now it’s a question of finding some interesting subjects and getting out there and making movies 🙂
The Retired Engineer 