Hi everyone,

I'm new to this forum and have a few questions. my intention is to build a modular and robust moco system for timelapse that has the ability to dolly/pan and tilt. if anyone here could chip in their 2 cents i would be very grateful!

ok so heres the plan:

pan & tilt head = MILAPSE Meade head :
http://shop.telescope-warehouse.com/pro ... ductId=119

dolly track = Kessler Cine slider ( this has a crank handle i would modify with a cog or belt to connect to drive system). this cine slider seems like a good option, and we can use it as a regular slider for shooting non timelapse.
http://www.kesslercrane.com/index.php?o ... Itemid=105


dolly movement = The Mumford Time Machine
a rig would be created that could bolt onto the cineslider to control movement. this is probably the bit i am most unsure about.
http://www.bmumford.com/photo/camctlr.html

power : a portable powerpack such as this
http://www.canadiantire.ca/AST/browse/4 ... werBox.jsp

Thanks for your help in advance.

Cheers

Jon

Your approach is basically a variation on many DIY approaches. It may be tough to combine the mumford and the meade head moves together....

We're trying to meet your needs in the openmoco project. It may not seem like much is going on from the outside but we're really working hard on getting a viable autonomous UI (there is already a windows sketch and the 'slim' interface) and hardware ironed out.

If your feeling impatient though, the meade head is a great way to get a feeling for moco and maybe the servo-city type dolly that's been floated around here is a better match for it due to the fact that they are both 'go motion' .

As Jay pointed out, I would not really recommend matching a Milapse head with a Mumford motor, because Milapse is continuous motion and Mumford is a huge stepper table that does "shoot-move-shoot", meaning that it starts and stops before each frame. Just use a simple DC gear motor with a speed indicator (or voltage meter) to drive the slider. Kessler is making a motor-driven one know. In fact, they said they would talk to me about it. I will post any info i get here.

I've mounted a Milapse head to my dolly to do a tilt while dollying, and it looked fine (except for when the batteries on the milapse started to die and it went haywire).

thanks for the quick responses guys!

im not so much impatient to get this to work, more so not confident with building my own motors and electronics. this is why i was going to use the milapse head as it is very much an 'out of the box' solution.

i understand the mumford moves/shoots/moves/shoots and the milapse is continuous. therefore you are only dealing with the motion from the milapse which alot of people have already been shooting with? so will it give OK results in this config?

being a newbie to this realm would i be able to build an openmoco system fairly simply? is there a comprehensive guide to building a system that dollies,pans and tilts? I'll jump in feet first if there is a solution.

rather than the cineslider, i will probably buy the pocket dolly now as it will be more portable. And it also has the belt groove built in
thats really interesting about the kessler motor. do you think they will be making that in the next month or so? as i need to get this system up and running for a project at the end of feb...

cheers

Jon

so where would you recommend i start with the open moco solution?

JP,

Openmoco would require some work at this stage, but it can run any stepper motor-based system out there.

Unfortunately, we don't have a kit or anything available to make it as easy as possible yet, but the first stage is always getting your hardware squared away. You can choose to build a system from scratch (requires the most work, but can be the most rewarding) or retro-fit an existing hardware solution.

To help get you on the right path, I'd need to know a few things, such as your budget range (like, under 1,000, or 10,000 would make a huge difference =) and what sort of environment/types of shots you're most interested in doing.

With that info, I can help steer you in the right direction.

!c

so for budget... i have priced up a milapse/mumford/dolly/power + cables rig for about $2500
this is fine.so thats about the budget...

ive had a few discussions here and the milapse solution seems like a good starting point to play around.
would you say this one is the best to get?
http://shop.telescope-warehouse.com/pro ... ductId=121
or is there an even better milapse head and controller you guys would recommend?

using the pocket dolly from Kessler we will have about 35" of travel. this will be plenty for our portable rig. we are building this rig to capture outside art installations for a project (capture time from 1 hour - 10 hours...). but after that cool scenics etc...
id like to make the system modular so we could adapt the controller units to move the dolly along a 30 foot custom track in the future...

Cheers

for power, this Orion power station looks pretty nice, i dont have specific experience, but it has multiple power plugs of various types and voltages right on the unit

http://www.amazon.com/Orion-Dynamo-Rech ... B001IFS300