360° Time Lapse

Passo Gardena

Passo Gardena is an alpine mountain pass at 2121m altitude. Located in the South Tyrol's Dolomites it is known for it's breathtaking view on the 3181m high mount Langkofel and connects the Gardena valley with the villages Selva and Corvara. Dive in and enjoy the glowing alpine panorama as the sun sets.

Lago di Misurina, Misurina

At 1756m altitude the Lago di Misurina is one of the most visited alpine lakes. It is very popular for it's location right at the foot of Tre Cime. In 1956 it was the venue of the olympic figure skating challenge. With little light pollution it is a good spot for nightsky photography.

Tre Cime

The Tre Cime are probably the most famous mountain panorama of the Dolomites. Well known for three spikes rising up to the sky, they have their peak at 2999m altitude. We decided to capture the stunning beauty of this alpine panorama from the back of the Tre Cime right above Rifugio Auronzo, a safehouse for hikers.

Tre Cime II

On our way back down the Tre Cime we came across a little waterfall and we wanted to give just another perspective of the beautiful Dolomites. As the point of view is shifting now you can see two of the three spikes of Tre Cime rising to the sky.

P. San Marco, Venice

Venice, known as the floating city is absolutely unique. This city is always worth a visit, just to get a subtle feeling for it's extraordinary flair and atmosphere. Piazza San Marco reflects this atmosphere perfectly with its sights like the Doge's Palace, the Torre dell'Orologio or the Campanile.

P. San Marco II, Venice

To capture what is so special about the atmosphere in Venice we went out to shoot not only at Piazza San Marco itself but also right at the waterside next to it which is called Piazetta San Marco. The Piazetta is dominated by two columns which are dedicated the saints Marco and Tadore.

P. San Marco III, Venice

When daylight vanishes in the course of the blue hour and all the spotlights on Piazza San Marco turn on the Piazza starts to look completely different. Especially the Procuratie which surround the Place from three sides are contributing to the wonderful lighting mood.

Punta San Vigilio, Lago di Garda

The Punta San Vigiliio is a small tongue at Lake Garda. On the peninsula there is the Villa Guarienti di Brenzone with its guesthouse Locanda di San Vigilio. It has become a popular hotel for famous guests like Great Britain's Prince Charles or King Juan Carlos from Spain.

P. Duomo, Milan

The Piazza del Duomo is the main square at the heart of Milan. It is dominated by the huge Milan Cathedral and surrounded by other famous architectural masterpieces like the Royal palace and the iconic Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele II, one of the world's oldest shopping malls.

Via Orefici / Via Torino, Milan

Milan is the worlds number one fahsion metropole. Also traffic in Milan with its tramway network, the motorcycles, cabs and cars is really vivid. The crossing at Via Orefici and Via Torino just next to Piazza Duomo is a great place to experience the pulse of Milan.

Varenna, Lago di Como

Varenna is a pictorial little town at the eastern shore of Lake Como. With its medieval city center and the Mediterranean flair of the water front, Varenna is one of the most popular destinations at Lake Como and offers a stunning view on the lake.

Lake Sils, St. Moritz

Lake Sils is an alpine lake in the upper Engadine valley, located close to St. Moritz, Lake Silvaplana and the Maloja pass. It is at an altitude of 1797m above sea level and is surrounded by colossal, over 3000m high mountains. In the summer the lake is a popular destination for windsurfing because of the steady wind.

Making Of insight

For our project we used three Canon 5D Mark III DSLRs with the Canon EF 8-15mm 1:4 L Fisheye USM lens to shoot our timelapses. We arranged them in a 120° angle on a selfmade metal plate. Since the canon fisheye lenses are able to cover 180° horizontally, using three cameras provided enough visual overlap to stitch the footage in post production. We used SanDisk Ultra SDXC Class 10 cards with an actual maximum writing speed of about 19MB/s.

In the following we would like to tell you about some challenges that we encountered while shooting:

Due to the fact that the three cameras are not positioned at the same nodal point, there is a parallax shift between each camera. This is critical when it comes to objects close to the cameras which therefore are very susceptible for stitching errors.

Another problem of the cameras being slightly away from each other is that a small part of the sky is missing. Sometimes this is not visible in the finished timelapse videos, but sometimes especially when clouds are moving above it is very obvious as you can see in the image below.

We started each camera simultaneously with the same shooting interval. However in the course of shooting the cameras desynchronised and shot with an offset. The longer we shot the worse was the offset. We believe the cause for this offset is a different writing speed of the cameras on the card.
In the image below you can see the synchronisation issue really well: While the tram is there on the left side, it isn't on the right because the right camera is not synchronised with the left.

Shooting in 360° doesn’t allow one to adjust camera settings while shooting as you would obviously walk into the picture. That means when light is changing a lot you can only counteract in the post. At certain circumstances when we expected a lot of change in light, like for example at a sunset, we set our cameras to bracketing via ISO-shift. Like this we got a second image for every picture taken that would be right exposed by the time the light had changed. In fact we only used this technique very few times.

Contact insight team

Feel free to email us to provide some feedback on our project or ask questions!