Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Last weekend I had a blast riding again in the Krewe of Centaur Mardi Gras Parade. And this year I took advantage of the situation and decided that I wanted to mount a camera on our float and make a time-lapse video of the parade and surrounding events. The Centaur management gave their support for the project along with the float co-lieutenants ........ my wife and father-in-law.

This year's Centaur Parade theme was "Centaur TV Land," a tribute to great television. So after we had finished building our "Cheers" float, I added some structural braces to firm up the spot above our float where I planned to shoot the images. Along with the braces I used 2x4's to build a custom solid bracket for the camera that would show riders and the crowds of the annual parade through our pool 10.5 mm Fisheye Nikon lens.

I used a Nikon D2H and the built in timer (intervalometer) to shoot an image very 30 seconds. I started making images a few days before the parade when we went up with other float members for our "float loading" where we unload boxes and boxes of beads, cups and various other throws onto the float in preparation for the annual parade that draws several hundred thousand people.

On parade day I arrived at the den about 7 am to help move the floats downtown and mount my camera. I was able to get the camera into position and start shooting before the doors opened. The camera shot frames from that point on throughout the day .......... and I only had to change the battery a few times, which was a good surprise.

During the parade I also gathered audio with a Sony digital audio recorder for the movie.

I then used Photo Mechanic to downsize the images and get them together for the making of the video. I used QuickTime Pro and iMovie to complete the project that ended up with more than 2,000 images compressed into a 3 minute time-lapse video. If I had it to do over again about the only thing I would change would be to bump up the intervalometer to at least every 15 seconds. I was able to compensate for that by just reaching up to fire off extra frames (when needed) throughout the day, then the camera's intervalometer would automatically go back to the original settings. It would also be very nice to have a AC adaptor to use instead of batteries and a charger.