This post on the making of the official Nikon D850 time-lapse ‘Hercules Rising’ is by Marsel van Oosten (website | facebook | twitter | instagram | flickr | 500px):
The making of the official Nikon D850 time-lapse ‘Hercules Rising’
Introduction
Late 2016 I got a phone call from Japan asking whether I would be interested in shooting a night time-lapse video for the global introduction campaign of the new Nikon D850. It’s not every day that projects like this come along, so to say that I was excited would be an understatement. This article is about the making of the time-lapse video Hercules Rising and about my experiences with the D850 in the field.
Hercules Rising (click on the icon in the lower right corner to watch full screen).
The locations
As my wife Daniella and I plan our photo tours two years ahead, it was a challenge to wiggle it into our schedule. By picking locations that were very close to where we would be, we minimised travel time and made it work. After giving it some thought, I decided to pick three different types of trees as the main subjects: camel thorn trees, quiver trees, and baobabs. Every year in May/June we are in Namibia for our Namibia Untamed photo tour, and that’s where two of our three shooting locations were – the camel thorn trees and the quiver trees. For the baobabs, we picked a remote location in the Botswana desert. If you’re not familiar with these countries, here’s where they are on the African continent:
Namibia and Botswana are located in Southern Africa.
The Gear
Over a period of several months, I had weekly Skype calls with Tokyo to discuss the new features of the D850 and how I would be able to use them. We had a limited amount of time for the entire project, so I asked for five D850 bodies: two to put on motion sliders, two for tripods, and one for shooting behind the scenes video. At the time there were only eight prototypes in the world, yet Nikon decided to give me four of them. They also sent me a 24/1.4, a 20/1.8, a 24/1.8, an extra 24-70/2.8 and two extra 14-24/2.8 lenses. Add to that vertical grips for all D850 bodies, my own D5, D500, 80-400 and 200-400, and you end up with a nice cabin luggage challenge.
Chargers, batteries, D850 (4x), D5, D500, battery grips, 14-24 (3x), 24-70 (2x), 70-200, 80-400, 200-400, 20/1.8, 24/1.8, cards, and the remote cords I didn’t use.
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