Grey Cup Time Lapse Video and Picture

Over 63,000 fans enjoy the 98th CFL Grey Cup with the Saskatchewan Roughriders facing the Montreal Alouettes in Edmonton on November 28, 2010. (Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).

To make this picture and time lapse video I had two cameras mounted up in the catwalk of the light standard on the east side of Commonwealth Stadium.
The time lapse camera was simply a Hero Cam mounted at the center of the catwalk. I set the Hero Cam to take a picture every 10 seconds for the entire game. I then plunked all the stills into Final Cut Pro. The whole video was over two minutes. I cut it down to just over one. For audio I just recorded a few minutes of game action and plunked it under the photos.

To make the wide-angle still image I mounted a Canon 5D Mark-II with a Canon 17-35mm f2.8 using a Magic Arm. I set it to Av mode F8 and turned on +1 / -1 bracketing. I then set an intervalometer to trigger the camera every 30-seconds. So every 30-seconds I had three pictures at -1, 0, +1 exposure.

Why shoot 6 frames a minute you ask? Well I wanted to get a perfect exposure with the sky just right, the downtown skyline silhouetted and all the fans in their seats. I couldn’t be up in the catwalk the whole time to wait for the light to be just right so setting the camera to shoot a few thousand frames is the next best thing. I shot over 48 GB of RAW pictures with that camera during the game for one picture. Well worth it!