moco

When building a motion control rig for timelapse, gigapano, or other photographic motion control, it is important to first establish which type of motion technique will be appropriate for your project. You must know which technique(s) you wish to employ before beginning motor selection and overall system design.

While some of the techniques described here will be well-known and agreed upon by the time-lapse community and others, some are purely hypothetical and crafted to encourage experimentation and thought on the subject.  Please feel free to add any additional techniques, or discussion as a comment to this article.

The term 'Moco' is short for 'Motion Control' (wikipedia).  In general motion control is precise mechanical movement of objects, in our case the object is a camera.  The basics of photographic or cinematic motion control are to achieve predictable accurate camera movement and thus smooth changes in point of view.  Moves can be made up of a pans (horizontal turn), tilts (vertical turn), dollys (linear travel), rolls (circular camera movement), booms (long arm cantilevers) or any combination of these movements.  Photographic and cinegraphic moco can also include control of lens functions such as zoom and aperture.  The apparatus that makes all these automated movements and adjustments possible is typically called the 'rig' (which can also refer to non automated or hand driven camera apparatus).