Time Lapse Photography

[KenKosowan]

Hello there everybody,

I'm hoping somebody here can help me with a question.

I'm looking for a digital camera that I can do time lapse photography with. I'm looking to take one picture an hour for about 3 days or more. (The specifics for this timing aren't important... just a guideline estimate)

Money isn't really an object and I'm not fussy about whether it's a digital still or digital video camera.

I hope somebody can help steer me in the right direction.

Cheers,
Ken

[jawz]

The Minolta A1 has an 'interval' drive mode that lets you set the interval between shots to 60 min (max) and up to 240 frames (or until the memory card is full).

Read more at: http://www.steves-digicams.com/2003_reviews/a1_pg4.html

[ursa]

there's an article in shutterbug about using an Olympus E-20 for a ten hour shoot with one shot every 3 minutes. I don't have the camera so I can't comment beyond that.

[BillDrew]

What resolution or what output size? What lighting conditions - natural changing over time or steady artificial? Studio or outdoors? Is power avialable?

If power and computer access is available, many cameras can be controlled from a PC. I am pretty sure you are going to want external power to keep a camera alive for three days however it is being triggered.

Watch out for sleep mode. Many cameras will "go to sleep" until a button is pushed with no activity after something like 5 minutes to save batteries.

[slipe]

I am pretty sure you are going to want external power to keep a camera alive for three days however it is being triggered.

I would ask someone with an A1 or other camera capable of interval shots to try it out. The camera is probably smart enough to power up for the shot and then power back down. If you can find it on the new Konica Minolta web site you might try to find a manual and check for yourself. The site is terrible since the merger.

[jawz]

From the A1 manual:

". . .During the interval series, the monitors will be turned off to conserve power. “Int” will be displayed on the data panel and the data- panel frame counter will countdown the remaining frames in the interval series. . . . . .

. . .The camera will stop recording images and reset to the first frame when the number of frames set has been taken, or when the memory card is full. The use of an AC adapter is recommended when recording with long intervals or a large number of frames. "

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I've only played with interval mode long enough to see how it works. I set the interval to 1 minute and the number of frames to 10, and used full resolution, xfine JPEG. (the A1 can also do an interval-mode time lapse movie which creates one movie file and each frame is recorded at 640 x 480 resolution).

As the manual states, the A1 turns off the LCD and/or EVF which are the major power consumers, but there are still parts of the camera electronics that are powered; and of course there is considerable battery energy consumed writing the image files onto the CF card.

The NP400 bat can support several hundreds of shots, and with two NP400s in a BP400, I would think that there would be no need for an AC power source.

[johnson]

I have a Canon G2 and it came with some software called Remote Capture. Ive only used it twice so far and it worked the first time but not the second time. On my first try, it kept the shutter and aperture the same value. For the second time, the camera (or software) kept compensating for shutter speed and aperture. What I was trying to do was make a visual chart for runtime on a SureFire flashlight with P61 lamp assembly. In the pic below, all shots were at 1/8 and F2.



The second time I tried it, the shutter kept going slower and slower making all the pictures the same brightness. In the menu, I can see the settings for AV or TV but thats probably only on G3 or G5 cameras. I am not sure, but Breeze Systems Remote Capture should be better than the one that came with Canon, but is $40 to buy. HTH.

[fun21x]

I'm looking for a time-lapse like capability in a compact, mid-range ( say $300) digital camera. I see several reviews that say theRicoh Caplio R4 has time-lapse, implying an image as frequently as every 30 seconds, but the manual (on-line) mentions only the interval capability, not time-lapse.

The manual implies the interval can be set as frequently asevery 5 sec.

An interval of 5 sec. is very attractive to me, if it can run as a movie. What I'm trying to get is [highlight= #ffff88]timelapse[/highlight] of cloud movement across the sky, andthe 15 sec. interval I currently get using a video camera is pretty rough. 5 sec seems about right.

Does anyone have experience with this feature of the Ricoh R4, or suggestions of other cameras that have time-lapse capability.

[fun21x]

I'm looking for a time-lapse like capability in a compact, mid-range ( say $300) digital camera. I see several reviews that say theRicoh Caplio R4 has time-lapse, implying an image as frequently as every 30 seconds, but the manual (on-line) mentions only the interval capability, not time-lapse.

The manual implies the interval can be set as frequently asevery 5 sec.

An interval of 5 sec. is very attractive to me, if it can run as a movie. What I'm trying to get is [highlight= #ffff88]timelapse[/highlight] of cloud movement across the sky, andthe 15 sec. interval I currently get using a video camera is pretty rough. 5 sec seems about right.

Does anyone have experience with this feature of the Ricoh R4, or suggestions of other cameras that have time-lapse capability.

[Ronnie948]

Find a used Nikon 8700, It will do the job.