25
The traditional cheap solution is a bag of beans.
13
How about one of the cheap Canon PowerShots with CHDK installed?
12
You answer lies in Lightroom and this free software plugin for lightroom http://lrtimelapse.com/
NOTE: this will only work for free for short timelapse segments. Anything over 400 images requires a license.
The great thing about using lightroom for a timelapse is that you can easily crop,edit thousands of images with a simple click. You can then make a ...
12
If you play the video at 30 frames/s, taking one picture/second is a 30x speedup. If your boat sails at 3mph, the time lapse at one picture/second will be a simulated 90mph. How much of a road can you see driving a car at that speed?
Taking the problem by the other end, figure out your "cruise" speed when in a car, divide by the boat speed. This is your "...
11
Ffmpeg will do it. If you have images img001.jpg, img002.jpg, img003.jpg, ... then on the command line do:
ffmpeg -i img*.jpg output.mpeg
There are more options given in ffmpeg --help or man pages, or the web. These allow control over the frame rate and the output format.
11
Aperture: Use the maximum aperture (F1.8 if possible)
Shutter Speed: Use the 600/(focal length * crop Factor)rule so as to not see star trails (Refer here in section 3. Camera settings).
ISO: Highest possible for your camera that you find acceptable.
Milky Way? You can use the application: Stellarium to find out if you are in the right time / place to view ...
11
Well, I answered in the comments but I'll answer here since I'm not liking any of the answers.
You do need to move the camera for a panning time lapse and you used to need a rig, motorized or not, rails or not, to do this movement. There is a new technique called hyperlapse or walklapse which accomplishes this without any extra equipment, aside from a ...
10
There are so many variables regarding power consumption per shot that it is probably a little hard to precisely nail down. In general, shooting raw is understood to require more power than shooting JPEG assuming all other variables are equal. Even when saving image files in a raw format, a preview or thumbnail JPEG is generated by most cameras. So some, if ...
9
First we rename all *.JPG files based on their creation date. Sometimes cameras change the file name or just ordering them is somehow not what we want. However, renaming them by the creation date always work:
jhead -n%Y%m%d-%H%M%S *.JPG
After that we put this list in a file:
ls -1tr | grep -v files.txt > files.txt
And then use mencoder to create an ...
9
You can do it using Magic Lantern software for your Canon. In fact, there's a setting that will save you some shutter opens/closes.
http://vimeo.com/37084470
The camera does not need to be connected to the computer. There is no real danger to the camera. Depending on how long the timelapse is, you may need to have the camera on a power supply, or use a ...
9
If you like programing, I found a link to a python project that will do exactly what you want. It will also interpolate between frames if you are missing a couple.
https://sites.google.com/site/timelapsepy/
9
I'd suggest either plugging it into the wall, a USB port or an external USB based battery. Any of these should be able to provide more power for longer runtime.
9
Other options for uneven surfaces which I like a lot are these ones:
Ballpod
THE pod
RiceQ (their online shop is pretty bad, if you need international shipping I'd suggest to use amazon.de)
9
Hugin has a tutorial on their website, which made for a good starting point.
Tools needed:
Hugin
ImageMagick
Bash shell
Create a Hugin project
Start Hugin and be sure to select Interface > Advanced (Expert will do, too). Go to the Panorama Stitcher window.
Set the Field of View (50° worked well for my smartphone camera), lens parameters and projection ...
9
Taking sequences of periodic images, by their very nature of being periodic, is used to show changes in the scene over time.
Time slice photographs. In particular, Dan Marker-Moore has created some truly beautiful time slice photos. From his site,
A Time Slice is an image that combines series of photos taken from one location over an about of time. Each ...
8
Frequent shooting of the time-lapse videos will eventually wear your shutter, and there is a way to limit that "side effect" other than replacing the shutter when it finally breaks. Remember that time-lapse is meant to be presented only by means of digital displays, like computer screen or a projector, not to be printed, so you don't need the full XX MP ...
8
Assuming a 2 minute video for 7 hrs, at 24fps, 2 × 24 × 60 = 2880 frames in total. So in 7 hours you need to take around 2880 frames, 7 × 60 × 60 ÷ 2880 = 8.75 — you need to take pic every 8.75 seconds. (Some people shoot at more or less fps to create varied effects.)
8
I would look into hacking a GoPro camera/camcorder to use a continuous power source. The GoPro is very well suited to harsh environments, and already comes with a housing that could be utilized. Further, it is very reasonably priced. If you are serious about low light ability, the newest Hero3 Black Edition claims 2x better low light ability then the ...
8
There is a GoPro timelapse contoller available from Cam-Do.
This switches the camera off between each shot, which can give much longer battery life. So it can take hundreds of photos, spread over days or weeks.
This controller is compatible with the HD Hero, Hero 2, and Hero 3 White and Hero 3 Black, but it is not compatible with the Hero 3 Silver.
8
If you don't want your equipment stolen, yes, you (and/or a friend) stay there for however long it takes.
Very long term shots usually make use of some kind of secure box, bolted or chained in place. Depending on the location this can require permission from the relevant authorities.
8
I can't watch your videos at the moment, but if I got it correct they are timelapses of a plant growing while the environment doesn't change or changes very little. It gives the impression that the plant grows fully over a short amount of time, or the the plant and the environment move at different speed.
If my assumption is correct, BBC did this for the ...
8
Several things could be going on. Based on the question as originally written you might have been experiencing buffer congestion. When the buffer is full the camera must wait until enough space has been sufficiently cleared from the buffer as the data is written to the memory card before it can take the next frame. Under such conditions, the "double tap" ...
8
This kind of fast then slow performance (as you correctly guessed) will be because of the image buffer filling up. Using a faster card will help until you reach the limit of the camera's circuitry - you may have reached this limit.
Even if your camera's performance is faster than the SD card. It's quite possible that some of the card's 'bandwidth' is taken ...
8
I don't think you'll find what you're looking for, because: bigger things are bigger than small things. Full-frame cameras are bigger than APS-C cameras Medium format cameras are bigger than full-frame cameras. APS-C cameras are bigger than 1/2.3" format cameras. Just like full-sized pickup trucks are bigger than commuter cars.
I think it likely that you've ...
7
My primary DSLR is a Canon 5D MKII, with an older Canon 450D as a backup body that I use mostly for a set-and-forget timelapse unit with a cheap intervalometer. I've recently moved to using a GoPro HD Hero 960 & GoPro HD Hero 1080p for the TL's I would use the 450D on, although there are very severe limitations. I've got an order in for the new HD Hero 2,...
7
Ha. Nobody mentioned free windows alternatives.
I've been using windows live movie maker with good results. It is as simple as dragging your pictures into the timeline, selecting them, setting a time for each (24 fps is around 0,04 seconds per picture) and exporting :)
(It auto-adds black vertical bars to your 3:2 or 4:3 aspect ratio pictures if you export ...
7
I suspect you might be misunderstanding how an intervalometer works. My suspicion is that the 1 second minimum is the duration between exposures and not the shutter speed. For your example if you'd like a shutter speed of 1/320th of a second, configure that on your camera, and then configure the intervalometer to trigger the shutter however often you like. ...
7
Bulb ramping, or bramping, is a means of automatically adjusting exposure settings to maintain a specific exposure value (EV) throughout the duration of a time-lapse sequence. Bulb ramping intervalometers can be simple and cheap, or complex and expensive, depending on the results they can provide. Cheaper ones, and many DIY projects that you can follow to ...
7
I use ffmpeg for this task. It is a command line program that works well on Windows.
A typical command line would look similar to
ffmpeg -r 15 -start_number 1234 -i DSC_%d.jpg -s 1280x852 -vcodec libx264 output.mp4
This assumes that your files are named according to the pattern DSC_1234.jpg and that the first file is no. 1234. The framerate is set to ...
7
You can use the software "EOS Utility" that comes with the camera. The remote shooting function lets you do time lapse through a connected USB cable.
Advantage:
You have the space of the PC hard disk instead of the flashcard, which is most likely much larger. That is great if you take really long time lapses.
You can also see better what is happening and ...
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