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Untethered Time-Lapse

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bensheppard

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Hi there,

What is the a) best and b) cheapest product to allow me to do untethered (no laptop) time-lapse photography?

I'd like to be able to put my 350D on a tripod, and leave the camera to take, for example, 1 shot every minute.

Thanks alot!
 
I have a TC80N3 digital remote which is made for the higher end SLRs (20D,30D...), but had been modified to use with the Rebel series. Basically, you replace the specialized plug with a mini jack...easy to do youself with a trip to radio shack. Resources are:

http://www.deep-sky.co.uk/dslr/dslr.htm
http://www.hapg.org/astrocables.htm

You can program exposures and intervals and # of exposures on the timer. If you set it on bulb, it can control extremely long (> 30 sec) exposures. Just start it and it takes care of the rest.

You can also do it through the serial cable on a laptop, and some control software (like DSLRFocus), but it's more involved.

Rick
 
Thanks for this!

I'm not great with electrorics... so is there a "works-straight-out-of-the-box" equivalent I can buy online?
 
Modifying the cable is easy though. There are just 3 wires in it, and will be 3 connections in the mini-plug. I'm not sure which wires are which, but that can be found online easy enough. Do you know anyone who's handy with a soldering iron?
 
Since the introdiction of the 10D/300D, the astrophoto capability of the Canon cameras has really taken off...I have some pics I took with the 10D here:
http://www.ricksastro.com/Gallery/htm/10D.htm

I used to use the TC80N3, but I now use a small PC to control it via a serial cable and my software treats it the same as a dedicated astro camera.

Rick
 
Hi, I know what you mean. I've been looking for the same thing. I've created a solution, but it involves a little electronics. OTOH, it's dirt cheap (about 30$) and really flexible.

Go to my site: http://patenteux.com/timelapse/timelapse.html

In the timers section I've got the TimeLapseTron v1 (cheezy isn't it?).

Here's a pic:



If you forego all the extra switches and the enclosure, you just need a battery wire and a camera connection wire. You can buy the board already assembled.

Let me know it it works for you.

If you want to see results, check out my time-lapse gallery:
http://www.patenteux.com/timelapse/time-lapse_gallery.html

Cheers!
Phil
 
This is something I reverse-engineered from the specification of the Canon unit. Not as smart as the real thing, but half the price and with a few extra bells and whistles. I should make it clear that I'm not selling it!



--
‘Lose civil liberties or suffer terrorism’ is a dilemma.
‘Which lens should I buy?’ is a choice.
 
Looks good! I've been DYI'ing and made myself a TL unit. My main criteria were portability, long battery life and simple configuration. You can enter the length of time and interval time. It's also able to do long exposures (up to 100 hours if the battery is up to it that is). It has a backlight (with auto powersave) and runs on 2 AAA size rechargeble batteries. I can't add any new features unfortunatly because the flash memory of the microcontroller is so stuffed it has only a few bytes of memory left. A bigger controller wasn't available to me (that could run off 2V batteries).
What's the feature list of yours?
Thanks for sharing!
 
imqqmi said:
What's the feature list of yours?
Thanks for sharing!
Click to expand...
Mine is quite similar, It has the backlit LCD, long battery life (albeit not that long, but I made an AC adapter), keypad and 5 user-defined presets. But one unusual feature is the possibility to change the interval and bulb durations over time, which allows for acceleration/deceleration of the time-lapse. To give you an idea, take a look at the LCD animation:



--
http://patenteux.com
Check out my desktop wallpaper and time-lapse galleries!
 
Thats great! I also had the idea to add ease-in/out to it, but ran out of memory. I'm look for a mcu with more memory that can operate at 2V. Not too many available to me though.

That trigger, is that an input you can use, for expample for a light sensor to activate the timelapse? I also want to add a time delay so that if you want to record dawn you can enter a delay, set it up at night and it starts running just before dawn.
I'll reserve that for v2 :)
El Rondo said:
El Rondo said:
What's the feature list of yours?
Thanks for sharing!
Click to expand...
Mine is quite similar, It has the backlit LCD, long battery life
(albeit not that long, but I made an AC adapter), keypad and 5
user-defined presets. But one unusual feature is the possibility to
change the interval and bulb durations over time, which allows for
acceleration/deceleration of the time-lapse. To give you an idea,
take a look at the LCD animation:



--
http://patenteux.com
Check out my desktop wallpaper and time-lapse galleries!
Click to expand...
 
imqqmi said:
That trigger, is that an input you can use, for expample for a
light sensor to activate the timelapse? I also want to add a time
delay so that if you want to record dawn you can enter a delay, set
it up at night and it starts running just before dawn.
I'll reserve that for v2 :)
Click to expand...
The "trigger" feature is simple. Just press the D button and it truggers the shutter. Nothing really amazing about it. I agree about the time delay, I've been longing for it for the same reasons exactly! In themean time, I plug in my camera and timer to an AC adapter and plug the adapter to a timer (you know, for turning on lights while you're away). I'll eventually get my friend to update it (I didn't design this particular one) and add a delay and a few bug fixes.

The problem is that sometimes making timers is just as fun as making the movies themselves...

BTW, if you want external triggers, look into this one for inspiration. It's AMAZING:

http://www.bmumford.com/photo/camctlr.html

Phil

--
http://patenteux.com
Check out my desktop wallpaper and time-lapse galleries!
 
Yeah that's right. It takes a lot of time but luckily much code from previous projects can be re-used. Most of the parts were done already, just piecing it together and work out the timing and menu part, that took a while. Also optimizing for small memory size to squeeze everything in there was a challenge. Because I chose a particularly small microcontroller, I had too few I/O pins left to connect everything. I had to be creative combining lcd and keypad I/O in a way I never seen before. I didn't expect it to work but it actualy does :)
Thanks for the link!

Not the same subject but also rather interesting stuff: high speed photography. This guy experiments a LOT:

http://users.skynet.be/fotoopa/highspeed_frame_set.htm

I like to try some of that stuff too :)
El Rondo said:
imqqmi said:
That trigger, is that an input you can use, for expample for a
light sensor to activate the timelapse? I also want to add a time
delay so that if you want to record dawn you can enter a delay, set
it up at night and it starts running just before dawn.
I'll reserve that for v2 :)
Click to expand...
The "trigger" feature is simple. Just press the D button and it
truggers the shutter. Nothing really amazing about it. I agree
about the time delay, I've been longing for it for the same reasons
exactly! In themean time, I plug in my camera and timer to an AC
adapter and plug the adapter to a timer (you know, for turning on
lights while you're away). I'll eventually get my friend to update
it (I didn't design this particular one) and add a delay and a few
bug fixes.

The problem is that sometimes making timers is just as fun as
making the movies themselves...

BTW, if you want external triggers, look into this one for
inspiration. It's AMAZING:

http://www.bmumford.com/photo/camctlr.html

Phil

--
http://patenteux.com
Check out my desktop wallpaper and time-lapse galleries!
Click to expand...
 
If you're doing your own microcontroller work for this stuff, you have to check out Parallax's new Propeller chip. Amazingly easy to work with, extremely low power, tons of I/O, and pretty cheap. To give you an idea of the power, just a few additional resistors and you can broadcast chip-generated NTSC to a nearby TV---using a fully generic microcontroller! Never again will I waste my time on some of the other controllers out there.
 
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