You can get similar controllers for the Olympus E-P1, E-P2, and E-PL2. The E-PL1 does not support a wired shutter release.
On some of the Panasonic cameras, I believe come with a fake battery that you can attach the battery charger wires to and plug the camera into the wall. I'm not aware of a similar system for Olympus.
The E-PL1 at least can employ the "anti-shock" feature, which is a delay to the shutter release, so, if the shutter button can be held down mechanically then FPS based on shutter delays of 1/8 sec, 1/4 sec, 1/2 sec, 1 sec, 2 sec, 4 sec, 8 sec, 15 sec or 30 sec can be used. As for how long the battery lasts under those conditions, I can't say, only ever fiddled with some short sequences.
You have full manual control in timelapse mode.
I get about 600 sequence shots out of my D700 in TL mode per battery... but, the time will be dependent on many factors including interval.. i bet you cant leave your camera on for a whole year with 1 day intervels.
I use Sony Vegas to timelapse.. i set the import photo time to 0.033 seconds and turn Quantize Frame off (you get the flickering if you leave this on). then you just drop your image sequence in and its basically ready to render. ... it you want to apply fancy video effects, you can export as uncompressed AVI (HUGE FILE) and owrk on that.
I assume you mean in timelapse still mode. Do the D700 or 5100 allow time elapse with manual shutter control in their video modes too? The few consumer videocams with time-elapse seem to use an auto setting and cannot shoot starry skies at night. A moon will blow out, unless you zoom so close that the earth's rotation will cause it to leave the frame after just a few shots. On a moonless night, you get no stars but only noise. To obtain stars that appear to move (as the earth rotates) one would need manual tools to set ISO low and set the shutter speed to five seconds or more.
Do Nikons with time elapse turn off or go to "sleep" mode between shots when the time-elapse interval is over, say, 1 shot / 10 seconds? Otherwise, one would think that to keep the camera in full ready mode would wear down the battery within three hours. As you might guess, I'm trying to figure how to "compress an entire night into perhaps 20 seconds, as simulated in some planetariums. One might need a second camera, or get up pre-dawn and shorten the shutter time, as sunrise approaches.
Not sure about tl in video mode. Although, i would think that using the still image capture mode would be far surperior to using video mode... esp. for DSLRs since their sensors are not designed for video.
No, i think it stays on all the time. I consistently get 1500-2000 shots with my D700... which is why the battery drains so fast.
