prolonged time lapse summer garden cam

mforrest wrote:

greetings and forgive me if this is the wrong forum to ask these questions.

i'm trying to secure a spring/summer/fall time lapse of my garden from an overhead frame of view - a small camera mounted at the peak of my garage under the eaves with a complete view of the garden. i need a camera that can take single shots continuously day after day.

i have so far been unable to find a camera to do this. accessing the cam everyday to retrieve images is out of the question. however if they could be retrieved weekly it would be doable. i'm trying to locate a small cam that equals gopro image quality and uses electric to usb power (always on) and a large enough storage capacity that i can retrieve the images weekly or monthly. a cam with the ability to download the images via wifi would be the best of all.

I hope someone can suggest a device that will do this well and is reasonably priced.

Lots of DIY options, but the easiest is one of the wildlife cameras, which is already waterproof, designed for unattended use, and many have timelapse settings. Another alternative would be a waterproof wifi network camera with a script running on a PC to timelapse sample.

Personally, if I wanted really high quality, I'd use a waterproof-enclosed, sub-$100, Canon PowerShot, powered by a battery-replacement AC adapter, and running a CHDK script. The 16-20MP stills from these cameras blow away a GoPro. For example, here's one straightforward raw->JPEG from an $80 (new) ELPH 160:

Notice the level of detail is really good, and DR is within a stop or so of what you'd get from one of the older MFT bodies (about 10 stops).