UKC

I have a project coming up that I would like to time lapse but I'm not too sure how to go about it(I'm a very amateur photographer!)

I know my camera doesn't have a time lapse function, so I would need an external shutter release timer.

The project could be up to two weeks in total(10 working days) and is indoors.

Any advice would be very much appreciated.

In reply to mwr72:

Well, that took about 2 seconds with google!

http://www.superstokedmagazine.com/article/2013/10/how-to-time-lapse-with-n...

In reply to mwr72:

Nikons remotes are hugely overpriced. You should be able to get a plasticky 3rd party knockoff that works just as well for about a fiver.

That's what I use with my d7000 - it has a built in time lapse mode, but it is awful.

In reply to Oceanrower:
I've googled but there is a heck of a lot of advice out there, I'm needing basically a "Dummies guide" rather than lots of tech info.

Edit: That's the link I had looked at, I think power source and memory would be the largest hurdles, I could buy an external adapter, could the photo's be saved straight to the computer so negating memory card limitations?

In reply to davidbeynon:

Thanks David.

What sort of timings would I be looking at for a long project, maybe 5 minutes-10 minutes? I have absolutely zero experience with time lapse

In reply to mwr72:

How long? I have usually found somewhere between 10 seconds and 1 minute works well. Things like clouds go almost too quickly at the longer end.

I find the biggest problem is power. My d7k keels over after a few hundred shots even with a battery grip in daytime. Things are far worse at night when you have long exposures to contend with.

The kit I used for filming in norway last year was:

D7000 with battery grip + rain cover.

Cheapo timer with rubber band to connect to tripod.

Big box of AA batteries. The grips will take rechargeable camera batteries but you need loads of them unless you have easy access to power.

Fairly basic tripod, with a length of accessory cord tried to the bottom of the shaft. This was generally tied to a rock or tent peg directly under the camera and tensioned.

Oh yeah, and set the camera to manual mode. I accidentally left mine on aperture priority and ended up with an evil flicker that I have to somehow remove before I can show anyone my stuff. Stupid.

In reply to davidbeynon:

It would be over a maximum period of 10 days at 10/12 hours a day.

More googling suggests tethering, I have found a program here http://www.controlmynikon.com/ which sadly doesn't support my camera body, but if I can find something similar that does support my body then I think it would work quite well for what I would like to achieve.

In reply to mwr72:

The problem with tethering is that you need to have whatever it is tethered to powered and present. If you are in a building then tethering & powering off mains would be ideal.

I don't know that much about the details of that approach though as it just doesn't work in places I'm interested in.

In reply to davidbeynon:

It's a sports hall I will be working in so no problems regarding power supply

In reply to mwr72:

Just running the camera off a power adapter will make life a lot easier.

You may not need the computer though, as the battery in the cheapo timers seems to last practically forever.

In reply to davidbeynon:


I was thinking more for the memory as the highest recommended sd card is 32gig. There could possibly be a couple of thousand exposures(would this be too many for 100 hours?).

In reply to mwr72:
Shot per 10 secs for 100 hours gives you 36000 shots.

Nikons specs say Fine quality jpg is 6.8mb per frame, medium 3.9. I guess we can ignore low. Call it 7 and 4.

So you want just over 246gb for high quality and just under 141gb for medium.

ouch.

Back of envelope calculation suggests that you would need to drop under 3 frames per minute to get it all on a 64gb card (medium quality). That's nowhere near enough if you want to have people in shot.

So yeah, tethered to a laptop in the cupboard is probably the way to go.