Portable Digital Timelapse Photography?

Bakajin asks: "The posting about the camera speedometer hack reminded me of my interest in portable time lapse photography. I wondered if the astute Slashdot crowd can make some suggestions for a very portable digital time-lapse system. I was initially thinking about a PDA connected to a small web-camera. I'll hack my own code if I have to, but I'd prefer to have something off the shelf or not involving too much work. Any suggestions on the PDA/camera/software combo or any different system?"

Possible

[anonymous cupboard]

What time lapse do you want? Where do you want to use it? Do you want the pics locally or remotely?

For portable units, the main issue is power management. However, it is possible to program a PDA to wake up at a particular time, run an application, then got back to sleep. The camera is also a problem for power management as it should wake up when the PDA wakes up, (this wouldn't work with my Olympus).

I don't run Linux on my PDA yet, but I have an IPAQ, which is very programmable and supports USB. It could do the job withm dare, I say it, WinCE (the standard system and the development kit) and just sending stuff down wire. You *must* send it to sleep after each photo though if you don't have external power, otherwise it will die after about 2.5 to 3 hours (less if you download the image from the camera).

Still camera - remote control?

[csmiller]

Some digital still cameras have USB remote control (Minolta is one); this might be cheeper than using a webcam, depending on what equipment you have to hand. It should be easier on the batteries as the CCD/LCD display should power down after each photo.
The jPhoto Linux USB driver should do the trick, see www.linux-usb.org/devices.html [linux-usb.org], http://jphoto.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net], or the tech. spec. pdf [usb.org]

Handspring + eyemodule

[Pathwalker]

Go for a Handspring Visor, and an EyeModule [handspring.com] or an EyeModule 2 [handspring.com].

They both include a nice time lapse feature, which keeps the pda powered down as much as possible to avoid draining the battery.

PhotoPC

[Bryan Andersen]

The PhotoPC [ualberta.ca] project has both Linux and Windows support and deals with cameras via serial or USB. It is designed with command line options so it should be easier to hack into a PDA setting. I've done some hacking, but I'm not happy with my results yet. I also want to do computer controlled digital time lapse photography. I've dome alot by hand, but one misses the timing every so often.

gphoto

[jjshoe]

if you have a laptop and a digital camera check out gphoto.org i made a script for taking time lapse pictures, its hard to estimate time between for sure because it is possible for communication errors and what not, but take a peak...

#!/bin/bash
# comon, do i need to comment that?

# you need to touch count.file and on the topline insert the number
# 0 for instalation purposes and thats it

# 1: zork is used to create a loop so the program continuosly runs until
# 1: killed
zork=0
while [ $zork = 0 ]; do
#

# 2: check to see if count.file exists, if not, create it and insert the
# 2: number one at the top
ls count.file &> /dev/null
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
touch count.file
echo 1 > count.file
fi
#

# 3: the variable count is used in naming pictures and count.file stores the
# 3: current number to use
count=`/bin/cat count.file`
#

# 4: if the count is less then 1 set it to one (used to initialy set the
# 4: variable to one and to never change it from there, a simple count = 1
# 4: at the top would not work, because you would overwrite old pictures
if [ $count == 0 ]; then
count=1
fi
#

# 5: tells gphoto to take a picture and save it as #.jpg, when that command
# 5: has completly finished gphoto then deletes image #1 which is always
# 5: the number of the image on the camera (be sure to delete all images off of
# 5: the camera before using this program
gphoto -p $count.jpg ; gphoto -d 1
#

# 6: add 1 to the current value of count
count=`expr $count + 1`
#

# 7: write the echo of count to count.file for future recall
echo -n $count > count.file
#

# 8: set the following value (in seconds) for how often you want to take
# 8: pictures
sleep 1
echo 1
sleep 1
echo 2
sleep 1
echo 3
sleep 1
echo 4

# 9: again, do i need to cover this one?
done

# written by [e-mail]
# any and all comments apreciated

(ignore this, fucking slashdot is bitching about to few characters per line, there's nothing i can do about it without murdering my script except to sit here and rant and rave hoping to get this post to go through, two few characters per line, 25.1? what kind of bullshit is this? i mean, this is preventing me from making a decent post, and im mighty pissed off, slashdot needs to find a better way to deal with trolls because they are now disabling the site for regular upstanding users)

Try the Minolta Dimage 7

[pwagland]

Try looking at the Dimage 5/7/7i from Minolta [minolta.com]. I have the 7 and it does time lapse photography. You can set it to do 1 photo a minute up to 1 photo an hour (from memory, I don't have the manual here...) and you can take as many photos as fit into your compact flash...which with a 1Gb microdrive is a lot, even at 2500*2000(rougly 500 images). At 640*480 it just goes into the realms of stupid....

Cheers, Paul

Nikon Coolpix 995

[ka9dgx]

It's not clear which type of "Time Lapse" you're looking for. I'm assuming you want to take multiple still images at intervals, for composition into a movie at some later point. The Nikon Coolpix family offers an accessory cord - MC-EU1 [cdw.com] which supposedly allows you to take pictures at intervals until the camera runs out of CompactFlash, or the battery dies. (I just ordered mine while composing this)

I've got a Coolpix 995, and it takes GREAT photos. In case you were wondering about just long exposures... here's a self portrait [photo.net] which shows a fairly long (4 second) exposure.

--Mike--

Nikon MC-EU1 - SUCKS!!!

[ka9dgx]

Ok, so I'm all hyped... got it this morning, plugged it in, figured I'd take a few pictures of myself, set the interval to 5 seconds, and I can't get it to work.... get pissed, think it's something wrong, didn't read directions, etc...

More time spent, tried automatic mode on the camera (I always use Manual), no joy...

Turns out the engineer who designed this thing is a mornon, he built in a 2 MINUTE minumum interval into this thing. There is no obvious or sane reason for this, the camera only takes about 1.5 seconds between pictures, what the heck was the imbecile who designed this thing thinking???

Now I reconsider the whole Nikon experience... perhaps now it's time to switch to Canon, or Kodak??

--Mike--

Those X10 cameras can do it, sort of

[markwelch]

A while back, I bought the 3-camera pack from X10 (the evil pop-up ad people), which included three wireless cameras (somewhat of a misnomer since you have to plug 'em in to power or replace batteries constantly).

The wireless receiver plugs into a USB port and the bundled software (actually you have to download it) allows you to record time-lapse images.

It's been a while, it might only run as slow as 1 image per second or per minute, but I know I found it entertaining to play with for a while.

Now, like so many other cool toys, all the X10 stuff sits in a package on the shelf.

You can see one time-wasting use I had for the wireless camera (and thus you can see the limited image quality), at http://www.robot-news.com/tele-rover/ [robot-news.com] (or just go straight to the animated GIF at http://www.robot-news.com/tele-rover/animated.gif [robot-news.com]) .

Olympus E-10 and E-20N

[jaydho]

Both cameras (4 megapixel and 5 megapixel respectively) have time lapse features [dpreview.com]. You can set the time from 1 minute to 24 hours.

J.D. Hodges [jdhodges.com]