Hi Wonderspark (& others), Yeah, interesting stuff here - thanks for sharing everyone. I have had a few time-lapse assignments in the past and am researching hardware to use for a possible long-term demolition/construction gig myself. I'm hoping to get away with some off-the-shelf equipment for this project and would appreciate any input. I'm guessing that the Harbortronics intervalometer that Wonderspark is using has a setting to stop/start image capture at dusk & dawn. I'm hoping to use a standard Canon intervalometer control, but as it doesn't have settings to stop shooting & then resume I'm planning to use an AC power adapter straight to the camera (will be mounted inside an office building) and use a household in-line power timer to switch off power at 6pm and start agian at 6am each day. It won't matter that the intervalometer is still ticking away (I'm hoping) and just start the camera shooting when the power is back on. The only problem I foresee is that there could be an occasion when the power is being switched off while the camera is writing an image to the memory card - this could possibly cause a corruption - but hopefully only to one image and I'd hope that it would keep on shooting. To add to the geekdom of it, I'd like to use Eye-Fi cards (www.eye.fi) and the office wi-fi network to ensure that after each image is snapped it gets sent to my Flickr account. This way I could check the images remotely to confirm that everything is functioning correctly and the images are looking as they should be. The recent Eye-Fi cards also have 'Endless Memory' which would be a big bonus - the card has the smarts to delete the oldest content on the card when it knows it's been uploaded to make room for new content. Hopefully a cost-effective and efficient set-up to record a project that is likely to be about 12 months long. Thanks for reading and making any suggestions.
Background: My Harbortronics unit uses a Digisnap 2700 intervalometer, which is very flexible. I looked up the sunrise / sunset times prior to programming it, and determined the time of day to start / stop, since my shoot is only 3-4 months, which crossed over the summer solstice for a convenient average. It shoots 930 shots, one per minute, onto 128GB SDXC cards in the camera, which I found to hold about 24,000 shots. This means I have 25 days of shooting before swapping cards becomes critical. Further, the DS2700 is set to cycle the camera's power off and on between each shot, since these cameras sometimes "lock up" during a shoot, and the only way to reset it is to turn it off and back on.
During testing, my brand new Canon T3 locked up after 120 shots the very first day it was in use. The second and third days, it only took two or three shots before locking up, and then it ran five consecutive days without locking up at all, 930 full shots. It then started locking up randomly again. I had it set to only power off at the end of the day during that test.
I then switched it to turn off and on after each shot, which takes about 10 seconds to complete. There is a delay to allow the camera to write the shot to the media card before shutting down. While this has solved the lockup issue, I've noticed every so often there will be a shot missing from the card. In looking through the media, I've seen as many as six consecutive shots missing, which is bothersome, yet reasonably acceptable for this project.
I mention this because you mentioned using a plain old electric circuit timer to switch off and on every day, which I think is a bad idea, mostly due to the possibility of losing essentially a whole day's worth of shots if the camera does lock up. I was told that Canon resolved the lockup issue in the T3 that was known to exist in prior models, and the same people were surprised to see it was still a problem after all. On the other hand, I have had two Nikon D7000 cameras that have each shot about 70,000 time-lapse shots using the built-in intervalometer, and never yet have either of those cameras locked up. Anyway, that's my own personal results so far.
I think the Eye-Fi thing sounds extremely cool. I don't have the luxury of AC power nor wi-fi access at my location, but it was something I wanted to try sometime, and I look forward to hearing how it works for you. If you were only going to shoot 65 shots a day, you could fit the whole year's time-lapse on one 128GB media card, though. My Nikon has dual SD slots, so if using a D7000, you could have two of them and get 130 shots a day for a year without touching it. Just a thought, if the Eye-Fi gives you trouble. Also, I'd look at putting the camera behind a UPS, so if the power goes out, your camera keeps going. The beauty of using solar power and two Li-ion battery packs is that I don't have to worry about power failures. (:
Hi again, Many thanks - great thoughts & suggestions there. Plus the project you linked to looked great - nice work. Lock-ups would be a concern and the UPS is a good idea... I will do some testing ASAP... altho' I'm not even sure that this job will happen yet. The Eye-Fi card to give remote viewing of captured images would be for peace of mind that lock-ups haven't occurred (or that a bird hasn't fouled the viewing portal, etc) - I could just go online (either computer or iPhone) and check the shots. As I'd be handy to the location I could fairly quickly rectify any problems. Ideally it would be great to be able to change shooting intervals remotely for days of high activity... I guess this would be possible with a laptop controling the camera and VPN. Getting a Digisnap Intervalometer looks like it could be well worth it - I had looked at Harbortronics in the past, but they didn't have the 2700 then. I've used a Nikon D200 but it's settings seemd a bit restrictive and would only capture up to 999 images... does the D7000 allow time-based capture periods? The last project I did was a relatively simple sign replacement job - short copy here - Vimeo . I'm thinking of using a Canon 30D or 40D for the next project.
I used a product called Rain-X on the glass of the camera housing, so that neither rain nor bird poo can obscure the image, haha.
The D7000 has the same 999 interval limit, however you won't be using that on the camera at all. The 2700 is actually what's triggering the shutter, so you don't have a limit, or it's 65536 if I recall correctly. If you set a setting to zero, it just goes forever, but the idea is to set the number of shots and the time between them such that it stops shooting at a certain time of day.
Had I realized the lockup issue, I'd probably have used a cheaper Nikon instead of a cheaper Canon, and I'll look at replacing it after the project is finished.
Also, you can reprogram the timer via an included serial cable and a terminal application that Harbortronics provides. All you need is a laptop, and you can reprogram it the night before you want to change settings.
Thanks again Wonderspark... and more questions (great to communicate with someone who has hands-on experience). The Digisnap unit seems to be rather old-school - requiring a serial to USB adaptor & serial to camera, plus not having an on-board control panel - is it easy to set up (I'd be using a Mac)? Have you discovered anything else that would be suitable for long-term projects?
This is where being both Mac and PC has its benefits. /:
I don't have a laptop of either, but had access to a PC laptop which I used to change the settings in the field when I discovered the lockup happening. I had programmed it prior to installing it in Texas on my PC at home. I'm told there is a way to use a USB-to-serial adapter which goes to the 2700 (not the camera), and then possibly using the Terminal app on the Mac, but I didn't get that far, because I think you still need another app or tool of some sort. I know it can be done, though.
It's very easy to set up once you get into the programming application. It *is* old-school and what-not, and not immediately intuitive, but once you read over the directions it becomes pretty obvious. In a way, I found it pretty cool to think of it as merging the 20th and 21st centuries, as the tech would have been fine for 35mm film cameras, but they could only hold so much film. You're only limited to media card size or other storage options!
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