Timelapse camera

Discuss cameras, settings, composition, or anything related to photography - cactus or other subjects.
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SnowFella
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Joined: Fri Jan 07, 2011 4:27 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Timelapse camera

Post by SnowFella »

I've tried this in the past using my DSLR but never got good results, mainly from varying exposure's or flash intensity, so I figured it was time to look into a different way of doing it. Plus it's really not good for the camera itself as the body only is good for X amount of shutter releases before wearing out.
Remembering that my parents old video camera, this is back in the early 90's, could do timelapse so there's got to be something out there nowadays that does it even better. A few google searches later and a camera by a company called Brinno stood out, plus finding out that Lazz used a camera by the same manufacturer shooting is timelapses and I was sold. Didn't help that the main Australian retailer for Brinno had their top of the line timelapse camera on special right now, $50 off retail price is to good to pass up on! Talked the wife into calling it my chrissy present for the year and headed out to buy it today.

Brinno TLC200
Image
Image

Tiny little thing, just 10.6cm's tall and 6.4cm's wide and shoots HD quality video....well 1280x720 atleast. Run's off 4AA's and records on SD card, plus no hassles or extra programs needed to turn the photos into a video as it's all done internally in the camera. Just pop the SD card out, plug it into a card reader and your good to go.

Didn't really have anything interesting to do a timelapse off but I couldn't help myself and had to try it out, first attempt I quickly cancelled as I figured out the settings used wouldn't be any good (5 minutes between exposures at 10FPS) so I changed it to every 30 seconds. Just over 2 hours generated 30 seconds worth of video

Very first test using it, make sure to watch it in 720P quality.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FELn7rnIsE&hd=1

Only downsides I can find with it sofar would be the minimum focus distance of ~75cm and that it isn't weather proof, just can't get in close and shoot macro but you never know what they will come out with in the future as there's already an addon wideangle lens and you can buy a weatherproof casing for it.
Likely be playing some more with it over the coming day's and come next spring might rig up a mount over the bench and do some longterm recording. A new set of batteries should last 4 months if it takes one image every 4 hours according the manual, at 10FPS that would make for 18 seconds of video a month. Could make for an interest view of spring growth and flowers =P~
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Daniel
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Location: Bracknell, UK

Re: Timelapse camera

Post by Daniel »

I watched the video and you can see the flower begin to close, its awesome! =D>
-Daniel

Aquatic technician at Maidenhead Aquatics, Windsor.
I like the South Americans. Cacti that is...
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SnowFella
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Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Timelapse camera

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2nd attempt done today, not all plants played ball though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBdi7bXlhEs&hd=1

Got to figure out some sort of background to keep things from getting overexposed.
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John C
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Re: Timelapse camera

Post by John C »

Looks good! Should be fun to play with!

It also looks like you have a mysterious moving jacket in the second video. :shock:
John In Fort Worth, Texas
"Where the West begins"
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SnowFella
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Re: Timelapse camera

Post by SnowFella »

That's my lowbudget background for regular photos, simply a black t-shirt tacked onto an old corkboad :lol:
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John C
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Re: Timelapse camera

Post by John C »

SnowFella wrote:That's my lowbudget background for regular photos, simply a black t-shirt tacked onto an old corkboad :lol:
Hey - Whatever works. Right? 8)
John In Fort Worth, Texas
"Where the West begins"
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SnowFella
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Re: Timelapse camera

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Well, I've had the little timelapse camera set up for just on 5 weeks now in an attempt at capturing one of my little Haworthia's flowering. Unfortunately a sudden cold snap combined with a sudden drop in battery "forced" me to abandon the experiment this morning before it had a chance to fully flower.

Viewing the resulting video was both exciting and a letdown in one, sure the growth progression is interesting to see but the image quality and flickering leaves lots to be desired. Camera was set to stop taking images if the light levels dropped down to far but with an outdoors light close by it kept recording images during some dark and white balance challenged times. Guess next time around I'll have to figure out some form of artificial light combined with a better background. If I could find a decent video editing program there's a chance I could go in and edit out the black frames in an attempt to limit the worst of the flickering and see if I can adjust the whitebalance,going to do some hunting to see what's available in the coming days.

Camera set to take one image every 30 minutes at 30 frames per second resulted in just under a minutes worth of video of near 5 weeks worth of running time. If you are to view it make sure to do so at the highest resolution and full screen.

http://youtu.be/lb69iPp92wo

Haworthia on left and magicly shrinking cactus on the right.
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