timelapse with still camera and laptop

[Andzei Matsukevits]

I was filming timelapses with video camera and then i heard thats its possible to do same with still camera which is controlled by computer. So it turned out well except some things:
- program allows to set minimum interval 5sec, but actually fastest result i got was 10 seconds. Computer was saving image that long, with full resolution it would take 15-20sec - too slow. Are there any way to get actual interval 5 sec and still with good enaugh quality
-exposure, i was shooting with manual settings included exposure, but if you put all pictures togerther in video, you can notice different exposure between some shots. Some of them are brighter and others are darker. How can i fix it? I dont want to edit frame by frame either.

really need your help, thanks!

[Rob Lohman]

I say all of your questions depend on the following 3 combinations:

1. the camera you where using

2. the software you where using

3. the connection between camera and computer you where using (USB 1(.1) will be too slow probably, it may depend)

You will need to answer that first. I've also moved your thread to our still forum.

[Michael Salzlechner]

Andrzei

the speed at which you can capture depends on the camera used of course.

As far as exposure goes if you use auto exposure it will of course change from picture to picture.

Depending on the situation you may want to go to using manual exposure. This will not work of course if the lighting changes a lot during the time lapse.

If the lighting changes a lot during time lapse evaluative exposure is usually the best choice.

[Sean McHenry]

Some 3-4 years ago I did a somewhat famous video piece of a barn building in the middle of NY city by the White Barn Candle company. They put up a 2+ story white barn in Bryant Park. We used a video camera but, we took the video output to a laser disk recorder and snapped one frame every 5 minutes. During the course of several days this added up to a lot of frames. We took the disks back to Columbus, Ohio, dropped the frames into an Avid and viola, time compressed video of the barn raising.

Later I did a similar thing for Lane Bryant. They were remodeling 2 stores on Long Island. I built 2 PCs with softeware that unfortunatly no longer exists. It was basic web camera software. We bought 2 MiniDV cameras and mounted them in the ceiling. The video ran into the PCs capture cards and was store as snapshots on the hard drives.

The original plan was to have a dedicated phone line right to those PCs and pull the images off nightly over phone line. The wonderful NY way of doing things, this never happened. I flew into La Guardia, drove a rental car out to the stores, set them up and started them running. We used IR keyboards and mice in case we needed to restart them from the floor below. We did. Daily. They kept killing the power at night.

Anyway, this too worked well. I flew to NY at the end of the week, grabbed the PCs and cameras and flew them home. We pulled the pics over the network into Avids again and viola. Time compressed video.

The short answer is yes, this works.

Sean McHenry