Video for a long length of time

MadMacs · 27 Aug 2010 at 14:26

I would like to video record a building construction site from start to finish. Obviously there would be a huge amount of footage and it would need to be speeded up using some kind of software.

Any ideas on how I would go about achieving this?
Thanks

Russinating · 27 Aug 2010 at 14:45

You'll need a stills camera and a timer (depends on the manufacturer of the camera). And it's called timelapse if that helps your Googling

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MadMacs · 27 Aug 2010 at 14:51

Thanks very much I will get googling

Jotun · 28 Aug 2010 at 16:25

I stumbled across this website recently. The guy talks about how he does it, originally with film and moving over to digital.

It's something I've been considering doing, my thoughts are that the simplest way to do this would be to buy a cheap Canon point and shoot, and put CHDK on it, as you can use it for time lapses. It's got a list of supported camera so it's just a case of finding a cheap one on ebay. If it's any help, I rustled up a quick page to search ebay for all of the cameras on the list which should be compatible and display them in one window - http://whoracle.com/images/ebayframes.html (only the canon ones are compatible, some other manufacturers show up with the same model name, ignore those)

It'd be necessary to power the camera from a different power source, the guy I linked to before seems quite fond of using a motorbike battery, I haven't looked at voltages but you'll probably need to lower the voltage, in which case a buck (or buck-boost) converter should do it. You could also use a voltage regulator but depending on the voltages would possibly waste more power.

FreeStream · 28 Aug 2010 at 18:53

I use my 40D for time-lapses now, using a TC-80N3, although my longest timelapse has been 6 hours or so and 2800 images (3 seconds apart-ish) which doesn't help for month long things like this!!!

I got this recently: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSY-n17kxlE

Where would this camera be placed? Outside, inside?

Outside poses problems with power, storage, etc

Personally i'd shoot at anything above 1080p (I find silly 480p timelapses have no impact as you can't see whats going on) and at a rate of a shot every 30 mins, gives you 4320 shots at 30fps gives 144 seconds of video, or 25fps gives 173 seconds.

You can ALWAYS shoot more often than required, but you can't go back and take more

I've learnt that