Not normally an important question this becomes relevant when you start doing time lapse, which means very large numbers of pictures taken.
Consider a 1 hour time lapse at one shot per 5 seconds, that’s 720 frames for the one hour.
Particularly I’m concerned about camera models which do not have time lapse built in, so the manufacturer had a different expectation of what the total number would be that you achieve.
The camera makers have their own estimates of the total shutter life of each camera, however a more interesting exercise is actually collecting data on this and that has been done here http://olegkikin.com/shutterlife/Read more...
Check out Whiternoise over at Hexus.net who has this great post about building a hardware timelapse device using programable chips. He has posted circuit diagrams and great shots of the plastic breadboard set-up.
Looks like a real fun project if you like that type of DIY – the electronics with wires and solder type – and if your Nikon DSLR is one with an IR receiver for a remote; e.g. works with a ML-3.
I thought that this was going to be a major limitation — the battery life of the camera — as while connected via USB the camera is constantly “on” and never goes into a sleep mode.
However while I was doing recent testing with the Nikon D40 time lapse I started with a full battery and took schedule shots every 5 seconds for about an hour, and at the end the battery still said 100% full. Both via the camera icon, and via the battery meter in my script. Read more...
If you have made any time lapse vids using my script and they are publicly available (youtube, etc) I’d love it if you’d post a link! I’ve still not done anything interesting with it — I have a few ideas but never the right time to sit there with camera and computer for several hours. Sadly nothing worth seeing from where I live or work and even the sky has been cloudless for days so I can’t do the “clouds streaming across the sky” thing.
Anyway if you have had better luck, or better ideas, than me lets have a look!
Yes, at last, I’ve implemented — admittedly very very basic and boring — but still functional — time lapse. If you have a D300 or other camera with time lapse built in then this is boring, but for those of you with D40 and similiar then this gets you what you need to do all those fun time lapse videos. Read more...
