Re: 2 yr time lapse

Same thing here - we used a Canon EOS 20D up on rafters to capture one shot every 20 minutes at a plant that was building an auto parts press over a 6-week span. The still camera worked great, the shots were equivalent to progressive HD. We bought a cheap laptop at WalMart and used ratchet straps to hold the camera and computer in place. We bought the AC adapter for the Canon, plugged the laptop into an outlet with AC as well and turned the energy savers off. We used Canon's capture software to capture shots directly to the laptop. The software had a limit of 999 photos, and we couldn't program it not to shoot at night when nothing was going on, so we had to travel down to location once a week to dump the photos to CD and restart the program. Footage looks awesome! Two years is quite a commitment - I agree with using a cheaper camera as long as you can find good capture software that would allow you to capture directly to a computer. One other thing - the computer had to be re-booted each trip too to clean out the cache. 999 photos will slow your system down, so rebooting is a great way to speed it up.

KC Allen
Allen Film & Video

"My name is actually spelled KC...really...it is..."