
Time lapse videos are always cool to watch and show a completely different side to an otherwise uninteresting period of time. I’ve found this link while going through random camera hacks on www.makezine.com. This little trick turns your TI graphing calculator into a time lapse remote for some Canon DSLRs. Basically the connectors at the end of the TI calculator cable fit into the Canon xxxD series remote plugs, so if you wrote a program telling the camera to take a photo every few seconds, it would do so on until you stop the program. A tip here is to use a fast memory card or to record low-res images, let’s face it the resulting movie’s going on youtube anyway, how hi-res does it need to be? The slew of images is later compiled into a video in for example Apple QuickTime.
Now as a disclaimer…. This is something you should not do on a DSLR. A DSLRs mirror flips up every time the shutter button is pressed and since this is a mechanical system this process will eventually wear your camera out. Most of the cameras in this series are tested for at least 50k actuations and could probably survive more than that but a short time lapse movie might require you to take a few hundred shots, so you do the math. I’ve tested this on a TI83 and a Canon 350D and it worked just fine.
Hit this link for the how to.