time lap

I am currently pitching a project that is going to involve a time-lapse camera of some sort. The subject is going to be the construction of a building over the course of 18 months. The camera will have to be mounted out doors, as there is no indoor location available.

My main concern with this project is keeping my options open. The client doesn?t know about video and they don?t seam to care about HD. This project is not going to be finished for at least 3 years. When it is complete HD is going to be much more prevalent and at that time I think the client will be much happier with a HD video, even though they don?t think that now.

My problem is I don?t know a lot about long-term time-lapse video. Does anybody know of an online resource where I could do some research? Does anybody know of a company that sells video or still cameras that could be used for this type of video? Has anybody out there done this type of thing before and do you have any words of advice?

Thanks,
Ryan Tarrant

You're doing a timelapse of three years?

Forget the videocamera. Use a digital still camera. The resolution will be WAY better than HD, and you can even "pan and zoom" on the image with no deterioration.

We've done this on several shows (Not three years, but overnight) and the results are quite nice.

Here's just one link I found by googling "canon timelapse still camera".

[www.stopmotionmaker.com]

There are several Internet surveillance cameras which work very well for this purpose.

The camera is connected to the Internet and takes a still picture on the schedule of your choice (once an hour, certain hours, certain days [built on the premise of UNIX CRON]), then sends the picture to you (e-mail or FTP).

It is all automatic. The cameras cost in the $200 range, with the built in software to do the scheduling and sending.

I did this for my alma mater University in 1999. The camera pumped out 1000s of still images, which I made into a slide show.