Over the last few months I have been testing the limits of my old Canon PowerShot SD400. It has been a great camera for me over the last few years, but I wanted to see if it could do more for me. A few months ago, I read an article about some MIT students who took some pictures of the atmosphere using only a couple of hundred dollars worth of supplies.
While reading the article I learned about the Canon Hack Developers Kit (CHDK). This application lets you take full advantage of all the power that is hidden inside of your Canon camera. This idea really intrigued me and I began to think of the projects that students could do with these new found camera abilities.
One of the basic, simple projects I thought of doing with students was using time lapse photography. I think this could have great applications especially in science classes. I know this is possible but the idea of repurposing your camera to do more than it was intended is a cool idea.
For this project you need a Canon camera (make sure your Canon is on the list of cameras on the CHDK website) and QuickTime Pro.
First you need to install the CHDK on your camera's SD card. Directions are fairly straight forward on the CHDK site. There is an installer script to correctly format your SD card for Mac computers which helps. Take your time and you should be fine.
Next Install the Countdown Intervalometer Script, I use this one with some success on both my SD400 and A480. Once you have downloaded the script you need to copy it to your SD card manually, placing it in the scripts folder.
Once you load the CHDK and script on your camera you can select from a multitude of options for your time lapse photos. Options include number of shots and frequency.
Now find a nice place to set your camera down and let it take a some pictures. I would suggest 150 pictures or more.
Once all your pictures are captured transfer them to your computer and collect them into one folder. Using QuickTime Pro you can assemble all the pictures into one movie. From the File Menu, choose “Open Image Sequence”. Browse to the folder where all your pictures were stored and open the first file. QuickTime will allow you to enter a frame rate. Select the number of frames per second you wish to use for the movie. I used 6fps in my demo video. QuickTime will then load all of the images in that folder into a movie file.
Once the movie has been created it will be shown on the computer screen. If your image files were too big for the screen, the movie file will be too big for the screen. You can make the movie appear smaller by choosing half size or other options in the View Menu. You can play your movie now and see how it looks. This is a sample video of some snow the other day.
Now go and have some fun with time lapse photography and the hidden features of your Canon camera.
