Equipment Suggestions for Underwater Time Lapse Photography

Hi everyone,

Was curious if anyone has experience with leaving a camera underwater for time lapse photography. I could leave my D700 housing underwater on interval shooting mode, but that doesn't make me too comfortable as you can imagine. Anyone ever try anything like this? I'd appreciate any suggestions on other gear options for this type of project.

Thanks!

Jake

I've always been curious about this as well. I imagine even the tiniest of currents would have the potential to ruin hours of work.

I dunno, secure it to a heavy tripod, go back onto a dive boat, come back down again an hour later to check? Repeat?

Does anyone have any examples of underwater time-lapses? I just realized I probably haven't even seen any .

I'll be trying this in Nov/Dec/Jan with a custom built tri-pod that I slapped together from square, thin-walled, aluminum tubing. My housing mounts to it, and you can attach weights to it as necessary, so it should do the trick. However, strong currents/surge might still be problematic.

Peter Kragh ( http://www.peterkragh.com/under.html ) and Norbert Wu ( http://www.norbertwu.com/Film.html ) do a lot of timelapse. Here's a photo of Norb setting up a shot:

He just uses an old tripod with weights attached...

Jack, I've also been trying to set up a system for some nocturnal time-lapse stuf. Have the same issue about being very uncomfortable with leaving $10,00 worth of equipment underwater overnight. Am currently looking at a bunch of compact cameras to do the job, but I'm finding that very few have an interval mode and battery life seems to be limited to around 4 hours. If anyone knows of a compact camera (or an adaptation of one) that could go the distance, it could be a viable alternative?

turn off image review mode, it kills your battery quick.

There must be a way to do this... considering all the advances in digital imaging and what not!

Canon P&S with CHDK loaded have scripts that provide intervalometer functions.

http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/UBASIC/Scripts:..._Intervalometer

Not sure how long the battery would last though.

Canon P&S with CHDK loaded have scripts that provide intervalometer functions.

 

http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/UBASIC/Scripts:..._Intervalometer

 

Not sure how long the battery would last though.

Some students from MIT just used a similar idea to send a camera into 'space'. They used a canon A470 with CHDK to take a picture every five seconds for 5 hours so that would seem like you can do it (their camera was pretty cold too I'd imagine so perhaps a longer time would be possible)

details of their project here

Peter Kragh ( http://www.peterkragh.com/under.html ) and Norbert Wu ( http://www.norbertwu.com/Film.html ) do a lot of timelapse. Here's a photo of Norb setting up a shot:

 

 

He just uses an old tripod with weights attached...

Thanks Eric, that Peter's site was quite helpful. Looks like until I can find a way of doing this without being there in person I need to start with some time lapse shots in a very controlled environment. Think I'll try that at dusk today. Thanks!

Jake

Canon P&S with CHDK loaded have scripts that provide intervalometer functions.

 

http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/UBASIC/Scripts:..._Intervalometer

 

Not sure how long the battery would last though.

I've played around with time lapse underwater using a Canon A630 in an Ike housing with the CHDK hack. I used a small manfrotto tripod with a weight zip-tied to it and a YS90DX strobe. Unless you're at Tiger Beach where a shark can take off with your camera or on the edge of an abyssal wall I wouldn't be too worried about losing the camera.

Here is my first try at it: http://thelivingsea.com/underwater/photos/...apse-video.html

I would have let it run longer, but the weather turned and we had to leave the dive spot.

^ Nice video man That was really cool.

wizbowes: That's amazing.