TEMPUS FUGIT

  As some of you may have surmised from a prior blog post I did about time-lapse videos, I have been fascinated by them for many years now.


  I think the first interest I had was in 1962 when I acquired my second 8mm movie camera, a Bolex K1.  It had a single frame collection capability that one could use to do "stop action" films or, if one had a way to operate the shutter release periodically and automatically, could create time-lapse movies.  Unfortunately, I never found a suitable mechanical trigger - an intervalometer - to create time-lapse movies with the Bolex.  Some professional film cameras had available mechanical intervalometers for creating time-lapse movies.



  When I got my second video camera in 1998, a Sony DCR-PC10, I found one could use the LANC connection to electronically trigger the cameral to record about six frames of video to tape.  I subsequently came across an electronic intervalometer that would plug into the P10's LANC port and trigger the camera periodically.  I used that device and the P10 to collect video that consisted of six frames collected periodically during the time of the event about which I wanted to create a time-lapse video.  I then used the Casablanca's Speedup function (by a factor of six) to create the time-lapse video.


  Such timelapse videos, while possible with some tape-based video cameras, were not very practical because of tape drives.  They just weren't meant for such periodic collection.


  Then along came video cameras that recorded to media other than tape - optical disc and solid state memory.  This made it much easier to collect one frame of video at a time and many pro-level camcorders had an "interval recording" capability built-in.  The Sony PDW-F350 and PMW-EX1, for example both have such a capability and I've used both to create some interesting timelapse videos.


  As I described in the blog post referenced above a lot of the time-lapse videos done today are created using digital single lens reflex cameras and PC/Mac software.  Here's an example of one that I created using my Nikon D90 and QuickTime Pro on the Mac.

  With all that background I'm now ready to talk about the real subject of this post.  That is the use of a mechanical intervalometer to control a camera without any electronic shutter release capability.


  I recently ran across the mechanical-action intervalometer intervalometer that I have been searching for some 50 years.  It's called the TempusALL and it uses electronics to set the timing of a mechanical arm that can be used to operate a camera's shutter mechanically.


  Unfortunately, it came along to late for use with my Bolex since I can't get 8mm film for it anymore.  But I do have a Leica M9 rangefinder digital camera that takes great pictures but cannot be controlled electronically.  So I decided to see if I couldn't use the TempusALL with the Leica.  The following video shows how I adapted the unit to the Leica.

  Now that, after 50 years, I have my mechanical intervalometer I'm going to use it with the Leica to do the time-lapse movie that I always wanted to do with the Bolex.  Stay tuned.