nigh photography with 10D or G2

I have a Canon 10D and a Canon G2 and wish to do some long exposure night photography. I don't want to spend $132 for a cable release for the 10D so what are some alternatives using either the 10D or the Canon G2..

thanks

Use the timer on the 10D. You obviously need to use a tripod. You can buy a cable that will work quite cheaply from ebay, I did and it works perfectly.

Just a quick note, anything more than 20/30 sec exposure and you'll get blurring from the stars due to their procession in the sky, rather than camera shake

If I recall correctly, my G2 has no "bulb" capability. Neither does my 20D.

For the G2, you can use the supplied infrared remote to trigger the camera, though you will have the delay of the self-timer to contend with. Your maximum exposure will be about 30 seconds, I think. I just discovered that the battery in my G2 is dead, so I can't confirm the 30 seconds.

With my 20D, I need to use a "cable release" - a switch at the end of a cable - to emulate a "bulb" setting. There is a latch on both the Canon and aftermarket cable switches that I have which allows you to lock the button down for as long as the battery holds out. You have to remember that if you leave the camera with the default setup, the 20D will take as long to write the file to the card as the exposure itself took. Thus, you want to start with a freshly charged battery.

20D has a "Bulb" setting, see p. 87 of the manual. It's actually more of a "Time" setting in that you need to hold the shutter release down for the duration of the shot than a "Bulb" where you click once to open, a second time to close, but it's there. If you haven't set the shutter speed to "Bulb" in Manual, you'll only get a set shutter speed. The extended write time Skip mentions only applies if long exposure noise reduction is enabled (which is definitely worthwhile). IIRC, it defaults to "Off".