Time Lapse Question?

Anyone who is running CHDK on an S95 or similar. I'm looking to do time lapse with my S95, but I want to confirm something first.

If I were to do time lapse using the 1920 x 1080 resolution, is there an estimate on how long it will take to fill an 8GB card?

that depends on the compression setting for jpgs and the interval youre shooting at. faster the interval, the faster you reach 8gb.

assuming theres only 7.2GB of usuable space on your 8gb sd card, and if your jpg is 1mb each, then you can store ~7200 jpgs. if you took a photo every second, you will fill the card up in 120 mins.

Hmm ok. Doing this for a car show. Friend has a 32gb. Need to do the math on the intervals. But, this is like an all day and into the night type show.

also you need to consider how long you want your time lapse to be and the frames per second for a video. once you figure that out, you can easily figure out how many photos you need. just work backwards then you can figure out your interval. there's also shutter speed to factor in. forexample, if your camera slows the shutter speed to 1 second. even if youre taking a photo at a 2 second interval. its more like 3 seconds before your next photo is captured.

There online calculators that can do the math. With 32gb, you should be fine. doing the math is the harder part. dont forget battery life is an issue too. use a power adapter if possible.

True. I bet a 1-5 minute interval will be fine honestly.

you won't fill up your camera with a 1-5 minute delay between your shots. A 5 second interval would be ideal.

maybe you should consider doing some practice runs.

quickly doing the math. if you were to go 1/min, thats 60/hour, and lets say 12 hours of shooting, comes out to 720 frames. If you were going to play back at 30 frames/sec, that comes out to a 24 second movie clip. If you were going 1/5 mins, thats a 4.8 second clip. if you were going with 12/min -> 720/hour -> 8640 over 12 hours and a 288 second movie clip (4min 48 sec).

of course you can change your video play back rate, i.e. have each picture show for more than 1/30 of a second, which would increase your clip time. Also consider, how it will look and what you are emphasizing. for example, if you wanted to see cars spinning around on a podium, you want to make sure that you get enough shots in for each rotation or else it might just look like the cars are just pointing in random directions on playback. If you wanted to emphasize setting up the show, the show itself, and clean up, then a larger interval would work.

either way, I am also concerned you will run into power issues if you are only using batteries. It would be nice if you knew before hand approximately how long/how many shots each one can do do and dont forget that the lcd eat up a lot of power (though I have heard if you plug in the av cable, it turns off the screen). Also consider, if you have to change batteries, it will be difficult to do so and keep the exact same framing, if you were planning to shoot the entire show from one spot.

definitely a good idea to hit "smootube' and 'bimeo" for car show examples and ideas.