Macintosh software for taking time-lapse movie with my digital camera?

April 8, 2005 6:37 PM

I just got the Sony Cybershot DSC-T33, and I'm wondering if there's any software (for the mac) that will control the camera and take time lapse movies with it. I know this sort of thing exists, but a google search exhausted me, and yielded a couple of things (istop motion) that seemed close, but no cigar when it came to camera control. Am I SOL with this camera?
posted by asavage to technology (3 comments total)

If iStopMotion does not meet your needs, can you explain a little more about what "camera control" means, as well as which Mac OS you are using? You might also look into ImageCaster, Oculus or SiteCam.
posted by Rothko at 9:57 PM on April 8, 2005

Sorry, I'm running 10.3.8 on a 17" 1.5ghz powerbook.
By "camera control" I mean software that will communicate with this camera, tell it when to take a picture, and give me either sequential photos, automatically taken at predetermined intervals, that I can compile into a time-lapse, or do that for me in the software. All three of the programs you mentioned do something like that, as does istop motion, it seems that either
A. I lack the proper usb driver for this camera, though it downloads just fine into my iview media express, and the manual says I don't need a driver for it.
Or,
B. This camera simply can't do this with these types of software. Thanks for the hints though. I'm off to ferret around the web some more...
posted by asavage at 10:43 PM on April 8, 2005

You might be SOL. My Canon camera came with software for Mac OS X that lets me do what you're talking about including saving the pictures it takes straight onto my Powerbook's hard drive. It is pretty cool to do time lapse and be able to preview your shots on the computer instead of the tiny screen.

The reason I think you might be hosed is since there is no standard language and protocol for communicating with the camera in terms of letting the computer control things, it might something Sony would have needed to provide. Does Sony provide a Windows type solution? If so, some brainiac Mac developer will figure out how to do it on the mac.

Best of luck. If you don't find anything, make sure you keep checking back at versiontracker.com to see if someone cracks the code.
posted by birdherder at 1:16 AM on April 9, 2005