Photography has interested me for a few years and then one day I discovered how to do my own time lapse projects using items I already had!

For detailed instructions I would follow those by yonderknight on Instructables found here.

My setup uses a TI-85 and a Canon Rebel. Also the program I use for the TI is a lot more involved. I’ve read where some people complain that it drains the battery too fast but I have not noticed that being an issue.

The program I used for my time lapse photos has the options for “SHOOT”, “XLOOP”, “LAPSE” and “QUIT”. Shoot will let you manually fire the camera. XLoop asks you for how many shots and interval between shots (I believe this is in microseconds). It will then automatically do the shooting for your. Lapse will fire a shot at the interval you specify for an indefinite amount of time (or until your batteries die). Of course, quit just exits the program.

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This is the program I use for my time lapse setup:

Lbl Z
Menu(1,”SHOOT”,R,2,”XLOOP”,L,3,”LAPSE”,A,5,”QUIT”,Q)
END

Lbl Q
ClLCD
Stop

Lbl R
ClCLCD
Disp “READY TO FIRE”

Menu(1,”FIRE”,F,5,”QUIT”,Z)
End

Lbl F
1->E
ClLCD
Disp “SHOOTIng…”
Outpt(“CBLSEND”,E)
Goto R
End

Lbl L
C1LCD
Input “HOW MANY SHOTS? “,N
Input “Interval: “,I
ClLCD
For(B,1,N)
ClLCD
Disp “SHOOTING…”,B
For(T,1,I)
End
Outpt(“CBLSEND”,B)
End
Goto Z

Lbl A
ClLCD
Input “INTERVAL: “,V
1->X:While X>0
ClLCD
Disp “SHOOTINg…”,X
Disp “”,””,””,””,”ON = QUIT”
For(H,1,V)
X+!->X
End

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The other difference is I had to cut my cable that I used and experiment with the connections. I just cut the cable in half, stripped the wires, plugged on end into the camera and the other end into the calculator. After experimenting with different connections and getting it to all work like it should, I labeled the camera end, the calculator end and heat shrinked the wires back together.

I had to do some experimenting with my intervals to figure out how long between shots. Roughly 24808 equaled about a minute between shots. I also had to be careful because my calculator has an auto shut-off around 5 minutes! My first couple of tries did not allow enough time between shots fired for the camera to reset itself OR the calculator turned off before the next shot.

Below are two examples of the the resulting time lapses I did.

Experiment with this in your own setup and let me know how you did. If you have any questions, comment below.