Alternative for shooting time lapse with a Canon T70?

[tribal-warrior]

For those who own cameras like the Canon T70 and T90, I'm sure you're familiar with the command back accessory which offers lots of features like time lapse shooting. Though looking on eBay, the prices for this accessory are bit more than I want to pay and the international postage costs are a bit steep (most are available from overseas sellers it seems.)

Just wondering if it would be possible to adapt one of those cheap Chinese made interval timers to the Canon T70? There are plenty of those on eBay at attractive prices but they're usually designed specifically for certain types of digital cameras. The T70 has an input socket for an electronic remote release but it's an unusual type with a little protruding bit and two flat circles.

Or perhaps it's not such a wise idea because I once plugged a modern interval timer into a 1970s Canon super 8 movie camera and due to the difference in voltage, the timer was changed somehow. I can't remember exactly how. But it was affected in some way.

 

[tribal-warrior]

I guess some of you might be wondering why I would want to shoot time lapse with a 35mm still camera. I can assure you that I'm not going to create time lapse footage.....certainly not with 36 exposures.

It's for KAP (kite aerial photography.) This is where a camera is attached to a kite line and aerial photographs are taken of the scenery below. People have been doing this for over 100 years. In fact, some of the earliest aerial photographs were taken with balloons and kites. Usually, people use some kind of interval timer to program the camera to shoot at fixed intervals. Then the best photographs are selected from that group of images. I admit that this where digital really shines as you can take hundreds of photos (improving your chances of getting a good image considerably.)

Most of the time, I'll be doing KAP on digital. Ive already done one KAP session with a GoPro. Though someone recently did a KAP film shoot and that has inspired me to do the same. Just for a bit of fun once in a while. Perhaps sometime, I could shoot some infrared film from the air. I guess that might be safe to use in a Canon T70 (I hope.) If I recall correctly, it's not advisable to use IR film in the more modern Canon EOS film SLR bodies.

By the way, here's a historical KAP image showing the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake (shot on large format, I believe.)

Repeat Photography: George Lawrence’s “San Francisco in Ruins”

USGS Earthquake Hazards Program, responsible for monitoring, reporting, and researching earthquakes and earthquake hazards

earthquake.usgs.gov