Hack Attack: DIY 360-degree egg timer panning mount
Want to experiment with time-lapse photography? Grab your compact camera and a $3 egg timer, then come this way.
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Welcome to Hack Attack, where we take a light-hearted look at building your own photographic tools on the cheap.
Photography is an expensive hobby. With new toys being released all the time to make you lust after pricey photo gear, Hack Attack provides the wallet-friendly version of doing it yourself. Over the coming weeks, you'll be able to watch the projects grow in complexity, and possibly see some epic DIY fails along the way.
This week's build is something so simple, even a fully-grown adult can do it — a 360-degree panning egg timer mount. For this hack, you will need:
An egg timer that can rotate 360 degrees
Small compact camera with intervalometer functionality, or a smartphone with an intervalometer/time-lapse app
Blu Tack.
This hack is pretty useful if you want to shoot an epic time-lapse, but don't want to manually move a tripod head or the camera around a set axis every time you take a shot.
An intervalometer is a feature that is built into some cameras, such as the GoPro, which tells the camera to take photos at set intervals in time. If your camera doesn't have this feature and you are using a Canon compact, use the Canon Hack Development Kit (CHDK) by downloading it and running it from your memory card. Then, run the Countdown Intervalometer script.
You can also be a bit more sneaky with this hack by deconstructing the egg timer and installing a 1/4-inch screw so that the camera sits more securely on the base. The Blu Tack is a lot easier, however, and it works just as well.