DIY
IMAGING
A
TIME-LAPSE PHOTOGRAPHY
WITH A MACBOOK
MATERIALS
MacBook laptop with standard built-in iSight camera
iSightCapture software Get a free download from
intergalactic.de/pages/iSight.html. The page says
the code isn’t maintained anymore, but it works
fine for this project.
Snapping the Frames
First I installed free iSightCapture software, which
lets you control the MacBook’s camera from the
command line. To test it, I opened an OS X Terminal
(Applications ; Utilities ; Terminal) and entered:
/Applications/isightcapture ~/ test.jpg
The camera’s green light flashed and a newly captured photo named
test.jpg appeared in my home
directory. (Note that before you run iSightCapture,
you need to turn off any other program that uses the
camera, such as Photo Booth, or you’ll get an error.)
My next step was to write code to make iSightCapture take pictures at a fixed interval. I chose Ruby
Photography by Randi Hazan (main) and Nir Yariv (inset)
122 Make: Volume
23
