Last night, because we had a late dinner, and because I drank too much iced tea with dinner, and because we didn’t get home until late, I was wide awake at 11:00 PM. We normally turn in around 10:00 PM. I was flipping through the instruction manual for the camcorder, and discovered that the camera has a time-lapse feature.

After going back and forth in my head for a few minutes I decided that I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I didn’t get out of bed right then and play with that feature. At this point Sheri is sound asleep.

I dug out the tripod. Went downstairs and got the power cable. And then set up the camera pointing at us in bed. I set the camera to its night-vision mode. This mode records the invisible (to the human eye) infrared spectrum rather than the visible light spectrum. There are even two infrared LED lights on the front of the camera to light up the room for the camera, but we can’t see a thing. How cool is that?

I set the stop action settings to film two seconds of video every 30 seconds. This morning we jacked it into the TV and watched our six hours of sleep while we were getting ready for work. Very fun.

I think I will do it again tonight, but will instead set it to take 0.55 seconds of video every 30 seconds.

Looking through the manual again this morning I saw that there is a “super” night-vision mode. The manual said that it will be 16 time more sensitive to the infrared spectrum than the normal night-vision mode. I will try that out tonight too.

I have started to think of other cool things I could use the time-lapse feature for:

• If we are expecting a big winter storm with lots of snow, I would like to set the camera up in the bedroom window and watch the snow accumulate on the ground. Also watch how traffic affects the snow in the street.
  
  
• Doing certain kinds of yard work. Pruning a tree. Raking the leaves in the yard. Digging up stumps. Anything that takes a while, and has slow steady progress.
  
  
• Set the camera up in the morning in various spots in the house to see what Goliath does all day.
  
  
• Painting a room in the house.
  
  
• A batch of bread dough rising.
  
  
• Clouds and jet contrails in the sky.
  
  
• A log burning in the fireplace.

There is also a stop-action feature that I want to experiment with. The camera comes with a cordless remote control. I could set the camera up on a tripod on the kitchen table, and then get some modeling clay and make Gumby movies!

I don’t know if this kind of stuff will turn into a hobby, but it sure is fun.