The Mumford Time Machine
  A Programmable Controller / Intervalometer
  for Cameras and Electronic Flashes

The Mumford Time Machine is a programmable controller and intervalometer for special photographic effects. It allows you to trip the shutter of your camera or fire an electronic flash at regular intervals (time lapse), at specific times of day, or in response to trigger events. These trigger events can be sound, light, motion, or electrical signals. A wide variety of sensors are available for use with the Time Machine.

The Time Machine is exceptionally easy to use due to it's keypad and LCD screen. All parameters are entered with easy-to-understand text on the screen so you can clearly see what your time lapse interval is or how many exposures have been taken. You don't have to remember arcane codes, decipher blinking lights, or use a PC to program it.

We also have a motorized rotary table that can be used with the Time Machine to create time lapse movies that pan across a scene, or as a motorized indexing table to rotate a subject for "virtual reality" images. Click here for more details.

Click on the following links to see examples of what the Time Machine can do for you.

Nature Photography
The Time Machine can trip the camera shutter, trigger a flash, or start a movie camera when a creature moves.

Nature Time Lapse
The Time Machine allows you to take a series of pictures at regular intervals or at specific times of day or night. These sequences can be combined into a time lapse movie on the computer. There are many natural subjects for time lapse, like clouds and plants.

Contruction Time Lapse
A common application of time lapse photography is to document the contruction of a building. Still pictures are taken several times a day during construction to create a history of the project.

Industrial Time Lapse
There are industrial applications of time lapse photography as well. Many mechanisms operate too fast to observe. Because their motion is regular, a sequence of still images taken at increasing delay times will produce a "slow motion" effect much that's less expensive than high speed movies.

  

High Speed Photography
For events that are too fast to see normally, you can configure The Time Machine to trip an electronic flash in a dark room while the camera shutter is held open. This will freeze motions that are just a blur to our eyes, like popping balloons or water drops.

High Speed Time Lapse
With the sequencing and variable timing functions of the Time Machine you can make "slow motion" movies of high speed photographs.

Ballistics
Harold Edgerton, inventor of the strobe light, took amazing pictures of bullets in flight. The Time Machine makes it possible to time exposures on this scale of precision, but you need a very fast flash to freeze very fast motions.

Exotic Effects
The many controls of the Time Machine allow you to take pictures of situations we probably haven't even imagined yet. Take a look at some of these exotic effects!

The Time Machine has several ways to take pictures:

  • By tripping the electric shutter release cable of your camera.
  • By firing an electronic flash while your camera shutter is held open.
  • By sending a software command to trip the shutters of a variety of digital cameras including Nikon Coolpix, Epson PhotoPC, and many Olympus cameras.
  • By simulating the remote controls of many Olympus, Canon, and Sony cameras.
  • With the Lanc protocol used in many movie cameras.

The Time Machine triggered this exposure
when the mother bird landed in the nest.

The Time Machine works equally well with film or digital cameras. Common cameras used are Nikon SLRs, Nikon Coolpix, Canon SLRs and Digital Rebel, Sony, Olympus, Pentax, and many others. If you want to know if the Time Machine will work with your camera, send us an email.

The Time Machine has a variety of programmable delay times that allow you to determine precisely when an exposure will be made in relation to the trigger event. It can time delays as short as ten microseconds or as long as 24 hours.

When used as an intervalometer, you can program The Time Machine to take exposures at specified intervals or at specified times, and exposures can be restricted to just daytime or night. It's internal 24 hour clock is calibrated to an accuracy of two or three seconds per week.

The Time Machine will run on its internal battery for a couple of days, or you can plug it into a larger capacity battery for field work or use it with the included AC adaptor.

The Time Machine has other modes that can be useful to the photographer. It can be configured to fire an electronic flash as a slave to the flash in your camera. It can be configured to ignore the pre-flash of digital cameras or the multiple flashes of red-eye reduction. It can measure the shutter speed of film cameras. It can measure the lag time between when the camera shutter is tripped and when a picture is taken, and it can measure the duration of an electronic flash in millionths of a second. It can even measure the lag time between when an electronic flash is triggered and when the light actually appears, in millionths of a second.

For a technical description of the various modes of operation built into the Time Machine,
Click Here.

A variety of sensors are available for The Time Machine including acoustic sensors, optical sensors, motion detectors, a laser beam, or crossed-beam optical sensors with infrared or laser light.

The Time Machine is only available from Mumford Micro Systems and includes the controller and an AC adaptor.
   To read about each function in the Time Machine, click here.
   To place an order for The Time Machine, please go to the Order Entry Form.

If you have questions about The Time Machine, please send us an email or call.


(805) 687-5116

 

Interesting links having to do with high speed or time lapse photography: