How to shoot a time-lapse video

This is a tutorial on how to shoot a time-lapse video.
All the goodies are after the jump:

DIY external power for Nikon DSLRs

Warning!: This is quite risky, and it could damage your expensive equipment, so if you are not confident about what you are doing, DON'T DO IT. I am not responsible for any damage your equipment might suffer.

If you don't want to mess around with your cameras, you can buy the official power adapters. For the D700 and D100 it's the Nikon EH5A, and the D200 it's the Nikon EH6. I dunno the rest.

With this, you can do all-night exposures, and days long time-lapses, and you don't have to spend any money on it if you are lucky.

The D100, D200 and D700 power supply is 13.5V, 5A. You can go a bit below this.
My power supply is 12V, 3A and it works perfectly. You might need a laptop power adapter or something that is similar.

I didn't want to cut the wires of the adapter, so I just taped my little cables to it. You have to check the polarity of the adapter, so you don't connect it backwards. I dunno what happens if you connect them the other way around, but I don't want to try it.

I just connected them, and used tape to hold them in place.

In this way, I can re-use the adapter if I need to.

I took the wires out from an old Dell computer. It's because they were wires that connected an LED with the mother board, so they had these square connectors to be able to fit them on to the motherboard's pins:

 

That thing fits perfectly to the pins of the camera's DC in connector.

If you can not find these, you can use some small crocodile clips.

The Connectors:

The D700 and D100 have the same connectors:

Click on the pictures to see them bigger.

The D200:

I don't know what are the connections on other models.

Now you just have to connect the pins to the cables and plug your adapter in!

Make sure you don't short any wires!!! This is common sense. I didn't try what happens if you do, but I suspect that it would mess your camera up.

As far as I observed, the DC power on the camera does not charge the battery, so you might as well just take it out.

There you have it!

And don't be stupid! one wrong move and you can trash your camera!