Remote exposure control
I dont know if this helps, but some years ago I wanted to take some long exposures at night and started building a camera set-up to do it. It got put on hold and I have never quite finished it, but the design could possibly be adapted for shorter exposures as well, but probably nothing too short. I took what I have built outside and made some quick pictures of it that Ive tried to include in this post. Basically, I wanted a camera I could leave somewhere overnight, with not too much of a financial loss if it got nicked or destroyed in some way. So using an old nettar camera, an old cheap mechanical wind-up clock from a charity shop, a bit of cardboard and a couple of bits of wood, I built the following. After taking the innards out of the clock and removing the hands. The card with the slit in the circle is designed to uncover the lens and recover it again within a certain period of time (5 hours in this case). The centre of the cardboard circle is attached to the hour spindle of the clock. Through testing I determined that when the clock had stopped, if I wound it up for 2 X 360° turns of the winder, this particular clock would stop in 11 hours. With the camera set on T, the whole thing could be encased in plastic box (hole yet to be cut in box) and placed in position in the early evening. I could then pick it up the following morning. Seeing this post has made me get it out of a cupboard and may make me finish it and try it out.
