Can I lengthen the Nikon D3100's Video Recording length?
I have a Nikon D3100, And I want to create some timelapses. Is there anyway I can lengthen the Video recording time?
Time lapse does not go by video recording time, You are just taking a series of still pictures. Set your camera to take small jpg pics and fire away.
How do you plan on making a time lapse?
You normally create a time lapse video with a timer called an intervalometer and take a sequence of still photos, all spaced evenly apart. Then take those photos and combine them into a video using iMovie (if you have a Mac), Photoshop Premiere Elements, or other video editing software.
There are various times you can use to create the time lapse depending on the effect you want, but taking a photo every 8 seconds and creating a video with a 15 frame-per-sec frame rate will result in a video that results in 2 minutes of time for every second of video. You can experiment with different frame rates and photo times.
One thing to be mindful is to set your camera for low quality photos as for video, high quality photos are not needed, and it would just create huge files that might be non-manageable. Also keep in mind that even with still photos, taking a photo frequently can overheat the camera.
I did a time lapse once with my Nikon P7000, which is a high end point and shoot (I used that because it was small enough to fit into the container I had), and even when I was shooting at 5 seconds per photo, the camera heated up sufficiently enough that it overheated and shut down after about 15 minutes.
My D90 on the other hand can go forever at 5 seconds between photos.
To be able to set your camera to take repetitive photos, you need an intervalometer. Higher end cameras have them, but your D5100 (and even my D90) does not have that feature.
For your camera, you should be able to use a 3rd party intervalometer as your camera does not come with one I don't think. I used a Satechi TR-M Timer Remote Control for my D90 before I custom engineered and built my own.
http://www.amazon.com/...001QSG4R8/
At any rate, this is hopefully enough information to get you started.