How to set my Nikon D3000 to take a picture every 30 seconds for an hour or so?

I want to photograph my Thanksgiving dinner this year. My idea is to set up my camera on a tripod and have it automatically take pictures every 30 seconds or so in order to capture the movement and change of the Thanksgiving table as the dinner progresses. I then want to compile the images to create a short film documenting the dinner that is made from the still shots. Is this technique possible with my Nikon D3000?

Dunno. You might need a remote trigger on a timer to make this work. Some video cameras have this feature if you want to try that instead?

In order to see the manual from Nikon I have to create an account, which I'm not going to do… But in short, when you plug your camera into your computer does Nikon software pop up? When I plug my camera in, I'm able to set all information up, and set up a timer. Hopefully yours is similar. If this is the case, then just have your computer with your camera set up together, and take pics every 30 seconds, 20 seconds… Etc. Use Picasa to put together the time lapse.

You might need to do some math here.

60 minutes x 2 pictures a minute = 120 frames. If you do film frame rate, you have 24 frames per second, with video, 30 frames per second. So you will be making a very short film, around 4-5 seconds long. 1 frame a second would probably yield better results.

Most cameras have a setup in the menus where you can set it to fire once a second. There are also external remotes that will do same thing. Read the manual about interval timer.