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Time-lapse tips for your Mac and iPhone


I've been messing around with more video lately, and considering doing some time-lapse work, so this post over at Macworld came at the exact right time for me. Heather Kelly walks you through some options, from expensive to free and complicated to simple, for creating time-lapse pictures and videos on your Mac and iPhone. Some of them we've already heard and written about, including iStopMotion 2 and the great open source Gawker, but there are a few new names in here for me as well. The $2.99 iTimeLapse Pro [iTunes link] and free GorillaCam [iTunes link] apps, both of which let you make some pretty amazing footage straight from your iPhone, are also mentioned.

Putting together interesting time-lapse photography is a great skill to have no matter what you're doing -- it can be used to show off your work online or just give you a look at visual trends in whatever space you tend to be studying. It's great that we've got lots and lots of different apps, on both Mac and the iPhone, that help make it easy to assemble this stuff.

I've been messing around with more video lately, and considering doing some time-lapse work, so this post over at Macworld came at the...
 

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randyharris

NightCamera is a great iPhone app that takes much better pictures in low light situations than the stock Picture App - it also does time lapse if you select it in the options.

Hard to go wrong at $0.99

December 31 2009 at 1:06 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
3gfisch

i use "iMotion" for Time-lapse on iPhone

December 30 2009 at 4:25 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mike Pascoe

I really enjoy time-lapse photography. I've made several video using the open-source app you mentioned - Gawker.

I'm guilty of making my own boring videos, just search 1996 Jeep Cherokee Brake Pad and read the comments!

But I also think I've made some pretty cool ones including:

Gingerbread house: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK1QuH65CxM

Snow melting in Colorado: http://www.vimeo.com/3672616

Cadaver dissection: http://www.mikepascoe.com/anatomy/page19/dissection/index.html

I always have my eye out for those processes that are slow to develop and are much more dramatic when sped up through time-lapse photography.

December 29 2009 at 11:18 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Michael

That video is terrible. I have iTimelapse Pro and it works great. it puts a watermark at the end of the video, which is a little annoying, but it has lots of features and I'd rfecommend it.

December 29 2009 at 5:38 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
jtb

I've always wanted to try out stop-motion software, but this is really cool.

December 29 2009 at 2:27 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Dan

I recently created a simple free program that assembles Quicktime movies from a set of images. This can be done in Quicktime Pro, but for those that are cheap check out Time Lapse Assembler: http://www.dayofthenewdan.com/projects/time-lapse-assembler-1

I'd really like to get some feedback from other users on it.

Also, for the enterprising photographer you can make your own Canon SLR intervalometer with an Arduino micocontroller. See: http://www.sporez.com/honeyjar/?p=347
and
http://www.dayofthenewdan.com/projects/motion-camera

December 29 2009 at 11:58 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Dan's comment
Joseph

a lot of the nikon cameras have intervalometer built in.
e.g. my d200 has one built in.

December 29 2009 at 2:15 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Gravy

I use Quicktime 7 pro (Open Image Sequence...). Like iMovie HD, it's an old version that is worth keeping around.

December 29 2009 at 11:49 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
uzerzero

I used iMovie HD 6 (from iLife '06) for making time-lapse videos with the iSight on my MacBook. All future versions of iMovie have removed this function for some reason. I keep a copy of the old one for the express purpose of time-lapse, plus I like the functionality of it better. It's free (for most) and you can edit your movie directly in the app after it's done.

December 29 2009 at 11:34 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
William

They forgot the bunkers!

December 29 2009 at 11:02 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Joseph

Boring video!

December 29 2009 at 10:51 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
3 replies to Joseph's comment
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