TimeLapse Pro for iPhone is a rock solid time lapse app. I’ve tried a few other apps for time lapse photography and TimeLapse Pro is the best.
TimeLapse Pro Example
I shot the movie above using TimeLapse Pro. It’s over 400 photos that were taken 5 seconds apart. Also, I uploaded the movie directly to Youtube through the app.
Ready. Set. Go!
All the time lapse photo apps work the same way – You setup your iPhone, set the amount of time between pictures, and away you go. Pretty easy to get started. TimeLapse Pro works the same way. However, it’s all the other features that make this app stand out…
Sexy Interface
The design of the app is perfect – It’s very simple to navigate through the app and it looks awesome. Let’s be honest, looks matter. And TimeLapse Pro looks pretty damn good.
Sharing Time Lapse Videos
Creating videos from your time laps photos is easy. But who cares if the video is stuck on your iPhone? You want to share it! TimeLapse Pro has a handful of sharing options. You can upload your videos to Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, or send it by email – straight from the app.
I know what you’re thinking: “Why would you want to email a video?” You’re right, emailing videos sucks because videos are huge files. Huge files slow down email and will piss off your I.T. department. The email option is not recommended.
Unfortunately, the very first iPhone time lapse app I purchased was a piece of junk. The only way to get your video off the iPhone was to email it. If I had known that, I never would have paid for that stupid app.
Download With Safari
Saving my time lapse photos & videos is a big deal to me. I want to save the videos to my Mac and edit them in iMovie and burn a DVD with all my time lapse videos. And this is where TimeLapse Pro shines…
Thankfully, TimeLapse Pro gives you 2 options (besides emailing) to save the video from your iPhone to your Mac: Download with your browser or download with FTP.
Download with Safari lets you use Safari to pull the video off your iPhone and on to your Mac. And it’s incredibly easy.
Make sure your Mac and iPhone are on the same wireless network. Open TimeLaps Pro and tap the “Download with browser” button. You’ll see a notification along with a URL. Just type the URL into Safari and click the movie to download & save. Awesome.
Now you’re ready to edit your time lapse video in iMove, save it to an external hard drive, burn it to a DVD, etc. And you can delete the video from your iPhone to save space.
Tips For Time Lapse Photos & Videos
Here are a few tips I learned by testing a few iPhone time lapse apps:
- Turn Airplane Mode ON – All of the time lapse apps froze (stopped taking pictures) when a phone all or text message arrived. Set your iPhone to Airplane Mode to stop this problem.
- Turn All Notifications OFF – Some apps give notifications, like iCal reminders. Unfortunately, these notifications can screw up the photos and cause the app to stop taking pictures. Make sure notifications are turned off!
- Plug Your iPhone in to a Power Source – Time lapse photography requires your iPhone to be on and running for hours and hours. Obviously, this can drain the battery quickly. My first attempt at time lapse photography was ruined because the battery dropped to 20%. The 20% battery notification popped up and the app stopped shooting photos.
More Info
TimeLapse Pro Developer Website
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Tony Stocco is a total Apple fanboy - addicted to his iPad, iPhone, iMac, MacBook Pro, Hackintosh and iPod Shuffle... And anxiously waiting to see the new iPhone 5.