Time-lapse photography is basically photography in slow motion; when played back at normal speed, it appears to make time lapse very quickly. Speeding up videos to watch slow events unfold much faster has always fascinated a lot of photo-enthusiasts. Of course, to create such a video, there was a time, not too long ago, that one had to jump through hoops (not literally, of course, or the frame would be shaky). Now, however, thanks to the wonderful little world of smartphone apps, a lot of us can experiment with this genre.
Hyperlapse
The word ‘hyperlapse’ first became popular through Shahab Gabriel Behzumi’s 2012 video “Berlin Hyper-Lapse”. Released less than half a year ago, Hyperlapse by Instagram is by far the best app for smartphone time-lapse photography. You can record upto 45 minutes of footage at one go and modify playback speed from 1x to 12x. And you’re done.
Hyperlapse uses an image stabilisation algorithm that eliminates camera shakes and differentiates it from other time-lapse apps. The beauty of the app is its simplicity and high-quality results. In fact, Fall Out Boy’s ‘Centuries’ was filmed with this app. Hyperlapse, however, is exclusive to iOS users.
Framelapse
Framelapse, earlier known as Droid Timelapse, is the closest app to Hyperlapse for Android users. It’s simple, but includes a few extra controls like zoom and autofocus. The pro version comes with further options like an exposure lock, white balance locking, a sleep mode that lets you reduce battery drain while recording and a wizard mode that sets the frame interval automatically, in case you’re unsure of the video duration you want.
The videos are saved in the mp4 format, which can be played back on most standard video players. A suggestion: shoot in airplane mode to avoid distractions, shakes and pauses.
Lapse It
Lapse It, a full-featured app, has both free and pro versions. While the free version is good, the pro offers a bunch of great options — videos in 1080p, adding music to video (available in the free version as well), creating stop-motion videos, importing videos (even from DSLRs or GoPros), speeding them up, and more. You can even apply effects, and best of all, render your finished video specifically for Instagram.
Hyper TimeLapse
Hyper TimeLapse comes closest to the point-and-shoot simplicity of Hyperlapse. Of course, you have to manually control camera shakes/jitters.
Also, you can only speed up your sequence from 2x to 8x, which is a little restrictive. But, it’s a fairly young app, which when compared to other Android time-lapse apps, is much simpler to use. One great feature is that the app lets you share your video across social media platforms.
