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You Can Do Time-Lapse Photography With Your Phone: Try This
Built into your phone's camera is a time-lapse shooting mode that allows you to capture impressive time-lapse clips like the ones you might have seen online. Let me show you how to get started.
What You Need to Shoot a Time-Lapse
You don't need anything to shoot time-lapse clips beside your phone, but having a tripod can really come in handy.
You can use a clamp-type phone holder for tricky locations where there is only a rail or a pole to set up your phone. Otherwise, picking up a traditional 3-leg tripod will definitely make shooting hassle-free. You can take a look at our favorite picks for the best phone tripod.
The main goal is to keep your phone as still as possible while your phone is taking a time-lapse video. Actually, your phone isn't taking a normal video, it's taking a series of photos at regular intervals, then putting these images into a sequence.
If you don't have a tripod, don't worry, grab some objects to prop your phone in place—as long as it's secure, you can make it work.
Adjust Your Settings
Open up your camera app and look for the time-lapse mode. On the built-in Samsung camera app, you can find it by swiping over to More where it's labeled Hyperlapse, which can be a bit misleading. On iPhone it's simply called Time-Lapseââââââ.
Your settings will differ depending on the model of phone you have, but in the Samsung camera app there are several shooting modes labeled 5x, 10x, 15x, all the way up to 45x.
Here's what they are recommended for:
- 10x - For recording traffic
- 15x - Good for filming clouds
- 30x - Capture crowds of people walking by
- 60x - For sunrises and sunsets
Stick to these profiles when you start out, but keep in mind that they don't always work best for the recommended situation, and it's worth experimenting with different settings if you're not getting the results you hoped for.
Our beginners guide to smartphone photography has a few more key settings that are worth experimenting with too.
Frame and Capture Your Shot
To get the best shot, make sure to turn on grid lines in your camera app. Even pro photographers use these guidelines to take better pictures. The goal is to line up the important elements of your shot along the grid lines, or at the point where two lines intersect, for an aesthetically pleasing shot.
Next, select the time-lapse setting that matches your scenario. In this case it was 15x, the setting which is recommended for clouds. Once you've got your phone in place for the shot, make sure that your phone is secure and won't move or get bumped.
Holding your phone for a time-lapse isn't going to work since the shots take a long time to capture. Depending on your settings, 15 minutes worth of shooting will produce just 1 minute of time-lapse footage, for example. So, if you've got a tripod, now's a good time to use it, otherwise prop it up using objects to hold it in place.
Last but not least, I always lock the brightness so it doesn't change suddenly while filming. You can usually do this by tapping the screen and pressing the lock icon, then adjusting the brightness setting using the slider.
Setting up your shot and adjusting all of these settings takes time, and you don't want to rush it either. If you're setting up for something like a sunset, you want to prepare everything well before hitting record since you won't be able to interrupt your filming after it's started, nor will you get another chance to capture a sunset until tomorrow!
Edit Your Time-Lapse
We recommend downloading a mobile editing app to get a better selection of creative editing tools. You can use it to fix all common problems, like brightness and contrast, if you didn't manage to get it right during shooting.
Video editing apps will also give you other useful functions, like being able to speed up a time-lapse clip. This can come in handy if your time-lapse is still too long to share on a social media platform, and you want to condense it down to a 30-second clip, for example.
If you've taken a few time-lapse sequences, then you can also use a video editing app to string together a series of clips, adding engaging transitions, music, or title cards.
There's usually always a bit of camera shake at the start and end of your clip, so make sure to trim the file at both ends to get rid of this. If there are any bad moments in the shot, such as someone obscuring the camera's view for a moment, you can cut those out too.
Tips to Get a Better Time-lapse
Once you get the hang of it, you can try using a dedicated time-lapse app to gain more control. Some apps are combined with an editing suite for convenience, and most will give you the option to set the photo interval, unlike the built-in app on your phone.
Another fun technique you could try is shooting a time-lapse video while in motion. You will get the best results if you're using a phone that has built-in video stabilization, although this can be done in post-production as well. Walking towards an impressive building or monument, or moving through a beautiful landscape, are fantastic scenes you can attempt with this technique.
There's no reason to spend hundreds of dollars on camera gear when even pro photographers are shooting on their phone cameras. Shooting time-lapse using your phone is less intrusive when you're in a public space and more lightweight and portable for travel, just pull out your built-in camera and give it a go.