If you’ve ever watched a movie, TV show, or even a YouTube video, there’s a good chance that you might have stumbled across a particular scene in the video in which it shows people walking around super fast, or seeing how quickly sunrise turns to sunset in a matter of seconds.
In case you were always wondering what that is and how you can go about recording it, it’s a type of photography/videography technique known as timelapse. It looks impressive but it’s actually pretty simple and straightforward to do, and Apple’s iPhone comes with the feature built right into the camera app. If you’re wondering how to go about doing it, here’s how.
How To Take Time Lapse With The iPhone’s Camera App
- Launch the Camera app on your iPhone
- At the bottom row where all the different modes are, scroll to the left until you see Time Lapse
- Tap the record button and it will start recording
- Tap it again when you’re done
You will see a clock-like animation spin around the record button. For every revolution it makes, it means that it has recorded 1 second worth of video. This is because timelapse basically speeds up the video recording by a massive amount, so to put together a scene that’s just a few seconds long, you might have to record for much longer than that.
How To Take Time Lapse Videos With Hyperlapse
While the built-in time lapse feature in the iPhone’s camera app is more than capable of getting the job done, you don’t get a lot of control over it, like how fast it is. There are third-party apps out there that offer up better controls, such as Instagram’s Hyperlapse app which is free to use.
- Launch Hyperlapse
- Tap the record button
- Once the recording has begun, you’ll see a small timer at the bottom that shows you how long you’ve been recording for, and how many seconds of a time lapse video it equates to
- Tap the record button again when you’re done
- You can now preview the video and you can also adjust how fast you want the video to be
- You can choose between 1x speed, which is the original speed, or go up to 12x speed
- Once you’re happy with the speed and video, tap the check button at the top right corner of the screen to save it
Time lapse videos are fun and can come off pretty impressive without too much work. If possible, it’s probably best to use some kind of gimbal while taking these videos to ensure that it is steady and there isn’t too much shake. You can also setup a tripod if you’d like to record longer time lapse videos, like people walking around, the weather, passing of clouds, and so on.