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Instagram Hyperlapse vs. iOS Camera

Hyperlapse is a good alternative to making quality time-laspe videos

Have you played around with the Time-Lapse camera functionality? It's pretty cool to set the camera on a tripod and just record the sessions for a while and then watch it all unfold in a matter of minutes.

There are some limitations to the Apple's Time-Lapse camera:

  • No information on how often pictures are taken.
  • Only can do one type of Time-Lapse - no way to speed it up or slow it down.
  • No way to adjust the focus after the Time-Lapse has started.
  • No way to turn off the display to save battery life.

Instagram's Hyperlapse

Instagram's Hyperlapse is a good alternative solution to Apple's Time-lapse. While they don't fix all the limitations that Apple's Time-Lapse has, you do get a lot more flexibility. It's also free - so the price is right!

Six Things I learned using Instagram's Hyperlapse

  • Instagram's Hyperlapse tells you the duration while recording. This helps when you want to stop the recording at a certain time length.
  • Default speed is 6x - Which means that it's six times faster than the original recording. To make a 30-second Hyperlapse video, the camera will have to be on for 3-minutes.
  • If you're taking a 1/2 video of the sunrise, your better off using the 8x speed. That will give you a nice 3.5-minute video clip.
  • After a video capture session you have an option to have the final output be fast pace or a slow pace. Once you select it there's no way to "go back" and save a different speed.
  • The Instagram's Hyperlapse Dimensions is: 720 x 1280
    The Apple Time-Lapse Dimension is: 1920 x 1080
  • Instagram's Hyperlapse smaller dimension gives it more room to fix stability issues. If you're not going to be moving the camera around much then the Apple Time-Lapse might be the better solution.

One Final Word

If you want the most flexibility with Time-Lapse videos, take a video using the regular video option and then change the speed at post-production. I use 4k at 24 fps for all my videos. I can use iMovie or Wondershare Filmora to slow it down or speed it up. Just make sure to have plenty of disk space.

Oh, one more thing... Make sure to put the iPhone in Airplane mode! You don't want the video to get interrupted by a robocall.

 

About

The iPhone XS Max is the most powerful iPhone Apple has ever made. I wanted to learn how to take the most advantage of the capabilities of the device and see how it so much better than my old iPhone 6s Plus.

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