Doing a lot of construction timelapse videos here at FilmSpektakel we always wondered if it was possible to shoot construction timelapse with a smartphone. So we got into the matter and created a prototype with which we successfully shot several construction sites.
After three years of hard work, we are proud to announce the release of TimelapseRobot, our new Android app that allows users to easily and affordably capture longterm timelapse videos with their smartphones. TimelapseRobot is perfect for professionals and novices alike to capture stunning footage of landscapes, cityscapes, and more.
Construction Timelapse With A Smartphone: How it works
TimelapseRobot is an Android app that allows you to capture long-term timelapse videos, such as construction timelapse videos, using a spare smartphone. Firstly simply install our TimelapseRobot app on a spare Android smartphone, connect it to your TimelapseRobot account, and mount it anywhere. The app will automatically capture images at set intervals and compile them into a timelapse video. You can remotely control your camera using the TimelapseRobot web app.
Features
Here are some of the key features of TimelapseRobot that make it easy to shoot construction Timelapse with a smartphone:
Easy to use: TimelapseRobot is designed to be user-friendly and intuitive, so even beginners can use it without difficulty.
Affordable: Instead of purchasing expensive equipment, you can use a spare Android smartphone to capture stunning timelapse footage.
Peace of mind: TimelapseRobot continuously monitors your camera and will notify you if anything goes wrong, so you can be sure that your timelapse video is running smoothly.
Advanced settings: TimelapseRobot allows you to customize the interval between shots, the duration of the timelapse, and other settings to get the perfect shot.
Remote camera control: You can control your camera remotely using our TimelapseRobot web-app.
Weatherproof smartphone housing: TimelapseRobot offers an optional weatherproof smartphone housing so you can safely use your smartphone in any weather condition.
Cloud storage: Your timelapse videos are automatically uploaded to the cloud, so you can easily access them from anywhere.
Community
As a member of the TimelapseRobot community, you will receive updates on new features and developments. And you can help us decide what features to develop next. You can also chat with other community members about timelapse photography and share your own timelapse videos. We wanna make TimelapseRobot a community project. By working together, we can create something truly special with TimelapseRobot.
Join our TimelapseRobot journey today!
TimelapseRobot is the perfect tool for capturing the world around you in a whole new way. Whether you’re a professional photographer or a novice starting out, our Android app enables you to capture stunning footage of landscapes, cityscapes, and more using a spare smartphone that is affordable and easy to use. We would be thrilled if you joined us on our TimelapseRobot journey today!
Welcome to our list of outstanding time lapse videos in August/September 2021. Every month, we honour outstanding projects and show these masterpieces to as many time lapse enthusiasts as possible. Because of a busy spell at our film production office, we have decided to combine the two months of August and September 2021 together in one article.
We pick videos for their unique shots, outstanding quality or innovative editing. We’re aware that this selection is highly subjective, so if you come across a video that should be on next month’s list, please send us a link to videos@timelapsemagazine.com and tell us what makes your choice stand out.
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Port of Hamburg
A Time-Lapse Adventure 4K
Rico Oder, a time lapse photographer based in Hamburg, shot this piece over three tours in the city. Between 2020 and early 2021 he visited Germany’s biggest port. And it was there that he captured these fascinating processes, which often remain invisible to the naked eye.
These moody shots are of the highest quality possible. Moreover, they are accompanied by beautiful sound design. As a result, it is truly a must-have on this list of outstanding time lapse videos in August/September 2021.
SOUTH POLE
NIGHT IN ANTARCTICA III
Martin Heck, also known as timestormfilms, has already been featured a couple of times on our outstanding time lapse videos list. And that’s not without reason, as you will see. His latest piece, released in August 2021, is the third episode of his South Pole time lapse series. This series is a collaboration with Robert Schwarz, who shoots the footage. Martin covers the post-production and editing part.
Martin is known for his outstanding quality of time lapse shots. Combined with a location that seems out of this world, this results in a truly outstanding time lapse video.
Timelapse: Producing Eurovision 2021
What time, effort and equipment go into creating a mega event like the Eurovision Song Contest? This question has now been answered by Dutch time lapse photographer Jorrit Lousberg. When editing the shots together, he didn’t just assemble one shot after another. Instead, he combined them via some very cool, seamless edits. Watch for yourself!
The edit, sound design and hard facts that show what effort goes into creating this huge event make this a very interesting video to watch. Well done!
Rebuilding the World Trade Center
EarthCam, a company that provides long-term time lapse recordings, has just released a stunning time lapse video. It shows the complete process of rescue, recovery and rebuild of the World Trade Center in 13.3 million photos. Just days after the attacks of 9/11, they installed their first webcam to capture this unique footage:
Not only the impressive number of 13.3 million photos tells you that this is not an ordinary time lapse project. Watch this video and you can see that a lot of passion was poured into this outstanding time lapse project.
This concludes our list of outstanding time lapse videos in August/September 2021. If you want to be notified about future outstanding time lapse videos, please subscribe to our newsletter.
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A little later than usual due to busy times at our film production office: Welcome to our list of outstanding time lapse videos in July 2021. Every month, we honour outstanding projects and show these masterpieces to as many time lapse enthusiasts as possible. We pick videos for their unique shots, outstanding quality or innovative editing. We’re aware that this selection is highly subjective, so if you come across a video that should be on next month’s list, please send us a link to videos@timelapsemagazine.com and tell us what makes your choice stand out.
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Hatching Ladybugs
Rare Macro Time Lapse Footage
Jens Heidler, who was already featured on our list of outstanding time lapse videos of April 2021, has just created another beautiful macro time lapse video. In “Hatching Ladybugs”, he has managed to capture incredible macro time lapse shots of alien-like eggs hatching.
Macro time lapses by themselves are already a big challenge – keeping the object in focus over such a long time is not an easy task. But Jens did a perfect job of getting these high-quality shots not only over the course of a few minutes, but over days. Well done!
Seasons of Denmark
Spring
This is already the fourth time we have included Casper Rolsted on our monthly list of outstanding time lapse videos. No wonder, for every episode of his time lapse series has turned out to be truly stunning. He has just released the fourth episode of his “Seasons of Denmark” project in which he creates a time lapse video of each season. Enjoy spring in Denmark:
These are some very cool studio shots combined with footage on location. Nice work. And congrats on it being a Vimeo Staff Pick!
7777 Days
Photographer Noah Kalina started his “everyday” project for which he has taken a selfie every day since 2000. Over the past few years, he has released a couple of time lapse videos of him aging, all of which went viral. Now, in 2021, he has released another video showing him aging from the age of 19 to 41. The new thing about this video is that he used AI to create it – his face was aligned automatically. Also, his face from the previous 60 days were blended together into one frame. As a result, each frame does not show Noah’s face on one single day, but an “average” of the past two months combined in one image.
We salute the effort that goes into this project. Consistently taking a photo every day is a huge challenge in itself. But to try out new techniques and experiment with new technology like AI for time lapse creation takes this effort to a whole new level!
Dinosaur Skeleton Assembly
Let’s conclude this month’s list of outstanding time lapse videos with a rather short but fun piece by flow motion master Rob Whitworth. The task was to shoot a short time lapse commercial to promote the display of a giant dinosaur skeleton in Norwich Cathedral.
In very little time, Rob manages to show off the technique he is famous for: flow motion. The execution is perfect and seamless, which makes this video fun to watch… over and over again.
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Welcome to our list of outstanding time lapse videos in June 2021. Every month, we honour outstanding projects and show these masterpieces to as many time lapse enthusiasts as possible. We pick videos for their unique shots, outstanding quality or innovative editing. We’re aware that this selection is highly subjective, so if you come across a video that should be on next month’s list, please send us a link to videos@timelapsemagazine.com and tell us what makes your choice stand out.
If you want us to update you about future outstanding time lapse videos, please subscribe to our newsletter.
Aerial Sheep Herding in Yokneam
Let’s start off our list of outstanding time lapse videos in June 2021 with an amazing piece of work. It has gone viral over the past few days and has even been covered by a lot of mainstream media. So, there’s a good chance you might have come across it already. However, just to make sure you don’t miss it, we have included it on our list.
This video was shot by Israeli aerial photographer Lior Patel. Over the course of seven months, he followed a herd of sheep and covered their movements in time lapse using a DJI Mavic Pro 2 drone. Take a look at these hypnotizing recordings of a herd of 1,000-1,700 individual animals:
What a great idea, which totally pays off because of these stunning images!
Partial Solar Eclipse – time lapse
“Partial Solar Eclipse – time lapse” is next on our list of outstanding time lapse videos in June 2021. It was shot by astrophotographer Göran Strand in his backyard in Östersund, Sweden. Not only did he manage to capture such a rare event perfectly, he also used a very special technique called “lucky imaging“. In 2.5 hours, he took a series of 200 frames every 30 seconds, which resulted in the crazy number of 50,000 still images. That’s over 250 gigabytes of data! From each 200-frame clip, he stacked and aligned the best 50 frames, working his way from 50,000 images in total down to only 250 calibrated still images that he then did further processing with.
We are amazed by the effort that went into this crazy close-up shot of the eclipse. The cherry on top of this video is definitely the end, where we get an idea of how little Earth is compared to the sun!
Hold on, there’s more!
Normally we would conclude our list of outstanding time lapse videos in June 2021 at this point. However, there are two more videos we would love to share with you. These videos were actually released in May (on 30th to be precise). Unfortunately, we saw them a little bit too late to include them on our list of Outstanding time lapse videos in May 2021. Therefore, we have added them to this month’s list, so that you can enjoy them too.
Out of this World Volcano in Iceland
Over the past few months there have been a lot of videos of the active Fagradalsfjall volcano in Iceland. However, there are a few that really stand out. One of these is by time lapse photographer Hafsteinn Robertsson. He managed to capture some stunning time lapse shots of the eruptions of the volcano:
These are very high-quality close-up and wide shots of the volcano that we haven’t seen in any other video so far. Very cool!
Cairo
“Cairo” by time lapse photographer Enrique Pacheco is next on our list. He is based in Iceland, but he loves to travel for his projects. He chose Cairo, Egypt, to become the subject of his latest time lapse video. Take look:
The way Enrique chooses the perfect interval for his shots tells you that he is a time lapse pro for sure. The traffic shots are so smooth, and the colours are very well chosen.
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A few years back, doing a long-term time lapse project over the course of several months or even years was a very complicated task. It required a lot of technical know-how because most Google searches led you to DIY guides about how to build up a system yourself.
However, this situation has thankfully changed over the past few years. As there are more and more people wanting to capture long-term time lapses, a few start-ups made it their purpose to develop plug-and-play solutions. To give you an overview of all available solutions, we have compiled a list of all long-term time lapse cameras we found on the internet. But please note that we haven’t tested all of these long-term, outdoor time lapse cameras, so we can’t tell you which are good and which are bad. This list exists to give you an easy link to every company, so that you can do your own research. However, there will be an article in the future about testing these systems. So please subscribe to our newsletter to make sure you don’t miss it!
TimelapseRobot
We’ve waited a long time to finally introduce to you our own long term time lapse solution: Introducing TimelapseRobot – The New Way to Capture Long Term Timelapse with a smartphone only. Have you ever wanted to capture a long term timelapse of a construction project, but found it too complicated or expensive? Look no further than TimelapseRobot, our new smartphone app that makes timelapse photography easy and affordable. With TimelapseRobot, simply set up a phone with our Android App installed and remote control it via any web browser. No need for an expensive DSLR. Say goodbye to complicated equipment and high costs, and hello to TimelapseRobot.
photoSentinel
photoSentinel (photosentinel.com) has been around for a very long time. It was one of the first companies to offer a solution for construction site monitoring. You can purchase hardware, like outdoor camera houses and intervalometers, and a cloud service. The system is not a plug-and-play solution, but it does provide you with all the additional hardware and instructions to transform your DSLR camera into a long-term time lapse camera.
Cyclapse
Next on our complete list of long-term time lapse cameras is the Cyclapse system from Harbortronics (cyclapse.com). Like Photo Sentinel, Harbortronics has not developed its own camera but uses Canon DSLRs. However, it will provide you with a camera, so you don’t have to buy one yourself.
Brinno
The company Brinno (brinno.com/construction-camera) offers a variety of cameras. And it even offers several time lapse cameras for time lapse recording. These are plug-and-play-systems, so you don’t need to buy an extra camera. Simply plug it in, define your settings and off you go. They are very low priced. Therefore, they usually don’t offer an internet connection and provide very low image quality. These systems are aimed at amateurs who are willing to take a risk and decrease quality in favour of a very affordable price.
CamDo
CamDo (cam-do.com) is a very interesting solution for construction site time lapses. It provides you with all the hardware to turn your GoPro camera into a construction time lapse camera. Read this guest article by Espen Eriksen, who built up a whole business only using these camera solutions.
TrueLook
The company TrueLook (truelook.com) offers three different construction time lapse cameras: a fixed outdoor unit, an indoor camera and a very interesting robotic camera system, which lets you record your construction site in 360 degrees! Unfortunately, the company doesn’t show prices on its website. But if you are interested, you can send a request!
Afidus
Afidus (afiduscam.com) is another plug-and-play-system aimed at amateurs. You get a little camera, which you can mount and start shooting with right away. You don’t need to purchase a DSLR or perform any complicated setup. This is the right camera for you if you are on a budget and are willing to compromise on image quality.
Enlaps
Enlaps (enlaps.io) is a French company that offers the Tikee system. It is a plug-and-play system which has two very interesting features. Firstly, it has a solar panel already built in. Secondly, it has two cameras instead of just one. This gives you the ability to capture a particularly wide angle – something other long-term time lapse cameras just can’t offer.
Bixion
The long-term time lapse system from Bixion (bixion.com) is a system for professional time lapse photographers. Like other companies on this list, it will provide you with all the hardware components to turn your DSLR camera into a long-term time lapse camera.
Swift
What looks like a trail cam at first sight really is a long-term time lapse camera from Outdoor Cameras Australia (outdoorcameras.com.au). They offer a variety of plug-and-play, long-term time lapse cameras for use outdoors. They are called “Swift cameras” and are low-budget solutions. However, they look quite sturdy, so you might want to give them a try.
Work Zone Cam
You can rent or buy a camera system from Work Zone Cam (workzonecam.com). Its system looks very sophisticated and uses a DSLR camera. You have to send a request to get prices.
TBOX
The Titan system from the Asian company TBox (tbox-timelapse.com) looks incredibly robust. It comes in two different versions: you can either purchase just the housing for your DSLR camera, or you can include their intervalometer for remote control time lapse. In short, this is not a plug-and-play solution but some great-looking hardware components to turn your DSLR camera into a long-term time lapse camera.
Did we miss one?
The market is always changing. New systems get launched, while others are discontinued. So, we need your help! Have we missed any companies, or are there some on the list who don’t distribute systems anymore? Please let us know by sending us an e-mail to hello@timelapsemagazine.com. And don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter!
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So, you are here because your time lapse clip flickers like hell. This means that our tips on how to prevent flicker in time lapse clips in the first place came too late. But fear not! There are some very good ways of removing flicker from your time lapse video, and this article is dedicated to them. One involves free software, while others rely on paid software or plug-ins. In the end, we are going to teach you which technique we personally prefer for sufficient time lapse flicker removal and use for every time lapse project we create.
Best deflicker software
We often get the question “What is the best deflicker software out there?”, because there are several on the market. But, like in most cases, there is not one right answer. Every piece of software has its perks and its disadvantages. In this article, we will compare them, so that you can get a good idea of which one is best for you!
Let’s take this clip we shot for a project in Hong Kong in 2020 to see how each piece of software or plug-in handles the task.
Time lapse flicker removal in DaVinci Resolve
If you have not heard of DaVinci Resolve yet, this is a name to remember. It is a very powerful piece of video editing software, which has a basic version that is free for everyone to download here. This software is not only good for turning your time lapse photo sequence into a video clip, but it is also great for deflickering your time lapse clip!
Step 1: Convert your RAW photos into DNGs
To be able to import your photos into DaVinci Resolve, you have to convert them into DNG file format first. For this, you can use the free Adobe tool DNG Converter. You can download this handy tool directly from Adobe here.
Step 2: Import your DNG sequence into DaVinci Resolve
Set your workspace to “Media” by clicking the “Media” tab at the bottom of your DaVinci window. Drag and drop the folder that contains your DNG sequence into the media pool.
Step 3: Create a timeline of your DNG sequence
Set your workspace to “Edit” by clicking the “Edit” tab at the bottom of your DaVinci window. After that, drag your DNG sequence onto the timeline. DaVinci automatically creates a new timeline containing your DNG sequence.
Step 4: Apply “Deflicker” effect
In the effects panel (probably the one in the lower-left corner), you can search for the effect called “Deflicker”. Simply drag and drop this effect onto your DNG sequence to apply it. That’s it!
Step 5: Exporting
All that’s left to do is export your deflickered time lapse clip. Change your workspace to “Deliver” and choose all your export settings. After clicking the “Add to Render Queue” option, don’t forget to start the process by clicking “Render All”.
To sum up
DaVinci is an extremely powerful tool, and it is free in its basic version. As a result, we would recommend it to beginners who have not settled on a specific piece of editing software yet and don’t want to invest money in any software like the Adobe suite (for now). This time lapse flicker removal workflow is easy and straightforward.
Deflickering in Adobe Premiere (as well as After Effects, FCP, Avid, Resolve and Vegas)
The Adobe suite seems to be the standard for time lapse photographers. Although Adobe Premiere comes with a price tag, it doesn’t come with a deflickering effect. You will need an additional plug-in for deflickering called Flicker Free by Digital Anarchy, which is available for a one-off payment of $149. It can be used in a variety of video editing software such as Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Avid, DaVinci Resolve and Vegas. So, the workflow is the same for every piece of software mentioned.
Step 1: Importing your image sequence
The good thing about Adobe After Effects is that it can import nearly every file format. So, you don’t have to convert your image sequence into DNGs first. Just import your RAW files or JPG files, whatever you are working with. If using Adobe Premiere or anything else, convert your RAW sequence into a JPEG sequence first or create a video file out of your RAW files. You can read all about this in our article “Basic time lapse post-production“.
Step 2: Create a sequence
When working in Adobe Premiere, you are working in sequences, in After Effects in compositions, in FCP in timelines. Whatever you wanna call it, it all comes down to this: put your RAWs or JPEGs into one of the above so you can apply effects to your time lapse clip.
Step 3: Apply “Flicker Free”
Assuming you have already bought and installed the Flicker Free plug-in (here’s a guide to help you install it), you just search your effects panel for it. Simply drag and drop the “Flicker Free” effect onto your time lapse clip and you are all set.
Step 4: Exporting
All that’s left to do is export your deflickered time lapse clip. No matter whether you do it directly within your editing software or by using the Adobe Media Encoder, Flicker Free should work perfectly fine.
To sum up
The downside of this workflow is definitely the cost. As a result, we would not recommend this workflow to beginners who are just dipping their toes into the time lapse game. However, if you are a professional using the Adobe suite anyway, we totally recommend investing in the Flicker Free plug-in from Digital Anarchy. We use it on every time lapse project and wouldn’t like to live without it.
Time lapse flicker removal in LRTimelapse
If you’re into time lapse photography, it is hard not to come across the name LRTimelapse. It is THE piece of software every time lapse photographer uses. It has a free version, so you can try it out if your sequence does not exceed 400 photos and as long as you are not using it professionally.
Step 1: Importing your image sequence
On the left side of your LRTimelapse window you see your file browser. Navigate to the location where your image sequence is stored. Click on the folder and your image sequence will be imported into LRTimelapse automatically.
Step 2: Set your keyframes
Firstly, make sure to have the “Visual Workflow” tab selected. Then click the “Keyframes Wizard” button. We will not go into the powerful keyframes function of LRTimelapse in this article (subscribe to our newsletter to be informed about new LRTimelapse tutorials). Just in case you don’t know, with keyframes, you can select a number of images whose parameters you will edit in Adobe Lightroom later on. All parameters between these keyframe images will be calculated automatically by LRTimelapse later.
For this tutorial, set the number of keyframes to “2”. This will create a keyframe for your first image and one for your last image. Then click the “Save” button.
Step 3: Go to Lightroom
Open up Adobe Lightroom and import the image sequence. Alternatively, you can drag the “Drag to Lightroom!” button into you Adobe Lightroom Library. When imported, filter your images to only see rated images. If you created two keyframes earlier in LRTimelapse, you should now only see two images in Adobe Lightroom: your first and last image. Change to the “Develop” tab and start grading your images. After that, select the images you just worked on and save the data into XML files by clicking “Photo” > “Save Metadata to File”. Then go back to LRTimelapse.
Step 4: Reload, Auto Transition and Visual Preview
To be honest, these are three steps. But since this tutorial only covers deflickering your photos, we will only focus on the deflickering part. So, just do these three steps in sequence. Firstly, click the “Reload” button to import the adjustments you have just made in Adobe Lightroom into LRTimelapse. Secondly, click the “Auto Transition” button so that LRTimelapse calculates all the values for each and every photo. As soon as this step is completed, you can start loading visual previews by clicking the “Visual Previews” button. This may take a while to load.
Step 5: Visual Deflicker
Now it’s time to start deflickering your sequence. And it is fairly easy! Just click on the “Visual Deflicker” button, which will open up a slider. By changing its value, you can set the curve for smoothing your lighting curve. The smoother the curve, the less flickering you will have in your time lapse clip. Usually a value between 10 and 20 will do the trick.
By activating the “Multi-pass deflicker” option, you will get longer processing times, but also better deflickering capabilities.
Step 6: Exporting from Lightroom
Return to Adobe Lightroom again. Go back to the “Library” tab (this is important; otherwise, this will not work properly) and make all your images visible by deactivating the filter you set before. Select all images and import their LRTimelapse metadata by clicking “Photo” > “Read Metadata from File”. You then go on to export your image sequence out of Lightroom. To find out how to turn the resulting JPEG sequence into a video file, please read our article “Basic time lapse post-production“.
To sum up
The deflickering process in LRTimelapse is the most complicated one mentioned in this article. But it is also the most powerful. You cannot imagine how many flickering time lapse clips we have been able to save by using LRTimelapse. And don’t be intimidated by this workflow or the looks of LRTimelapse. Once you have done this workflow a few times, it will become your go-to workflow, we promise!
Our deflickering strategy
The time lapse flicker removal workflow which probably saved 95% of our flickering time lapse clips is not just one of the techniques mentioned above. Since we use LRTimelapse for all our time lapse clips anyway, it is no additional effort to deflicker our time lapse clips with LRTimelapse right away. In LRTimelapse, we remove heavy flicker and export the images. After that, we import our clips to After Effects (read more about our post-production workflow here) and apply the “Flicker Free” effect to it. This usually gets rid of any flicker remaining after our LRTimelapse workflow.
If you are a DaVinci Resolve user, we would recommend using the deflickering effect mentioned above in addition to the LRTimelapse deflickering process.
To sum up, there is not one best technique to save your time lapse clip from flicker, but a combination will get you the best results possible.
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