Easy Ways to Waste Hours in Isolation With a Camera Part 8: Be a Time Lord

Wish you could control time? Well, you can! For part 8 of wasting time in lockdown with a camera, we're looking at time-lapse photography. You don't need any fancy equipment, just a camera, any camera and some imagination... 

Start Your Time-Lapse... 

There's a number of ways you can start your time-lapse. The easiest and simplest is to just start taking one photo after another, if you do this with the camera on a tripod you'll get a smoother, more sophisticated finish to your sequence. On most camera phones you'll find a time-lapse option too! For DSLRs some DSLR, bridge and mirrorless cameras will offer time-lapse options in the menu, sometime it's referred to as 'interval timer settings'. If not you can use an intervalometer which will allow you to set the time between shots and how many shots you want to take of the scene. The longer the gap between the shots the starker the changes in the animation. The shorter the gap between shots the more subtle the changes in the sequence.

Congrats, you are now a time lord! :D

Displaying your Time-Lapse Animation... 

The good news is if you've created the time-lapse in your phone or through the menu system of your camera, the chances are it's already been prepared for you into a movie file format which means it's all ready to play and display.

If you're wanting to pull the individual shots together into a time-lapse yourself, you're likely to need some software to sequence the photos (if you want to convert the sequence into a movie). There are literally 101 software options for you. I use Adobe Premiere or iMovie but if you want to take this route, a quick search on the internet should see you right!