A few months ago I bought a video camera on a whim because it was on sale. Admittedly, it was a bit of an impulse buy because I had no real need for a video camera but at least I didn’t pay a whole lot of money for it. When I read the manual for the camera, I noticed it had a time-lapse feature which seemed really cool. I didn’t actually test the feature out until last week when I attempted to make a time-lapse video by pointing the camera out my balcony towards the skyline.
This was technically not my first time-lapse video since I made one a few years ago with a very low quality web cam. You can see the results here. There were numerous problems with that first video, namely due to the crappy VGA resolution and the long intervals between taking frames (five minutes). With this video, it was shot in high-definition at 720p and with only 30 seconds between frames. Filming started around 3am in the morning which meant it didn’t take very long for the sun to rise. I was initially dismayed to see it was a cloudy day as I believed a sunny day would be more pleasing to see. It turned out that the clouds made for a much more interesting time-lapse as you can see the fascinating cloud movements throughout the day. I was quite happy with how this time-lapse turned out. In this instance, better equipment did make a difference.
If I were to do this again, I think I’d stop filming some of the night-time hours. At least from the angle I was shooting at, when it gets dark, there’s no more movement to be seen so it’s useless to be recording at that time. If I had a better angle on a busy road or highway, I think that might be a good candidate for a time-lapse as well. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this one!