How to shoot mobile phone time-lapse photography

Time-lapse photography is the antonym of high-speed photography. Time-lapse photography is a photography technique that takes photos at a certain time interval and then plays them at normal or faster speed. In time-lapse photography video, the changes of objects can be shortened to a very short time, such as sunrise and sunset, flowers blooming and falling, traffic and people flowing, showing wonderful scenes of object changes that are usually not noticed. Time-lapse photography is often used to shoot natural scenery, astronomical phenomena and other topics. Let's take a look at the shooting method of time-lapse photography.

First of all, we should understand that time-lapse photography will only look good when shooting moving objects, such as clouds, lights, shadows, cars, crowds and so on. So pay special attention to the selection of materials.

First method

You can shoot the video first, and then shorten the duration in the editing software. This is a relatively simple and quick method, not a professional method. Set the SLR to video mode before shooting and make sure it is in manual mode. The shutter is between 1/30s and 1/50s when shooting. If the shutter is too short, the moving object will feel unstable. The aperture should not be too large, because something will be out of focus and will not look good in time-lapse photography. We recommend using an aperture of F4 to F8. For example, if you have a 20-minute video and import editing software to change the speed or duration of the video, you can make a 10 second time-lapse photographic video.

The second method

It is also a professional practice to take pictures first and then make a sequence later. This shooting technique can allow long exposure, which is very useful in shooting night scenes, especially when shooting trailing effects. In addition, taking pictures has another advantage, that is, it can have ultra-high resolution, and the picture quality is much better than taking video, so it is more convenient to adjust the composition or do scaling animation later. Some SLR cameras have time-lapse photography or interval photography mode. Most SLR cameras require an external cable release. You can set the exposure, the number of photos and the time interval, and then let it shoot automatically. Finally, the sequence frames of these photos are imported into the later software.