Gadgetory

you've probably seen a time-lapse video before the most common example is a gorgeous sunset that's been sped up to go from light to dark in just minutes capturing scenes like this used to take a lot of money and time and special equipment but I'm gonna show you how to get professional quality results using just your smartphone now the app I'm using today is called lapse it pro it's available on both iOS and Android and there are a lot of options out there but most of these tips can be applied to the competing apps now first a few things about choosing the right scene time-lapse photography doesn't lend itself well to every situation even though the results look quick these things take time to make 10 to 15 minutes minimum because of that make sure you're in a location where you can relax for a while or be able to leave your phone unattended windows work well maybe the patio of your hotel room if you're on vacation and when you're picking a scene make sure you're capturing something that there will be some action in even if it's subtle waves on the beach trees in the wind cars on the road people walking by that sort of thing now when it comes to setting up your camera the most important thing is to make sure your phone isn't going to wobble around since that's gonna break the spell of the video unfortunately with today's thin smartphones is nearly impossible to rest these on a table and prop them up on their own seeing that Sharon Profis has a great video for making your own tripod mount for your smartphone but if you want something quick and cheap try a binder clip or two by placing one of these on each side of your phone it makes it much easier to prop up or even hang up on a nail alright now I'm almost ready to record but before I do there are a few settings worth checking out tap the settings menu on the home screen and the first thing you'll see are capture settings by default lapse that will take a picture every 2 seconds which is great for shorter videos 15 minutes turns into about 18 seconds but for longer stretches say capturing hours or entire days it makes sense to raise this closer to a frame a minute you can also make use of the schedule function to start recording at a later time you can use this in conjunction with limit mode to automatically stop your recording now a few other tweaks you can make you can set the video quality of the 1080p if you want the best quality just know that's going to more space also disable the promotional ending unless you feel like giving laps that a free ad in every one of your videos now once you're ready to shoot you'll see a separate settings menu on the capture screen this will give you options for locking down the focus and white balance and exposure you can play with these if you really know what you're doing but I got the best results just leaving these alone on continuous automatic control when you're all ready you're gonna set this thing down make sure it's steady hit the capture button and then just find something to do for the next 15 minutes now when you're all done capturing your time-lapse wake up the phone and hit the stop button then turn your phone into portrait view and you'll see a number of options for editing your video adding effects music and exporting the final product use the trim button to edit out the shaky parts from the beginning and end when you're probably handling the phone and then in the info panel you can rotate the video you can make it square you can lay a time stamp over it and when you're ready to make the final render tap the render button check the box for copy to camera roll and give your movie a name then hit render after a minute you should have a new video added to your camera roll which you can upload to YouTube or share however you like for more tips like this including how to create your own kind lapse rotating tripod head over to how to cnet.com for CNET i'm bomba