Tag Archives: timelapse

The best camera apps for smartphone travel photography

2016-07-12

Many smartphone owners are happy with the camera application the phone manufacturer has installed on the device in the factory. In general, the factory-installed camera apps get the job done, but may lack an extra feature photographers maybe looking for. Fortunately, this is exactly where smartphones are strong: you can install another camera application on your phone. But which one is the best for travel photography?

Many camera apps are available both for Apple devices and for Android phones and tablets, but in this article we focus on Android camera applications. Joe Hindy on AndroidAuthority wrote brief reviews of popular camera apps for Android. First, let’s list the best apps, and then, we make our recommendation for the best apps.

Open Camera can show if you are holding the camera at level.

BestMe Selfie Camera
– as the name implies, the app has been designed for selfie photography
Camera FV-5
– manual control over images, including RAW format
Camera JB+
– simple photo shooting
Camera MX
– in addition to capturing photos, the app lets you edit images
Camera Zoom FX
– manual controls, RAW, 360 panorama
Candy Camera
– lots of filters
Cardboard Camera
– 360 photos for Google Cardboard
Cymera
– filters, stickers, photo editing
DSLR Camera Pro
– manual controls, histogram display, volume button as a shutter
Go Camera
– simple photo framing with filters
Google Camera
– HDR mode, slow motion video capture, wide angle mode, burst mode
Manual Camera
– strictly for taking photos exactly the way want with manual controls
Open Camera
– an open source, free, app with plenty of features
Snap Camera HDR
– plenty of features: 4K video, RAW, manual controls

You can read more about the camera apps introduced above here. What is our recommendation? Of course, it depends on what your requirements are. If you only want filters and don’t want to learn to use manual settings, download a simple app that can automatically snap decent pictures and has plenty of filters. If you know how to shoot on an SLR camera, you probably want more control over your images, and you should get an app with manual controls.

Settings in Open Camera app.

Our favourite for travel photography is Open Camera. It is a free app, and comes with features that have proven handy on the road and at home:

– an indicator that shows if the camera is at level with the horizon,
– burst mode,
– and burst interval.

Used together, the burst mode and burst interval features let you shoot timelapse picture sequences. You need a tripod or something else to hold the phone steady during the photo shoot, which can be as long as you want. For instance, we have created a timelapse from photos shot with Open Camera that has pictures taken at one minute interval for 24 hours. Open Camera won’t create the timelapse video for you, but you have to create the final timelapse on a PC.

Hyperzoom video really takes you to places without having to travel

2016-01-15

British photographer and filmmaker Geoff Tompkinson has worked for National Geographer and GEO, among other media companies. In recent years, he has been one of the pioneers who has been developing timelapse photography. Tompkinson has taken it even further and developed a technique he calls Hyperzoom. The technique is so exciting that it is almost as amazing as the scene in the movie Blade Runner where the detectives zoom behind a corner.

Tompkinson’s objective was to establish a technique that lets the viewer (or camera) travel from a place to another. For instance, you spot an object on the other side of a lake, and the camera takes you over the lake right there where the object is. The viewer (with the camera) can even travel through windows and doors if they happen to be on the way.

When Tompkinson filmed in a village of Hallstatt in Austria (you can see the result in the video below), he had 15 pre-planned positions for his camera. When photos taken in these positions are carefully merged into a hyperlapse video, the result is simply amazing – a Hyperzoom video.

It can take a whole month to produce a high quality 90 second Hyperzoom video. Thousands of photographs are edited and merged into one image stream that creates the illusion of movement.

Geoff Tompkinson reveals a couple of secrets to DW how he creates his amazing hyperzoom video films:

You can view Tompkinson’s other hyperzoom videos at his home page.

Solution for all of us who want an easy way for creating spectacular timelapse videos

2015-12-24

Timelapse photography is so spectacular way of taking pictures that it drives many travel and landscape photographers to study the secrets of the technique. Once they discover how laborious it is, how much time it requires and what kind of equipment is needed, many simply forget it. French startup Enlaps has created a solution for anyone who wants to become a timelapse photographer. Enlaps has developed an integrated solution that consists of a camera, cloud photo storage and a timelapse video creation application.

Enlaps has a working prototype camera and cloud software solution that they can demonstrate. They have already won a design award and an innovation award for the timelapse system. The product should be available in August 2016, because the startup still needs money to start production o f the special camera they have created.

Enlaps expects the price of the product to be around 600 Euros once it reaches production. Before it happens, they sell the product at lower early-bird price at Kickstarter.

Here is how the Enlaps dedicated timelapse photography system works:

1. Place the camera (known as Tikee) at a spot you want to photograph. Turn the solar panel towards the sun for keeping the camera powered. Tikee has two wide area lenses in the corners that must face the subject.
2. Connect the Tikee camera to a Wi-Fi hotspot (for instance, your smartphone), or if you have the Pro edition of the camera, you can connect it directly to the mobile data network (3G or 4G).
3. The camera starts transmitting images to your cloud storage at given interval.
4. Logon to your cloud account and make sure pictures show the subject that you expected.
5. Once you have received enough photos to your cloud storage, you can let the cloud app create a timelapse video for you. You can edit and select photos before you create a video.

Here is a video where Enlaps co-founder explains how the system works:

The Tikee camera can function without sunlight and without Internet for awhile. Its built-in battery should last for one week if it takes a photo every 10 minutes. An SD memory card can store photos instead of sending them to the cloud storage.
The camera specifications:

– 2 image sensors and 2 lenses.
– 16 megapixels per sensor.
– F2.8 wide angle lenses.
– Field of view 220 degrees after images have been (automatically) stitched together.
– Weatherproof.
– Operating temperature -10 – +45 Celsius.

Timelapse Video Takes You to a Two-minute Sightseeing Tour of Paris

2015-03-12

Just like many authors who write travel guidebooks, here at Klaava we love to photograph places we visit. Sometimes a long enough visit allows our writers to produce a travel guide on the destination. Paris is the number one travel destination in the world, and thousands of tourist guides have been written about it. But have you ever seen a sightseeing tour of Paris made of thousands of photographs?

Mayeul Akpovi is a timelapse and urban photographer who creates short films from thousands of photos he has taken in a destination. His timelapse video of Paris is pretty amazing. Travelers who have visited Paris can recognize most sights on the video, like the Eiffel Tower, Sacre Coeur church, the original Statue of Liberty, Champs d’Elysee, Pont Neuf, and many other lovely places.

Here is the amazing timelapse video of Paris.

If you are planning to travel to southern France, take a look at the travel guide The Gems of Nice and the French Riviera that features hundreds of photos and surprising video clips.

The video discovered via Diario del viajero.