To do time-lapse photography — the kind where you can see a flower bloom, for instance — you need to have a camera set to take many photos over time. To do that with a standard camera, you'd have to hook up a separate timing device, or keep going back to manually take shots. Then you'd have to stitch the snapshots into a video.
The TLC-200 camera from Brinno offers a simple way for us non-cinematographers to do cool time-lapse video with minimal fuss. You place the camera in front of the item you want to shoot, turn it on, set the frame rate (from once per second to once per 24 hours) and come back later to collect the footage. That's it.
The 1280 x 720 high-definition video is stored on an SD card of up to 32 GB that you have to buy separately (you can also shoot at a lower-res 640 x 480-pixel size). Four AA batteries power the camera for 300,000 frames — nearly three hours of sped-up video play.
You can also add extra lenses, such as a wide-angle lens that the company sells separately. Other accessories include a stop-motion shutter, in case you want to make that claymation video or "South Park"-style cartoon.
It sells for $200 from Natureshost.
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