When you say time-lapse most people think, “oh yes I can do that on my mobile!”. Yes, you may have the editing capability of speeding a film up, but do you have all the other features time-lapse systems have to offer such as remote monitoring, solar powering and super-high quality?
We are going to dive into why a time-lapse system is the better option for recording your projects over mobile.
1) Quality
I know it’s obvious but setting up one of our time-lapse cameras will provide you with a much better quality film than a mobile phone. Our cameras can record up to 20K, and this offers an excellent opportunity to zoom in. A standard iPhone (depending on the model) can record in HD and normally 4K. If you are investing in a time-lapse film for marketing/documenting or analysis, then higher quality is your better option. It’s impressive.
2) Security
A time-lapse system can provide you with CCTV, remote monitoring capabilities. This is great if you need to show images of a site for a client, or for someone to monitor it for you. Your iPhone won’t be able to do this. As the diagram above lays out, the camera connects to a Poe and that connects to a router. Your router can upload site images to the cloud. From there, your images can be viewed on a web portal and can be used for remote management.
3) Weather management
Don’t get us wrong, iPhones can be great, but they won’t do too well if your project is outside and it starts to rain. Iphones and mobile phones aren’t normally waterproof and if they claim to be, it’s normally the more expensive models. Not to mention, they don’t have any components in place to protect your camera from the rain. That’s where our cameras are great. They have heaters that can essentially “burn off” rain. Meaning there are no weather disturbances to your final film. Excellent! The sun however, can sometimes be a bit more tricky; but there are ways we can minimise glare or direct sunlight…
4) Height
Towers and cranes can give your camera’s height, this may be used for a better shot or to avoid the sun as previously mentioned. Although you can get around this by using a tripod for an iPhone, it won’t get you the same height as a tower or crane does. We recommend this for large construction sites. If your project is a small reconstruction indoors, then maybe your mobile is the best option.
5) Power & Connectivity
Our cameras can be powered by solar, and if not they are always connected to a power source. Mobile will only get you so far with battery life and even then, recording videos clogs up your storage. They aren’t the ideal solution for long projects.
Our time-lapse systems also use high gain aerials which are stronger than most phones for connectivity.
Overall, if your project is small, short and relatively low budget then using your mobile for a time-lapse can be effective, but for all other projects, we recommend using a time-lapse system. For more details see here, or to view some of our customer’s completed time-lapse films visit: https://www.solutions.co.uk/work/