A well-made time lapse movie is a beautiful thing. Mesmerizing to watch and pretty fun to put together, time lapse is like a bridge between a still photograph and a narrative motion short. If you've never made a time lapse before the Sony PlayMemories Time Lapse app is a great place to start. The app has a variety of automatic and custom controls to make it possible to create your entire project in camera without ever having to go to the computer. Go to the PlayMemories store to purchase and download the app to your Sony camera (it's $9.99). If you're already experienced in time lapse you'll find that the app has a lot of powerful controls that can free you from the laborious processes in Premiere and Quicktime.
To get started with the Sony PlayMemories apps, Sony Artisan Colby Brown has put together an outstanding tutorial to guide you through the installation process. You can find Brown's tutorial at colbybrownphotography.com.
Here's Sony's quick video to get you up to speed on the Time-Lapse PlayMemories app as well as the Angle-Shift Add-on. The Angle-Shift Add-on is an especially nice tool for adding smooth pans, tilts and custom moves to your time lapse to give it a polished look without having to invest in expensive and complex motorized pan/tilt tripod heads.
Check out Mark Galer's quick tutorial using the on the Time-Lapse PlayMemories app on his Sony α7. Galer's video gives you a close up look at the screen on his camera and his narration is clear. The tutorial was made in 2014, but it's still one of the most popular and useful of its kind.
From YouTube's Swink, here's a solid tutorial that explains how to adjust the Time-Lapse app's Custom settings and why you might want to depart from the auto settings for your time lapse movie.
This one isn't a tutorial, but it's a great example of the kind of time lapse that can be created straight from the Time-Lapse app. As Joel Schat explains, the entire film is straight out of the camera using the Time-Lapse PlayMemories app.
In the wake of the recent monster blizzard that hit the mid-Atlantic on January 23rd, there have been a lot of time lapse movies hitting YouTube and Vimeo. We found this one, Snowzilla by Eric Martin to be particularly well done. And, really, how long did he carry that Godzilla figure around before getting this chance to use it?
And wrapping up this quick guide, here's Stan Moniz' short movie that shows one of the coolest types of time lapse, a night shoot. Moniz is an expert at shooting and assembling time lapse in the computer, but he did this one with the Sony PlayMemories Time Lapse app. Moniz shot the project with an a7R II and his beloved Sony FE 28mm f/2 lens. (Check out his in-depth review of the lens at StanMoniz.com).
