When I got an email from Photojojo announcing the new arrival of the TLC100 time lapse camera I immediately thought about my upcoming trip to Smith Rock in Central Oregon. I was pretty excited about the idea of taking this camera and setting it up to capture our rock climbing adventure. After placing the order and eagerly waiting, the camera arrived in the mail, along with Photojojo's signature plastic dinosaur to add to my growing collection. I opened the box and pulled this little space pod out:
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| (photo via Photojojo) |
The first thing that struck me was the size. I hadn't expected it to be as big as it was, but no matter. It seems to be very rugged. What you see in the photo is basically all there is to it. A lens on the front that turns to toggle between macro mode and normal mode, a start/stop button, and three LEDs to indicate power, low battery, and low memory. Now a look at the back:
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| (photo via Photojojo) |
When you open the back you can see that the cover is surrounded by a foam rubber seal. Upon inspection of the manual I see that this guy is weatherproof, at least to some degree. Inside there are the slots for the batteries, a slot for a flash drive (with a 2GB drive included) and a wheel for changing the interval at which the device will take a photo. The time interval options are 1 minute, 5 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 4 hours, 24 hours, or you can choose a custom setting. To use the custom setting, you plug the flash drive into your computer (and I'm seeing that it is not Mac friendly) and you are able to change it from 5 seconds to 12 hours. You are also able to set the date and time, but I will cover this briefly later.
Now for the good part! The tests! As soon as I got this powered on and set the time setting to 5 seconds, I put it on my trusty gorillapod, pointed it out my window, and pushed the start button. A friendly beep let me know it understood my wishes. I left for several hours and turned it back off upon my return. I whipped the thumb drive out the back, plugged it in, and as soon as my PC recognized what was happening, I hit play. I was very impressed! The thing automatically stitched the photos together into a video and replayed the video at breakneck speed! Then things got even realer... As the light of our sun faded, the camera automatically adjusted. The world got darker and darker, but still everything in the street was easily visible. And did I mention that this was all happening in HD?!?
Indoors, outdoors, dark, sunlight, it has worked great every time. I have yet to test it in the rain, but being a Seattleite I will certainly get my chance. I have had a bit of fun with the long exposures at night, so there's certainly more to explore there too!
Now a quick mention of a few gripes, though these are far less important than the positives:
- It's pretty tough to aim. I with there was a viewfinder for setting it up. Even a small one... I did waste a few videos filming the wrong part of a scene, but such is life.
- The time stamp never seems to be right. I imagine this is because a thumb drive isn't powered, and will therefore take a snapshot of the time when it is plugged into your computer. It will then start at that time when you start the video, but who will be taking their computer everywhere they take the camera? That is just my theory - I have not proven it yet. And again, hardly something to complain about.
- The ability to remove the timestamp (and "TIMELAPSE CAMERA V.1.0") from the bottom of the video would be nice. There have been times when it is easier for me to mount this upside down and it just looks strange to see that upside-down bar at the top.
Ok, so overall I say this is great. A lot of fun. I look forward to making time lapse videos of all kinds of things. New ideas are constantly popping into my head. Now here is a video of me and my friends climbing at the Phoenix Buttress in Smith Rock State Park. Watch for the automatic light adjustment!
See more time lapse videos here: Vimeo
See more time lapse videos here: Vimeo
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