One of my favorite things about the GoPro Hero 11 is the one button
time lapse modes– are the one button time lapse modes? Time lapses!
There are some time lapse modes that we've seen in previous GoPros,
but there are also several new ones that are unique to the Hero 11.
And in fact, because I really like the 11
so much
I'm just going to film this whole video with the GoPro Hero 11– 5.3K, 24 fps.
This is actually just the audio from that camera, which I think
sounds very decent and usable.
But since audio is half of video and because it's a little bit breezy
and there's leaf blowers, and stuff happening, and dogs barking, I'm just
going to use the Voice Memo app on my phone to record the audio for this.
So this is a pretty simple setup, just GoPro, Voice Memo app,
and then we're good to go....
...to go pro! And before any more time lapses, let's talk about time lapses. 😬
Anytime we're talking about time lapses, what we're really talking about is taking
a long period of time and condensing it into a shorter period of time.
That's pretty much it.
And here's an example of that with the regular time lapse mode
showing that sun's path moving across the floor over several hours.
And yes, watching the sun move across the laundry room floor is probably the
most extreme use of an action camera
pretty much ever,
[laundry room death metal action intensifies]
And I'm even using that same basic time lapse mode right now with the
Hero 10, so that I can get a time lapse of this video about time lapses.
Now, several of these modes are unique to the GoPro Hero 11 but
several of them, like TimeWarp, Time Lapse, and Night Lapse are available on
the Hero 10 and even previous models too.
But we're going to cover everything that's available on the 11.
For the most part, you just turn on the camera, press one or two buttons,
hit record, and then you're ready to go.
And that's it.
And when you're done, everything is finished.
There's very little post processing to do.
You can do this stuff on older GoPros, you can do it on traditional
cameras, "big cameras," but learning how to do it, and setting it up, and
trial and error and experimenting
can be kind of frustrating and can definitely turn some people away from
even wanting to try. And keep in mind that for most of the time lapse modes,
the longer you can record, the better.
The more footage you can get, the better. You can always fine tune things
and adjust the timing of that specific clip later on, either in the GoPro
Quik app or in whatever editing software you like to use, so you
don't have to get it exactly frame-perfect
while you're recording, just get the basic thing and then you can adjust it later on.
So I'll be keeping...
...I won't be bee keeping, but I'll be keeping things simple by using
just the default presets and all of the modes throughout this video.
Let's start first with the three modes that are new to the Hero 11.
Starting with one of my favorite, which is Star Trails.
Basically the way that you use this is you keep the camera in one spot.
You don't want the camera to be moving, and then you just point it
at the night sky and let it record.
You do have the option to adjust how long you want the trails to be.
You can do short trails, medium trails, or maximum length trails.
I like the maximum length ones.
You know, if you're going to use this effect, why not use it to the max?
In general, I've gotten pretty good results using 90 minute exposures,
but if you do longer, it will just get better and your trails
will get longer and longer too.
Since time lapses do cover long periods of time, you could potentially risk
running the battery out of your camera.
So in order to avoid that, I've only done all of mine using the Enduro
battery that comes with the 11, but you could also run it off of a USB
power bank or plug it into a wall outlet or something, and then you could have
🔥 U N L I M I T E D P O W E R 🔥
This is a fun effect too, to play around with foreground objects. So you can just
point the camera directly at the sky,
But sometimes putting something like a tree or an object in front
of the camera really gives it sort of an interesting– it just sort of
gives it an interesting composition.
Very important though:
The GoPro is very good at adjusting all the different lighting and
all the different exposures.
However, Be sure that things are as dark as possible.
In this example right here, it was pretty much pitch black out here.
There were just a really dim little landscape light on in this tree
over there, but in the time lapse or the star trail time lapse, it looks
like it's so bright because the long exposures and all that stuff makes,
You know, it really emphasizes any kind of light source, so the darker
you can have your setting, the better. The next mode, which is really fun,
is something that I've been doing and playing around with on DSLRs for
years and years now, is Light Painting just built in to the GoPro Hero 11.
Just like with Star Trails, it's very important that you keep the camera steady
for Light Painting, and then you just basically move a light source around.
Anything that's moving at a relatively quick speed won't be captured,
but anything that's standing still will.
So if you have an object and you move lights around it, you won't see the hand
or the person moving the light, but you'll see the light itself and then you'll see
the results of that light on the object.
The object that's not moving will stay there.
Anything that's not moving super fast,
so if you're moving your hands pretty slowly around and you're not
doing a very long light painting, you might get little ghostly
images of you or your arms or whatever, moving lights around.
It can kind of look cool.
Sometimes.
You could use it to, I don't know, scare your friends or your kids.
"Scare your kids with the GoPro Hero 11."
An important thing to remember, especially if you've done light painting before,
is when you're using it on the GoPro, you don't need to stress out,
which for someone like me who stresses out over everything is very, very nice.
When you use a traditional camera to do light painting, you have to be
really concerned with the exposure length, the intensity of the light that
you're using, all this kind of stuff.
But with the Hero 11, you literally just need to press record and then
just do whatever you want to do.
If you want to write out some letters, take your time, write 'em out.
It's tough to write backwards sometimes. If you want to do some cool
artwork around an object or try to
turn a tree in your yard into a Christmas tree,
take your time and the camera will adjust everything for you.
I like using the little Aputure MCs.
They're my favorite lights for light painting because they're small, but
they're bright and you can change them to any color. But you don't
need to use a dedicated, you know, $100 light like that.
You can use pretty much anything.
The other favorite thing that I have is just the light on my phone.
As you can see in this one here.
I tried to cover it up when I didn't need it, and then it just sort of
did this ET effect where, my finger was red, but then it looked like I
had a white light and a red light.
But the red is just my flesh in this case.
But the reason I was trying to cover it up is
because the light painting will capture the entire trail of light.
And so if you want to start and stop at a certain point, being
able to turn off the light or cover up the light fully helps a lot.
In this example, I was just using a rag to do that when I was doing
light painting around this camera.
And this is kind of what it looks like as I'm going around doing light painting.
It's not super exciting, but it's also not super stressful.
It's really easy and really fun. And the GoPro will automatically turn your
light painting exposure into a video.
And if you want to use that, you can just freeze the last frame
and then you can do something like this where I key framed
some movement into the camera.
So when the last frame freezes, the image is still moving a little bit and
it doesn't look like a video just froze.
And because you are recording at a high resolution, even though these aren't still images,
which you do have the option in a lot of time lapse modes to just use still
photos and then stitch them together,
I've just been using the video modes for everything.
But even though this isn't made of photos, it is made of high resolution video.
So that means that you can take a frame and either from the GoPro app or from
your editing software, you can just export that frame as a still image, and
then you have a really cool looking still image of light painting that you can share.
And it's also "dawned" on me before we go any further that perhaps we should
take a break from time lapses to thank Artlist for sponsoring today's video!
Because if you're using your awesome camera to make an awesome video, you might
need some awesome music for that video.
And as I've said many, many times, Artlist is literally just
the best license out there for creators.
I've used Artlist literally since day one of starting my YouTube channel,
and it has gotten me through so many projects over the years.
Artlist's royalty free music library is always expanding and their licensing
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Any projects you create and publish while you have an active Artlist
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And no matter what your goal is, you've got a few different plans to choose from.
The Social Creator plan will let use Artlist music across all of your
personal accounts and platforms, but if you do want to take things one
step further, the Creator Pro Plan, which is the one that I have, let's
use Artlist music on all platforms for both personal and commercial projects.
So you're pretty much covered no matter what.
And if you're part of a creative team, there's now a plan that
lets you provide Artlist music to a team of up to seven people.
And beyond that, there's even an enterprise plan.
If you an "enterprising" individual.
Or team.
So be sure to use the link in the description to get two additional
months on your Artlist subscription.
Thank you again to Artlist for sponsoring this video and for supporting me and
my channel so much over the years.
And now let's jump back in,
it's time to talk more about time lapses.
Let's keep things "rolling."
Let's keep this video "driving" forward by now talking about the Vehicle Lights mode.
Just like the other two modes, it's important to keep the camera
stationary when you're doing vehicle lights, and then this will let you do that
thing that you might have seen many times where it's like cars are moving and the
headlights and the taillights of the cars are sort of, you know, light streaks.
It's almost like light painting.
It's a type of light painting.
And just like with Star Trails, you have the option to choose if
you want short, long, or maximum light trails for your cars.
That setting is probably going to depend on basically how much traffic there is
and the effect that you're going towards.
And then we can jump to the other three time lapse modes, which are
also available on the Hero 10 and some of the previous models as well.
So let's start with the traditional
Time Lapse mode.
This is just taking a bunch of still freeze frames and
pushing 'em together to make a video.
You can take traditional time lapses a little bit further by doing things like I
mentioned a minute ago, and adding in key frame zoom-ins and zoom-outs,
or even pans and stuff over the frame.
If you want to add in some motion, you can also do a really cool
thing, which is super simple.
I don't think you can do this in the GoPro app, but you could do it in
other editing software. If you duplicate your time lapse clip, set the top
one's opacity to 50% and just nudge it
forward or backward one frame, you're going to get kind of this
blur effect, which can sometimes be really helpful to sort of emphasize
the movement and the chaos instead of everything being a crisp still image.
Just a fun thing to try sometimes.
Doesn't work all the time, but it's fun sometimes.
The next time lapse mode that's been around for a while is
really one of my favorites,
and that's TimeWarp. Because what really differentiates this from
other modes is that the camera can move.
So if you're wondering what the difference is between the Time Lapse mode
and the TimeWarp mode, in TimeWarp you can move the camera around.
I have a lot of fun using it on bike rides.
If I want to capture a bike ride and you know, the camera is on a bike
moving, it's almost like you had a drone going at a really high speed.
It's just, it's so cool.
It's like the camera is flying.
There's a lot of really fun stuff you can do since you can move
the camera during a time lapse.
It's a very different thing than normal.
And the last time lapse mode, which has been around again for a while is
Night Lapses.
If you've ever tried to use this on a regular camera, like a mirrorless
camera or a DSLR, setting up your night exposures can be really, really tough.
This is great because the GoPro just takes care of it.
It's the same as a traditional time lapse, except it's settings are ideal
for lowlight, for nighttime, for night lapses...time lapses...at night.
Shocking.
I know personally I like to stick with auto intervals, and then 30 second exposures.
Especially if you're doing stars and stuff like that, you definitely don't
want to move the camera or have the camera on a wobbly tripod during
Night Lapse because with those 30 second exposures
any kind of movement is going to look strange.
This example actually had the camera clipped to the top of this gazebo here,
which is moving a little bit in the wind.
I kind of like the effect in this case, but it's not as solid and crisp as it
would be if it were mounted on a more sturdy tripod or a more stable surface.
So those are all the time lapse modes, but there are a few other things
that I think are worth mentioning.
The first being Scheduled Capture, which is pretty awesome, especially if
you want to do a time lapse or a night lapse of certain stars or planets.
You want to catch the sunrise, but you don't want to wake up in
the middle of the night or super early to set up your camera.
You can actually just set up the camera wherever you want
it to be, and then schedule
the capture.
And at that time, the camera will turn on and start recording without you having
to do anything, which is pretty awesome.
You can't even also adjust the duration.
So if you only want it to record for, you know, an hour, you can set
that and then you're not going to end up with a four hour time lapse.
And the last feature I want to talk about is pretty cool, and
it's like sort of related to time lapses, but I didn't really know
where it fits,
is called Hindsight.
Maybe it's not really time lapse related, but it's pretty cool.
In "hindsight," it's pretty cool.
Basically what this means is, it's a setting you can enable within the
camera, and you can set it to either 15 or 30 seconds, and what it will
do is when you press record, it will actually capture the 15 or 30 seconds
BEFORE you started pressing record.
So it kind of means the camera's sort of always capturing and keeping
this imagery in cache on hand.
Not cash like money, but like memory, cache, and then if you press record,
then it saves it to the memory card.
It's not something you want to have on all the time because the camera recording,
even when it's not recording, is obviously going to use more battery power.
However, it can be really cool if you wanted to do something like
catch lightning or fireworks or some specific moment, and you don't want to just have
the camera recording indefinitely until this thing does or doesn't happen.
You can just have the camera set up, when the thing happens hit record,
and then it will go back and you will have captured that moment as
long as it was within the 15 or 30 seconds– whatever you have it set to.
So that's a lot of capability, and those are a lot of features
in a tiny little camera like this.
The time lapse modes have always been some of my favorite GoPro features,
and with the Hero 11, it just takes it
one further. To 11.
And because it is so simple, it also opens these things up and makes them so much
more accessible to so many more people who might not have had access to a regular
camera or even wanted to deal with it.
But now they can experiment with all this cool stuff
because it's so simple and easy
just built right into the tiny little camera.
And speaking of things that are fun, thank you to everyone
who helps support my channel through Patreon and YouTube Channel Memberships.
And if you want to know a bit more about the GoPro Hero 11, check out
my full review right here, or this other super fun video right here!
Before more time elapses.