I’m a sucker for a good gadget, and my latest find is the Brinno GardenWatchCam. This camera takes individual jpg images at set intervals and puts them together into time-lapse videos.
This camera was originally created, as the name suggests, for making time-lapse videos of your growing garden. It even comes with a stake to mount the camera into the ground (it also can be threaded onto a tripod). But it has value well beyond your garden.
The camera runs on four AA batteries and records to an included 2GB flash drive. As something meant to be used in a garden, it’s of course weather-proof. You can take photos at intervals of 1 minute, 5 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 4 hours or 24 hours. Or use the custom setting to create your own interval (from 5 seconds to 12 hours).
And it couldn’t be easier to use. Just set it for either a close-up or a far-away shot, then press the button until you hear a couple beeps. A light will indicate each time a new photo is taken. The camera retails for a bargain price of $140, although you can likely find it for close to $110.
There are a couple drawbacks. The camera is bigger than I expected – roughly twice the size of a Flip camera. And the fact there is no LCD screen means you can’t easily frame your shots (you need to set it up, record, then remove the flash drive to see if you got it correct). But a future version appears to have added an LCD screen.
Here are a couple test videos. I’ll continue to share future videos as well. The first video was show in 5-minute increments over the course of five days. The second was shot in 30-second intervals over the course of a few hours.
Need a little time-lapse inspiration? Read this post from 10,000 Words.