Apple’s pair of new iPhones and upgraded iOS have had a rocky launch, but there’s zero cause for complaint with the photography features in iOS 8 and the cameras on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. One of the coolest iOS 8 camera tricks is Time-lapse mode, which directly competes with Instagram’s new iOS app Hyperlapse. Clearly, Instagram has to step it up.
A Thursday update for Hyperlapse lets you use your front-facing camera to shoot time-lapse videos—wow, just like iOS 8, which lets all iPhone owners shoot front-facing time-lapse videos. Frameographer, another time-lapse video app, has the front-facing option as well.
You know what this means: The potential for horrible time-lapses of teens making faces has now grown exponentially. But front-facing time-lapse videos can also be incredibly artistic, as we’ve seen with front-facing videos on Instagram itself.
So if time-lapse video is now part of the iOS toolkit, who needs Hyperlapse? The camera functions differently for iOS 8 and for Hyperlapse. The iOS Time-lapse mode works by shooting stills and stitching them together. You can’t adjust the speed of the time lapse. Hyperlapse actually shoots video that you can speed up from 1X to 12X. You can easily share it to Instagram and add a filter before posting.
I prefer Hyperlapse’s extra options, plus its well-executed image stabilization, to the more rudimentary Time-lapse mode in iOS. I do wish Instagram would just add Hyperlapse’s features to the main app and call it a day.