Until now, I hadn’t really done that much time-lapse photography. Getting the settings right, worrying about exposure to the elements, and powering the camera for extended periods of time, just made it seem too complicated. They say that necessity is the mother of invention though, and that’s where the Enlaps Tikee 3 Pro saves the day.
Enlaps looked at how complicated shooting great time-lapse photography was and built a stand-alone smart camera that makes shooting incredible 6K time-lapse videos accessible to everyone. To test it out, I flew 3,500 miles south to El Salvador, a country known for its dramatic landscapes due to its primarily mountainous geography. From mountain towns, to rocky cliff-lined beaches, I knew it would be the perfect place to explore and shoot some killer time-lapses.
Enlaps Tikee 3 PRO ()
The solution for perfect exposures
Flicker from changing exposure settings is the easiest way to ruin a potentially great time-lapse. But how do you avoid it? Do you change the exposure each frame? Do you just lock it in for the duration of the time-lapse? How do you handle changing lighting conditions? Honesty, I don’t know, but fortunately the Tikee 3 Pro takes all the guesswork out of getting the perfect exposure.
The settings are totally automatic; all you have to worry about is finding the right location. Once you import your shots to the computer, the My Tikee online smart software removes any frames that might ruin your shot and blends everything together seamlessly.
To set up the Tikee 3 Pro, you connect to your smartphone though the native iOS and Android app. Here you can program automatic start and stop times, as well as the duration between each shot frame. Should you want to set it up for a longer term time-lapse, you can even program it to automatically power on and off as well as run different shooting schedules by date and time.
You don’t necessarily have to be right next to a Tikee camera to set up a new time-lapse either. It’s possible to control a Tikee camera from anywhere in the world thanks to its onboard SIM card slot. With a SIM installed, you can even set the Tikee to upload low-res preview images to the cloud so you can make sure you’re getting the shot— from anywhere.
Dual Built-In Lenses
Instead of just having one lens to capture your scene, the Tikee 3 Pro actually has two lenses. This means that it’s capable of capturing super wide images. It can do it without all of the horizon distortion you’d get from a wide angle lens. Then, to create each frame, the Tikke 3 Pro captures the images and merges them together as a panorama.
At first, this may sound even more complicated than a normal time-lapse. However, with the My Tikee online software, you just upload your images and the software automatically handles both the creation of the panoramas and the building of the time-lapse video for you.
Durable Build & Solar Power
Mother nature is unpredictable. Unless you’re sitting next to your camera the entire time you’re shooting a time-lapse, there’s always the potential of damage from the elements. Things got really foggy during one night in the cloud forest. There was quite a bit of moisture that built up all over the camera. Fortunately the Tikee 3 Pro has an IP66 weatherproof rating. You don’t ever have to worry about rain or condensation destroying your camera.
My favorite things about the Tikee 3 Pro are the enormous 24,000 mAh battery and the built-in solar panel. Over the course of my trip, I never had to charge it once. Depending on which mode the camera is in, Enlaps says you can leave the Tikee 3 Pro for up to a 60 day-long time-lapse without ever having to charge the battery!
Having a totally autonomous time-lapse setup was awesome on this trip because it allowed me the freedom to explore or to sleep. I didn’t have to worry about turning the camera on and off. With the Tikee 3 Pro, Enlaps has really taken the guesswork out of time-lapse photography. What was once a super complicated and time-consuming process is now easy enough to allow anyone to to create gorgeous time-lapse photography over any period of time.
Shop the Enlaps Tikee 3 PRO 16MP Timelapse 6K Video Camera () at Adorama now.
Feature photo by Cooper Naitove
