Wingscapes WSCA04 Timelapse Outdoor PlantCam

 (32 customer reviews)

The PlantCam is a robust, well-designed device that produces timelapse videos at a very affordable price. It also has some idiosyncrasies that are worth knowing about. For me, it replaces an awkward method of timelapse photography in which I attached a video camera via Firewire to a Mac laptop and used iMovie's option of capturing frames at a reduced rate. That method was very flexible (the framerate was infinitely adjustable and the camera could zoom in as needed), but it tied up a computer and video camera for the duration of the movie, and it could not easily be used outdoors. By contrast, the battery-operated PlantCam is self-contained, compact, sturdy, sealed against the weather for use outdoors, and designed to do this one task well. Its preset choice of framerates and non-zoom lens are less flexible than the iMovie approach, but the PlantCam does the job at about a twentieth of the cost of the other equipment.

The designers made choices that generally are very shrewd...Read more

Customer Video Review Length:: 1:11 Mins

Here is an actual video made using the Wingscapes Plantcam. This is what you can expect when using the product inside. The quality might be even better outdoors, but it is December and nothing is growing right now. I took 152 high quality images with the camera (1 every daylight hour). I used Microsoft Movie Maker to turn the images into a video; each still is shown at 1/15th of a second. Hope you enjoy!

--This camera is advertised for its lapse-time (automatic spaced intervals between exposures) capability. Its name (PlantCam) could give the impression that its only use is for seeing a bud, flower, plant or garden grow "high speed," compressing hours, days, or weeks into a few minutes. But it can be used with delight in many other nature-situations with satisfaction, showing "sped-up replay" in the motions of clouds, shadows, animal intra-flock associations, indoor flower turning, snow melting, and even things like recording the development of a drawing, construction, what people mostly look at in a store window, and on and on. The camera works fine with variable time selections, a laser pointer for down to 11 inch close-up work, a view finder for distant projects, several levels of resolution, date-time imprint and more. I have viewed the picture results with Windows Picture Manager, finding the filmstrip view nice for speeding through the sequence. In Windows Movie Maker I can...Read more