Sunset Timestack - hundreds of frames shot and blended on iPhone 5

This is a slightly new edit of a very old photo - in November 2014, I went to Navy Pier in Chicago and set up my iPhone 5 on a little tripod to take a time-lapse of the sunset. I took 489 frames at 5 second intervals, and then stacked them all into one photo to make this photo showing a long exposure type photo of the cloud trails during sunset. This is the same technique you've probably seen done to make a star trail photo - blend all the frames by keeping the brightest pixel at each point. It is doable with any camera and a desktop app, but I did this one 100% on my iPhone 5 using the app iLapse to capture and stack the frames, and then other iPhone apps to edit the resulting photo.

I'll always remember this as my first successful timestack photo. I remember being freezing cold on Navy Pier in the blasting cold wind off the lake and my hands going numb while I waited and waited to make sure I didn't leave until all the color was gone from the sky, and I remember my amazement as I sat on the train on the way home and watched my iPhone 5 slowly, slowly, stacking these frames. (My iPhone 6s now stacks them a lot faster, since it has more processing power, and of course a desktop computer will stack them in seconds, but there's something fun about having it all done on the phone before I even get home.)

There are plenty of apps that will capture a time-lapse on a smartphone and then you can easily stack them on a computer later, but to my knowledge, there is only one app that will also do the stacking part on the iPhone: the app iLapse. Unfortunately, the app hasn’t been updated in a couple years (even though I’ve emailed the makers telling them how much I love it and giving them a few small suggestions for easy improvements - they seem to be going in another direction towards print-on-demand apps). It does still work, but the interface could be better and I worry that at any time it will stop working completely with some OS update or other. I wonder, if a lot of people interested in this technique emailed them, would they start updating the app again? Alternately, can we convince some other time-lapse app to add the stacking feature? My other favorite time-lapse app is Laspe It Pro, which is better in all ways except it doesn’t have an in-app stacking feature. I emailed them once years ago to suggest it and they never added it, but I wonder if a lot of people expressed interest, would they? I like doing this process with sunsets on my phone, but as smartphone cameras get better, having an app like that might even someday be useful for star trails as well.

See more related stuff:
Time-Lapse & Time-Stack
Stuff You Can Do With An iPhone

Taken in: United States / Illinois / Chicago / Streeterville (show map)

Taken on: November 12, 2016

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Sets appears in: • Featured • Most Interesting by Flickr Algorithm more » • Chicago • Stuff You Can Do With An iPhone • Timelapse & Timestack • Sunsets & Sunrises • Chicago • Sunsets and Sunrises « less

Groups appears in: • Chicagoland • Chicago Capture more » • Long Exposure Photography (LEP) • The Long Exposure Effect « less

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