Shooting timelapse on Sony Alpha

Yesterday I wanted to shoot a timelapse video with my Sony Alpha 7 Mark II. I was a bit surprised that there is no video mode for that. My small Canon G7X Mark II has a timelapse mode where you can also control how the exposure is set and it works just fine. A camera that cost almost 4x the money, I really expected to have a similar function.

But, you have to buy this seperately for 10US$ via the PlayMemories Apps. At least, that’s the solution Sony has for this. There is another solution: Using the Remote Control App (this might already be installed on your camera, as it was on mine) and the Android App Timelapse – Sony Camera.

To start a timelapse, open the PlayMemories Apps panel and then the Remote Control App on the camera. The Wifi connection of the camera should be turned on now and waiting for a connection. Now start the Timelapse app on your Android phone. The UI should show the connection progress and if everything works out, you can set up the timelapse interval timer and the number of pictures to take (or just check “unlimited”).

The timelapse pictures are stored as JPEGs, not RAW images. I wasn’t too unhappy about this, because I can import the images directly into Vegas Pro 15 as an image series and create a video. Pretty painless, and I guess every video editing application has a feature like this. Now I just have to get the timelapse intervals right for different topics…