Life on the frozen tundra of South Dakota Life on the frozen tundra of South Dakota

Brinno TLC130 Time Lapse Camera

I purchased the Brinno TLC130 time lapse camera for a different purpose than most people. The camera was designed to document long-running situations, such as building projects, season changes, cloud movements, etc. After taking a series of photos over this period of time, the camera will then assemble them into a video file showing the progression of the subject being filmed.

For me, however, I had a different idea for using the camera: When taking motorcycle trips I often see things that I wish I could get a picture of, but pulling over to snap a photo would be inconvenient or even dangerous. Sometimes there's a lot of traffic in the area. Sometimes there's no shoulder on which to pull over. Sometimes the curves of the road would hide you from approaching vehicles. And sometimes you're just not in the mood to keep stopping to take a picture.

I decided it would be handy if I had a camera that I could mount on my bike that would take pictures at a regular interval. That way I wouldn't be tempted to put myself in peril just to take a scenic picture, and it would also save me the time of pulling over. It also wouldn't lose motivation to keep snapping pictures the way I do after a long day of riding.

I did already own a GoPro action camera (Hero 11 Silver), and tried to figure out a way to adapt my existing GoPro for this purpose. I ran into two major problems. First, while the camera can be set up to take still photos, it only does so on demand; there's no way to set my GoPro to automatically snap photos based on a time interval. Second, on a good day the GoPro battery will last about an hour and forty-five minutes before needing to be recharged. This isn't ideal when I'm usually riding for eight or more hours at a stretch.

So I did some searching online and came across the Brinno brand of time-lapse cameras that looked like it could pull off what I was wanting to accomplish. They have several models of cameras and price points. I didn't need all the bells and whistles of their fancier cameras, so I selected the TLC130 which is one of their entry level models.

I used it for the first time as I went on a 10 day trip covering seven states and almost 4,000 miles. Using an easily obtainable RAM mount, I attached the camera to the left side of my handlebars. During the trip the camera wound up taking nearly 11,000 pictures, which I later sorted through and picked out 635 "keepers." This gave me a good base of experience from which I could write this review, in case someone is looking to purchase the same camera for themselves.

The Brinno TLC130 mounted on my motorcycle.

Here's what I liked:

The battery life is phenomenal. For most of the trip I had the camera taking a photo using 30 second intervals. I would start the camera when I got on the motorcycle early in the morning, and I would stop it when I arrived at my destination that evening. During gas or food stops I would just let the camera run, rather than worrying about starting and stopping it during each riding break. Even on the days where I was on the road for more than 12 hours there was still plenty of battery left. I would charge the camera in the evening in preparation for the next day and it would take less than 1/2 hour to "top off" the battery.

Despite the camera being mounted to a vibrating motorcycle as it went down the road, most of the pictures were surprisingly steady. Some of them had a little blur at the edges, which I attribute to the camera snapping a picture right when I hit a pothole or patch of rough pavement. The camera would be visibly shaking as I rode, which at first made me worried that the pictures would all be blurry. This turned out to be a non-issue, and it actually impressed me how good most of the photos turned out even though the camera was mounted on a nonsteady object like a motorcycle. Occasionally there would be a blurry photo, but I would say it would happen no more than one out of every five hundred pictures taken.

The storage space is more than ample. I added a 64 GB micro SD card, and I barely used up any of the storage with all of my photos. I could probably take 15 or 20 motorcycle trips before I have to worry about deleting files off the camera. There was no worry during my trip that I had to swap SD cards or that I would run out of space.

It's small, at a little over two inches in height and width, and about 3/4 deep. It doesn't take up a lot of real estate when mounted on my motorcycle. In fact, my RAM mount arm is disproportionately larger than the camera itself.

The camera is water/weather resistant, which is a concern when mounting it on a motorcycle. I didn't want to have to worry about putting the camera away if it started to rain. In fact, I did use the camera as I rode through an intense rainstorm and the camera had no issues with the moisture. Plus it captured some great pictures of the threatening clouds as the storm approached.

Here's what could be improved:

It's difficult to tell if the time lapse picture taking mode has been started or stopped. There is a little LED that blinks every 10 seconds or so, but the LED is very dim and it's impossible to see it in sunlight without cupping your hands over it, sticking your eye right up near it and waiting for the flash. A brighter LED would be nice.

Having no screen or interface on the camera itself, there is no ability to configure the camera options except through the smartphone app (I use Android.) Using an app isn't that big a deal to me, except the Brinno app itself is a bit clunky to use and figure out (and I'm a software engineer by trade.) Until I played with the app for a bit I wasn't really sure what the different camera options did or meant. Also, when you change a camera setting on the app there isn't any real positive feedback that the setting has actually been sent to the phone, so you have to take it by faith. Something like having the camera beep when you change a setting would be nice (the same way my Roomba does.) Also I had the app lock up on me a couple of times, causing me to have to restart the app. The good news is once I got the settings on the camera dialed in and configured the way I wanted, I really didn't need to use the app after that. So the quirks of the mobile app aren't something I need to put up with on a regular basis during normal use.

The camera only stores data via AVI video files. If you want to post your time lapse movies to social media, they need to first be converted to MP4. Or, if you're like me and are just interested in the individual JPG pictures, each frame of the AVI file needs to be exported as an individual image. Brinno provides a Windows app to handle both of these conversion functions, however I am not exaggerating when I say the app looks like it was originally designed in the era of Windows 98. The app does work as intended, so that's a plus. However, given the obvious age of the app it does call into question the long term support for future versions of Windows. It would be nice to have a camera setting that would let you store the files directly on the camera in your preferred format (JPG or MP4) so one didn't have to monkey with this antiquated Windows app.

The camera has only support for wide angle pictures with a 16:9 aspect ratio (1920 x 1080). Because of the wide angle lens, images tend to get a little "fish eyed" which is noticeable around the edges of the photos. In my case, things like straight lines on the pavement have an obvious curve to them as they traverse the photo. My preference would be to have a narrower aspect ratio without the distortion, or even better: an option to select what aspect ratio the camera uses in order to support both types of photos.

Summary

Overall, I am quite pleased with the camera. The improvements I suggested aren't "deal breakers" for me. I'm glad I bought the camera as it allowed me to capture tons of pictures during this trip that I would have otherwise missed. Even though my usage of the camera (mounted on a motorcycle) is not the way it was designed to be used, it does the job surprisingly well.

It also was not a major investment. When I purchased the camera I believe I paid $160. I also purchased a larger SD card (the camera did come with a memory card included), and the RAM mounting components. Everything in total cost around $200. I feel I easily got $200 in return value by the photos taken during this one trip by itself. I'm looking forward to using this camera for many motorcycle trips in the future. Here are my (non-sponsored) Amazon links to my camera and mounting items. I do not get any compensation or kick-back if you use these links. I only post them here for your convenience:

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This page last updated on 12/10/2024