Hi everyone!
I’m fairly new to 3D printing and looking to get into creating time-lapse videos of my prints.
I just purchased a Bambu Lab PS1 and I’m looking for recommendations on the best micro SD card to use for capturing time-lapse videos that can be easily extracted and uploaded to social media.
I’d also love to hear the community’s thoughts on the camera setup:
• Is it worth investing in a 3rd-party camera, or is the onboard Bambu Lab camera good enough for time-lapse videos?
• If you’re using an external camera, what are you using and why did you choose it?
My goal is to capture clean, high-quality time-lapse videos while keeping things simple and beginner-friendly.
Any advice, recommendations, or examples would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Your stated goals are reasonable, but there are a few misconceptions worth clearing up first. Based on your questions, it’s also unclear whether you’ve experimented with the built-in time-lapse feature yet. That should be your first step.
Micro SD card selection
The SD card is not a limiting factor here. The Bambu onboard cameras record modest-resolution video, and any modern, name-brand micro SD card will handle the required write speeds without issue. Card speed does not meaningfully affect image quality or reliability in this use case.
Is the built-in camera sufficient?
That depends on how you define “clean” and “high quality.” The easiest way to answer this is to look at real-world examples. Search YouTube for Bambu time-lapse videos and decide whether the results meet your expectations. Many users are satisfied with the onboard camera for social media content. This channel may help set expectations: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2vImj_K_9GdMVpSzI14O6A
Third-party cameras
There is no single “best” external camera. Camera choice depends on lighting, framing, mounting options, and how much effort you want to put into setup and post-processing. Without specific requirements, this question does not have a single correct answer.
Best beginner setup
Use what comes with the printer first. Learn its limitations, decide what you don’t like, and only then consider upgrades. Buying equipment before understanding your needs usually leads to wasted money.
Time-lapse capture can be done on a fixed time interval or tied to layer changes, which significantly affects results.
If you are new to photography in general, starting with a phone on a tripod is often more instructive than jumping straight to dedicated hardware.
Personal experience, for context:
I went down this rabbit hole a couple of years ago and built my own remote shutter setup using a phone camera, a repurposed Bluetooth shutter fob, decent lighting, and a tripod. I modified the G-code to park the toolhead against a limit switch wired to the shutter, then stitched the images together using FFmpeg, VLC, and other tools. Total cost (excluding the camera) was under $20 plus some design time.
I later repeated the experiment with an old DSLR and better lighting. What I learned:
A good phone camera can produce still images comparable to an expensive DSLR for this use case.
Time-lapse prints are interesting at first, then quickly become far less compelling once the technical challenge is solved.
It was a fun project and a good learning exercise, but today I mainly use time-lapse videos as a diagnostic tool for print issues. In that role, they’re genuinely useful.
Thank you for your response Olias. This is super helpful and gives me something to think about. i will take your advise and try out the on-boarding camera first and should i want to upgrade this in the future i can.
I’ve never understood the fascination with time-lapse videos. They are slightly interesting to watch once or twice, but then they are predictable and rather boring.
I don’t even find them useful for troubleshooting, as they usually miss the point where the print actually goes awry. Activating Auto-record monitoring fills the card quicker, but the continuous video will show exactly when the print broke loose from the plate, where the filament became spaghetti, when the nozzle pulled over the wobbly tower, etc.
