Translate real-world time into smooth, watchable video — eliminate guesswork before you press shutter.
Timeline compression: 1h 30m → 30s clip at 24 fps (180× speed-up)
📷 Subject Presets
Event Duration
Shooting Interval
7.5 s
between each shot
Formula: 5,400 s ÷ 720 frames = 7.5 s/shot
Total Frames
720
30s × 24 fps
Shots/Hour
480
during the shoot
Storage Needed
5.6 GB
DSLR JPEG · 8 MB/shot
Speed-up Factor
180×
real-time → video time
| Subject | Typical Interval | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 🚗 Moving traffic / people | 1–3 s | Short interval for fast movement |
| 🌅 Sunrise / Sunset | 3–7 s | 5 s is a reliable starting point |
| ☁️ Fast clouds / storms | 5–10 s | Match to cloud movement speed |
| ☁️ Slow clouds / overcast | 15–30 s | Longer for lazy cloud drift |
| 🌙 Day-to-Night (Holy Grail) | 5–10 s | Requires auto-ramping exposure |
| 🌟 Star trails / Milky Way | 20–30 s | Match shutter to interval; use Bulb mode |
| 🌸 Flowers blooming | 5–30 min | Days-long project; use external power |
| 🏗️ Construction (per day) | 10–30 min | Weatherproof housing + solar panel recommended |
Intervalometer: A dedicated remote shutter controller that fires your camera at set intervals. Most modern mirrorless cameras have this built-in; DSLRs often need a cable remote.
Power: Dummy battery adapters replace the camera battery with a cable to a wall outlet or power bank — essential for shoots over 4 hours.
Storage: Shoot in JPEG (not RAW) for long projects to conserve card space. Use V30-rated UHS-I cards or faster for reliability during extended sequences.
🎯 A Simple Example: Shooting a 30-Second Sunset Clip
You want to capture a 90-minute sunset and condense it into a 30-second cinematic clip at 24 fps. Here is the plan:
1️⃣ Select Sunrise/Sunset preset — sets 1h 30m event, 30s clip
2️⃣ Keep 24 fps selected — this is the classic cinematic frame rate
3️⃣ Calculator shows: interval = 7.5 s between shots, 720 total frames
4️⃣ Set your camera intervalometer to 7 seconds (round down to avoid missed frames)
5️⃣ At 8 MB/JPEG, you need only 5.6 GB of card space — any 32 GB card handles it easily
6️⃣ Set up your tripod, lock focus manually, set exposure manually (no Auto ISO during timelapse), and press start
Pro tip: Always shoot 10–15 minutes before and after your target window — light changes faster than you expect, and the "best" frames are often right at the edges of what you planned to capture.
Data Source: Time-Lapse Photography: A Complete Introduction to Shooting, Processing, and Rendering (Ryan A. Chylinski, public domain educational resource) • Public domain • Solo-developed with AI
Muybridge's Obsession and the Birth of Motion: In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge set up a row of 24 cameras along a racetrack at Stanford's farm in California, each triggered by a trip-wire as a horse galloped past. The resulting sequence — "Sallie Gardner at a Gallop" — was the world's first timelapse-like motion study, and it resolved a genuine scientific debate: do all four hooves leave the ground simultaneously during a gallop? (They do.) Muybridge had no calculator. He solved the timing problem by trial, error, and sheer stubborn repetition — the same approach most photographers still use today without a tool like this one.
The Maths Behind the Magic: A timelapse is fundamentally a sampling problem. Your camera takes a sample of the world once every N seconds, discarding everything in between. When those samples are played back at 24 frames per second, the human eye perceives smooth motion — but all the "boring" in-between moments are simply gone. The formula is elegantly simple: divide your total event duration (in seconds) by the number of frames you need (clip length × fps). The result is your interval. A 2-hour sunset (7,200 seconds) compressed to 30 seconds at 24 fps needs 720 frames — so your camera fires every 7,200 ÷ 720 = 10 seconds, exactly. Every timelapse challenge is just a variation on this one equation.
Why Interval Choice Defines the Mood: The shooting interval is not just a technical setting — it is an aesthetic one. A 2-second interval for clouds creates frantic, churning motion. A 30-second interval for the same clouds creates a majestic, slow sweep. B&H Photo's professional timelapse guides recommend 1–3 seconds for traffic and pedestrians (otherwise people "teleport"), 5–10 seconds for clouds, and 15–30 seconds for star trails where individual star movement needs to be visible over 4–6 hours. The interval you choose determines whether your final video feels dynamic, meditative, or geological.
The Storage and Power Problem: Modern timelapse photography runs smack into a real-world logistics problem that has nothing to do with optics: you may need to shoot 1,000+ frames at 25 MB each (25 GB of RAW data) while keeping a camera powered for 8–12 hours in a field. This is why long-term construction and nature timelapses have spawned an entire ecosystem of specialised equipment — dummy battery adapters, weatherproof housings, solar charge controllers, and dedicated timelapse cameras. For single-session shoots under 4 hours, JPEG shooting and a camera with a battery grip solve most problems. For anything longer, external power and careful storage planning (which this calculator helps you pre-visualise) are not optional.
🐾 From the Lab Cat's Motion Analysis Division:
I attempted to assist with a timelapse of a garden last Tuesday. My findings: at a 5-second interval, I appear in 47 frames. At a 30-second interval, I appear in 12 frames but look considerably more mysterious. My conclusion is that the correct interval depends entirely on how much of the final footage you wish to dedicate to me. I recommend intervals of 4–6 seconds for maximum cat coverage. The birds got 2 frames. This is appropriate. 🎬