Time-lapse Interval Planner

What it does

Works out the interval between shots and the total number of frames you need to capture to fill your target shoot duration into a video of your chosen length and frame rate.

What you'll need

• How long you'll actually be shooting for (e.g. a 2-hour sunset-to-dark session).
• How long you want the final time-lapse video clip to run.
• The frame rate you'll export the video at.

Steps

1. Enter your total shoot duration.
2. Enter your target finished video length and frame rate.
3. Set your camera's intervalometer to the interval shown, and make sure your card/battery can handle the total frame count.

Reading the result

The interval is the time between shots — set this on your camera or intervalometer. Total frames is how many photos you'll end up with; check that against your memory card capacity and battery life before you start, since long shoots with short intervals can produce a lot of files.

Tips

• If the calculated interval is shorter than your camera's write time for one frame (common with RAW at high resolution), your camera will fall behind — increase the interval or shoot JPEG to keep up.
• For smoother-looking motion (clouds, crowds, traffic) shorter intervals generally look better; for very slow subjects (plant growth, star movement) longer intervals are fine and save storage.

What is a time-lapse interval?

The interval is the fixed gap between shots in a time-lapse sequence — set it on your camera's intervalometer, built-in or external, and it fires automatically at that spacing for the whole shoot. Every frame you capture becomes one frame of the finished video, so the interval is simply your total shoot duration divided across however many frames the final clip needs.

Why photographers use it

A time-lapse compresses a long real-world event — a sunset, moving clouds, a construction project, a crowd — into a short, watchable clip. Getting the interval right is what makes that compression look smooth rather than stuttery, or, at the other extreme, needlessly bloated with far more frames and storage than the finished video will ever use.

Which interval suits different subjects?

Moving clouds and general sky motion: roughly 2-5 seconds. Foot traffic and crowds: roughly 1-3 seconds. Construction or other slow-changing scenes over hours or days: minutes to tens of minutes between frames. Star and night-sky motion: roughly 15-30 seconds, balanced against how long each individual frame needs to expose to gather enough light. Sunsets and golden-hour transitions, where the light itself changes fast: 2-4 seconds, to catch the colour shift smoothly rather than in visible jumps.

Common mistakes

• Setting an interval shorter than your camera's write time per frame. common with RAW at high resolution — the camera falls behind the requested interval and effectively self-throttles, producing uneven real spacing between frames even though you asked for a fixed one.
• Not checking storage and battery against the total frame count first. long shoots with short intervals can produce thousands of frames. Running out of card space or battery partway through wastes the entire sequence, not just the frames you missed.
• Picking an interval from the subject's speed alone, ignoring total shoot duration. a 2-second interval sounds right for smooth cloud motion, but over an 8-hour shoot that's over 14,000 frames — likely far more than a short finished clip needs, and needlessly taxing on storage and processing.
• Ignoring exposure drift across a long, changing-light shoot. a sunset-to-night sequence shot on a single locked manual exposure will underexpose as it goes dark. Either plan for a ramping exposure approach, or accept the shift as the intended effect of a day-to-night transition — but decide on purpose rather than by accident.
• Picking a video frame rate without checking where it'll actually be viewed. 24-30fps looks standard on most platforms. An unusual choice, like 60fps for a slow, subtle time-lapse, can make an otherwise smooth sequence look oddly sped up, or demand far more frames than the subject's motion actually needs.

Example settings

FAQ

What happens if I pick too short an interval for my camera to keep up?

The camera falls behind — each frame's write time eats into the next interval, so shots end up spaced less evenly than the fixed interval you set. Increase the interval or shoot a smaller/faster file format (like JPEG) to keep up.

How do I know how long to actually shoot for?

It depends on the subject. A sunset is naturally bounded (start to dusk). A cloud time-lapse usually needs at least 30-60 minutes of real motion to compress meaningfully. A construction project might run for the entire build, shot in short daily sessions stitched together.

Should I shoot RAW or JPEG for a time-lapse?

RAW gives more grading flexibility — useful for exposure ramping across a changing-light scene — but write speed and storage add up fast across thousands of frames. JPEG is often the practical choice for very long or high-frame-count shoots.

Can I change the interval partway through a shoot?

Not with a simple fixed intervalometer setting, without adjusting it manually. Some cameras and apps support ramping or adaptive intervals for scenes whose motion speed changes — a separate technique from the fixed-interval math this tool covers.

Does a shorter interval always look smoother?

Generally, up to a point. Once you're capturing far more frames than the subject's actual rate of change, extra frames add storage and processing cost without a visible smoothness benefit.