Timelapse & Slow Motion Shooting Calculator
Calculate frame counts, intervalometer shooting gaps, and playback runtimes for time manipulation cinematography.
Input Parameters
Total duration you will be recording on location (e.g. 60m = 1 hour).
Seconds between consecutive shutter releases.
Calculation Results
Duration of the generated clip in your editing timeline.
Number of individual stills captured by the camera
Principles of Timelapse & Intervalometer Shooting
Choosing the correct interval between exposures is critical to achieving natural, pleasing motion in timelapse cinematography. Moving clouds usually benefit from 1–3 second intervals, city street traffic from 1–2 seconds, pedestrians from 2–5 seconds, and day-to-night transitions (holy grail) or celestial star movements from 15–30 seconds.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. What shutter speed should I use for timelapse?
To avoid jarring staccato motion, dragging the shutter to achieve motion blur is key. Use ND filters to shoot at shutter speeds equal to roughly half of your interval (e.g. 1-second exposure for a 2-second interval gap).
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