How to Choose a TIme Lapse Interval

[@chase_with_jase]

Great video been experimenting with time lapses of storms and weather. Hoping to come to the USA in 2026 to go chasing some of those huge mid western storms but trying to perfect the technique first (I'm in Australia) Thanks for all the tips.

[@princesslizzy5675]

Very clear video. Thank you. You now have a new subscriber. 🎉

[@WarerBrow]

hey, that's pretty much all what I need to shoot a time lapse! thanks

[@ScottHerder]

You’re welcome

[@palomavano4705]

Thank you for providing such an informative and easy-to-understand video.

[@ScottHerder]

Glad to hear it thanks for the kind words!

[@Mike0193Azul]

Thanks so much for the particular use-case examples and visual examples!

[@ScottHerder]

You're very welcome!

[@markolson3855]

That was good and helpful. I'll have to play it over again but that's fine. Yhank you!

[@ScottHerder]

Glad to hear it's helpful Mark, there is also a written guide that you can reference when out and about on the go. hyperlapsephotography.com/how-to-choose-the-best-time-lapse-interval-for-any-scene/

[@dyl1350]

@@ScottHerder Great video and love the written guide. Thanks!

[@alexhahnebach647]

Great! Thanks! subscribed

[@joyflg1rl]

Thank you! This is all very helpful and very clear. You mentioned in one of the examples adding a time stamp to the time lapse and I’m wondering how to do it. Right now, I’m using Lapse It and my iPhone, but I have a variety of Adobe programs I could use after the fact. Do you have a sense of what is a simple, straightforward way to do this? I’m trying to take readings of how much sunlight different areas inside and outside of my house get so that I can determine what vegetables can be planted in different places. A lot of the sunlight happens in hours when I’ll be sleeping, which is why a recording is particularly helpful. Right now, I’ve included a large physical clock in my videos but it is rather cumbersome and a bit hard to read. I can imagine when I’m trying to make time lapse videos that are for less utilitarian purposes, it could be really nice sometimes to have a more subtle clock.

[@ScottHerder]

In Lapse it. In the summary tab (The tabs are found on the bottom of the screen and are Summary/Editor/Effects/Soundtrack. There is an option for displaying timestamp. If it's not there, than it's either an update OR just a feature in the paid version?

[@joyflg1rl]

@@ScottHerderWow!!!! Thank you! I’ve been doing all these gymnastics when the setting was right there under my nose! 😄 Thank you so much for showing me where to find it! I super appreciate it!

[@ScottHerder]

@@joyflg1rl my pleasure, glad it could be helpful!

[@donaldrobbins252]

Thank you.

[@MomoFilmProduction]

I love you man

[@ScottHerder]

Right back at you!

[@collay]

I am sorry but I am slightly confused, if my timelapse intervals have to be every 5 seconds, what would my shutter speed be please? Any help would be greatly appreciated ✌️

[@ScottHerder]

Divide your interval by 2 and that’s an ideal shutter speed. So for 5 second interval. 2.5 would be ideal. But if you can’t get 2.5 seconds don’t worry, just get as much as you can to get some blur. Hope that helps.

[@collay]

Thanks so much for your reply. And thanks so much for a great video. It really helped!

[@tzen7529]

Loved the Pizza analogy, now im hungry. 😂

[@i4y943]

Anyone know Whats the best interval for snowfall.I wanna film Snow falling in my garden thankss

[@ScottHerder]

It will really depend on how much snow fall you are getting and how long it will snow. A wide shot of a garden from a security cam pov could be good at one second, ten seconds, or one minute depending on the rate of snowfall.

[@douggingerich2216]

Hey Scott, I have to shoot solar panels that follow the sun over a 12 hour period. What interval would you recommend?

[@ScottHerder]

Damn that sounds interesting! Anytime I shoot anything new that I’ve never done I err on the side of caution and shoot more than I think I’ll need. So I’d go a photo every minute. This would get you 720 photos. ( i normally aim for 10 seconds or 240 photos) 720 photos will get you about 30 seconds of Timelapse. You can then speed it up to be faster if needed but that’s a safe start.

[@douggingerich2216]

@@ScottHerderok cool. Thanks for the reply!

[@oneeyedphotographer]

I work on 300 frames as a starting point. It gives Yanks ten seconds of video, the rest of us a little more, and the arithmetic is easier. 300 seconds is 15 minutes, a quarter hour. It's not focal length you should be talking about, it's angle of view _in the finished video._ (That's underscored). I might shoot at 90 degrees (that's quite wide), but crop to 30 degrees (that's not so wide), and perhaps I can figure how to pseudo-pan so I have my 30 degree viewpoint moving across the entire imaged area. Angle of view is better than focal length as it's independent of sensor size and cropping in PP. The autistic in me thinks the shutter speed is likely 6mm/msec. Exposure duration is a useful measure of what's going on. The exposure duration vs interval gets hard to do when you are shooting long intervals. 12 hours for one frame per day? Panasonic says the longest recommended for one of my cameras is 15 minutes. I expect it gets a little warm.