Time-Lapse Time Table

It's no secret that we like shooting time-lapse footage.  It's a great way to compress time and show things that you couldn't ordinarily see with the naked eye.  Shooting time-lapse however can be an excruciating experience.  You need to anticipate what your scene will look over the course of several hours, then you need to dial in your manual settings before shooting your sequence.  If your shutter speed, aperture, white balance, or interval length are off slightly you probably won't get another chance to shoot the sequence that day.

In order to help us plan our time-lapse sequences we put together a quick table which helps us determine how many frames to shoot, the interval duration between shots and how long we need to plan on shooting to get enough frames to make a video clip.

There are two charts, one with a 5 sec final video clip length and one with a 10 sec final clip length.  Both charts make the assumption that your final video clip will run at 24 frames per second.

Your Shoot Interval will be a creative decision.  For fast moving scenes like people walking or clouds moving you should shoot with a faster interval like 2-5 seconds.  For slow moving scenes like weather patterns or plants growing you should shoot a slower interval.

To use the charts, first decide what your shoot interval will be.  Then set your intervelometer to shoot the Total Frames with the Shoot Interval and be prepared to wait the amount of time Shoot Length shows.

It's not rocket science but this chart does help avoid doing the math so you can concentrate on your settings.  Hope this helps!  You can download a .PDF of this here.

Final FPS	Final Length	Total Frames	Shoot Interval	Shoot Length
24 fps	5 seconds	120	0:00:02	0:04:00
24 fps	5 seconds	120	0:00:03	0:06:00
24 fps	5 seconds	120	0:00:05	0:10:00
24 fps	5 seconds	120	0:00:10	0:20:00
24 fps	5 seconds	120	0:00:15	0:30:00
24 fps	5 seconds	120	0:00:30	1:00:00
24 fps	5 seconds	120	0:01:00	2:00:00
24 fps	5 seconds	120	0:02:00	4:00:00
24 fps	5 seconds	120	0:03:00	6:00:00
24 fps	5 seconds	120	0:04:00	8:00:00
24 fps	5 seconds	120	0:05:00	10:00:00
24 fps	5 seconds	120	0:10:00	20:00:00
24 fps	5 seconds	120	0:20:00	40:00:00
24 fps	5 seconds	120	0:30:00	60:00:00

Final FPS	Final Length	Total Frames	Shoot Interval	Shoot Length
24 fps	10 seconds	240	0:00:02	0:08:00
24 fps	10 seconds	240	0:00:03	0:12:00
24 fps	10 seconds	240	0:00:05	0:20:00
24 fps	10 seconds	240	0:00:10	0:40:00
24 fps	10 seconds	240	0:00:15	1:00:00
24 fps	10 seconds	240	0:00:30	2:00:00
24 fps	10 seconds	240	0:01:00	4:00:00
24 fps	10 seconds	240	0:02:00	8:00:00
24 fps	10 seconds	240	0:03:00	12:00:00
24 fps	10 seconds	240	0:04:00	16:00:00
24 fps	10 seconds	240	0:05:00	20:00:00
24 fps	10 seconds	240	0:10:00	40:00:00
24 fps	10 seconds	240	0:20:00	80:00:00
24 fps	10 seconds	240	0:30:00	120:00:00