How to shoot a timelapse

A timelapse is not a fast video: it is a sequence of stills fired at an interval and played back at video speed, so hours compress into seconds. The interval is the first decision, and it follows the subject's speed: fast-moving clouds or a busy street want a short interval, a second or two between frames; slow subjects (stars, a construction site, opening flowers) want a long one, many seconds to minutes, or the finished clip barely seems to move. The non-obvious craft is the shutter. Borrow the motion-picture ~180° rule: set the shutter to roughly half the interval so each frame carries a little motion blur and the played-back frames FLOW into one another instead of stuttering (a fast shutter freezes every frame and the result strobes). That is the same shutter-draws-motion physics the long-exposure lesson works at the far end, and in bright daylight reaching a slow-enough shutter needs an ND filter exactly as long exposure does. Then the arithmetic people skip and regret: the clip length is the frame count divided by the playback rate. Six hundred frames at 24 frames per second is twenty-five seconds; the same six hundred at 30 is twenty. Want a thirty-second clip at 24fps? That is 720 frames: at a four-second interval, roughly forty-eight minutes of shooting. Do the sum before the shoot, not after. Everything rides on a locked frame: a solid tripod, image stabilisation OFF (it hunts and drifts on a fixed mount), and manual exposure so the brightness does not flicker as the light shifts. The advanced tier is the holy grail: a day-to-night timelapse where the exposure must ramp smoothly across an enormous brightness change without a visible step; name it as the hard version and come back to it, because it is an exposure problem more than a timing one. And the honest entry point: most people start with a phone's or a drone's built-in timelapse mode, which handles the interval and assembly automatically; what shooting it manually adds is control over the shutter (the flow), the exposure (no flicker, and the ramp), and an interval matched to the subject rather than a fixed default.

Flat illustration of six tall side-by-side frames of the same faceted city skyline caught at even steps through the day (the sun climbing and sinking, the sky warming and cooling from panel to panel) above an evenly ticked timeline; the fourth frame and its tick are highlighted in teal.

Starting points

Interval: Match the subject's speed. Fast clouds or traffic: 1–3 seconds. Slow change (stars, sunsets, construction, plants): 5–30 seconds or more. Too long an interval skips a fast subject's motion; too short on a slow one just fills the card.
Shutter (the 180° rule): Set the shutter near HALF the interval so each frame holds a little motion blur and the clip flows. A too-fast shutter freezes every frame and the sequence strobes. In daylight, an ND filter brings the shutter down to that value: the same tool long exposure uses.
Exposure: Manual, so the brightness cannot flicker as the light shifts frame to frame. Auto re-meters each shot and the tiny differences stack into a visible pulse.
Clip-length math: Clip seconds = frames ÷ playback fps. Decide the clip length and fps first, multiply back to the frame count, then multiply by the interval to get the shooting time. A 30-second clip at 24fps is 720 frames: 48 minutes at a 4-second interval.
Support & stabilisation: A solid tripod, and image stabilisation OFF. On a locked mount, IS drifts the frame slightly shot to shot, which reads as jitter in the played-back clip.
Focus & white balance: Both locked manually. A refocus or an auto-white-balance shift between frames shows as a jump in the final clip.

In the field

Do the arithmetic before you start: clip length × fps = frame count, then frame count × interval = shooting time. Confirm the battery and card cover it.
Set the interval to the subject's speed: short for fast motion, long for slow change.
Set the shutter near half the interval (an ND filter in daylight) so the frames carry motion blur and flow instead of strobing.
Lock exposure, focus, and white balance to manual: any auto setting flickers or jumps across the sequence.
Mount solid and turn image stabilisation off; a fixed mount does not need it, and IS only adds drift.
Frame with room for the motion: clouds build, shadows travel, crowds spread; leave space for where the scene is going.

When it fails

A stuttering, strobing clip: Each frame is frozen sharp with no motion blur, so the eye sees a jump between them instead of flow. Slow the shutter toward half the interval, an ND filter in daylight, so every frame carries a little blur and the frames melt together: the same shutter-draws-motion physics the long-exposure lesson uses at the far end.
Brightness pulsing or flickering through the clip: The exposure changed frame to frame. An auto mode re-meters each shot and the differences stack into a visible flicker: lock exposure manually so the brightness holds, and for a shot that crosses a big light change (the day-to-night holy grail) ramp the exposure by hand in small, even steps.
A clip that is over in two seconds: The frame count was too low for the playback rate. Clip length is frames divided by fps, so a satisfying clip needs hundreds of frames: do the sum first (clip seconds × fps = frames, × interval = shooting time) and shoot long enough to fill it.

Stitched or compressed: get the honest read.

A technique assembles the frames; a critique reads the result. Upload your finished panorama or a standout single frame and FinalFrame returns the full diagnosis: what works, what limits the frame, and whether the fix lives at the desk or back in the field.

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