Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

57%
+2 −1
Q&A How long does the time lapse interval need to be to capture shadows during the middle of the day?

First, let's clear up a misconception. Shadows move faster at the beginning and end of the day This is not true. The angle to the sun changes at a constant rate during the day. That rate is eas...

posted 3y ago by Olin Lathrop‭

Answer
#1: Initial revision by user avatar Olin Lathrop‭ · 2021-03-05T21:54:58Z (over 3 years ago)
First, let's clear up a misconception.

<blockquote>Shadows move faster at the beginning and end of the day</blockquote>

This is not true.  The angle to the sun changes at a constant rate during the day.  That rate is easy to calculate, since it's 360&deg;/day = 15&deg;/hour.

Shadows can appear to move faster or slower at different sun orientations (times of day) due to the geometry between the object casting the shadow and what it is casting the shadow on.  For example, something sticking out from a west-facing vertical wall will have the fastest shadow as soon as the sun hits the wall around noon, and the slowest shadow right before the sun goes down.

<blockquote>What should the interval be for shadow movement during the middle of the day?</blockquote>

That all depends on what is fast enough to "show movement" in your context.  There will be a difference between any two pictures taken with some time between.  We can't know how much difference you consider "movement", and how much shadow movement translates to how much movement in the picture.  If you're doing a macro shot of a flower, then a millimeter of shadow movement could be significant.  If you are taking wide angle pictures of your back yard, it may take 10s of mm for a change to be noticeable.

Playback speed also matters.  If you're going to show the pictures at 10 frames/second, you need 2.4 times the motion between pictures than if you were to show them at 24 frames/second.

It is better to say how long of a clip you want to show what length of real time.  You then decide the playback frame rate, and the rest is just simple math.

For example, let's say you want 10 seconds of playback at 15 frames/second for every hour of real time.  That 10 seconds will require 150 frames.  Spread over an hour, that's a period of (1 hour)/(150 frames) = (3600 seconds)/(150 frames) = 24 seconds/frame.