Timelapse calculator: how long your clip will be, how many frames it takes and how much card space it eats, before you spend the evening finding out.
Free photography calculators for night and landscape
Free photography calculators: golden hour, NPF rule, star trails, hyperfocal distance, ND filters, timelapse and Sun alignments. No sign-up, nothing stored.
A photograph taken outside is planned twice: once against the light, which moves with the Sun and the Moon, and once against the camera, whose sensor and lens decide what is sharp and what trails. These calculators cover both halves. Each gives a number you can set on the camera, and says what it does not know, which is usually the weather and your particular lens.
Which calculator answers which question
- When is golden hour in my city this month? The golden hour calculator gives sunrise, sunset, golden and blue hour day by day, in local time.
- How long can I expose before the stars trail? The NPF rule calculator works it out from your sensor, your lens and where you point, next to the 500 rule you were probably using.
- How long will my star trails be? The star trail calculator turns a session into trail length and frame count, and says whether the gaps will show.
- Where do I focus so everything is sharp? The hyperfocal distance calculator gives the one distance, the sharp band on a scale, and the aperture where diffraction starts costing.
- What do I set once the ND filter is on? The ND filter calculator converts the exposure, stacked filters included.
- How long will my timelapse clip be? The timelapse calculator answers before the evening is spent: clip length, frames, card space, batteries.
- When does the Sun set down this street? The alignment planner finds the dates for any bearing or landmark.
Why the numbers are honest
The astronomical ones run on published ephemerides for your exact coordinates; the optical ones use the standard thin-lens model and state the circle of confusion or the pixel pitch they assumed, so that a calculator elsewhere giving a different answer can be understood rather than argued with. None of them store what you type.
How long your trails will be, how many frames the session takes, and whether the gap between them will turn the trails into dotted lines. Free, no sign-up.
What to set once the filter is on — including two filters stacked, where the stops add and the numbers on the rings do not. Free, no sign-up, nothing stored.
Hyperfocal distance calculator: where to focus so foreground and horizon come out sharp, and exactly what is sharp if you focus elsewhere. Free.
NPF rule calculator: how long you can expose the night sky before stars trail, from your sensor, lens and where you point, not focal length alone.
When the Sun or Moon lines up with a street, a bridge or a ridge from where you stand: give a bearing or a landmark, get twelve months of dates.
Golden hour, blue hour, sunrise, sunset and day length for your city, day by day over a month, in local time. Free, no sign-up.