"Road Lapse" along Richmond Highway

The following time lapse video shows two "Road Lapses" along Richmond Highway, U.S. Route 1 in Fairfax County, Virginia USA on 20 March 2026. [Source Credit: Thanks to my good friend Luis Acosta for suggesting the name "Road Lapse."]

My Panasonic LUMIX DMC-FZ300 superzoom bridge camera was facing east-southeast from the 6th floor of a seven-story parking garage. Notice the trees look "nervous" due to a wind speed of 10-12 mph reported at KDCA. High level cirroform clouds appear to be moving across the sky from west-northwest to east-southeast.

20 March 2026. Facing east-southeast.

Camera Settings

The camera was set for manual exposure and manual focus. ISO was set for 100. White Balance was set for "Daylight." The focal length was 4.5mm (25mm, 35mm equivalent). Aspect Ratio was set for 16:9 (4000 x 2248 pixels). [Picture] Quality was set for Fine JPEG.

I recorded two sets of 200 photos per set using an interval of one (1) second. The first video segment was created using an aperture of f/7.1 and a shutter speed of 1/200 second. The last video segment was created using an aperture of f/7.1; the shutter speed was increased to 1/500 second in order to slightly underexpose the clouds in the sky.

Tech Tips

Two short time lapse video segments, created in-camera using my Panasonic LUMIX DMC-FZ300 superzoom bridge camera, were combined using Apple iMovie. The in-camera video creation process features an option to increase the duration of the output -- I selected the option to double the duration of both video segments. Both clips were edited using Apple "Photos."

Based upon a limited sample size, I think in-camera creation of time lapse videos works well.

Wind (mph), Weather and Sky Condition

"Wind (mph)," "Weather" and "Sky Cond." are highlighted by red rectangles in the following excerpt from a table of three-day weather observations for KDCA on 20 March 2026 nearest the times when I recorded the photos used to create the time lapse videos shown above.

Source Credit: KDCA | National Weather Service.

Related Resource: Time lapse field test using Panasonic LUMIX DMC-FZ150 - a blog post by Walter Sanford

Copyright © 2026 by Walter Sanford. All rights reserved.