Tethered Time-Lapse with LUMIX Tether: Interval Setup

The camera's built-in Interval Shooting menu is fine for unattended outdoor time-lapses, but if you're shooting a 6-hour studio sequence you almost always want LUMIX Tether driving the interval instead. You get a live preview between frames, every shot lands on the laptop the moment it's taken, and you can stop, tweak exposure, and restart without losing the sequence count.

Setting it up

Connect the camera, open LUMIX Tether, expand the Drive Mode panel.
Pick Interval Shooting. Set Shooting Interval, Image Count and Start Time.
Under File → Direct Save, point at a sequence folder. Frames land as P10000001.RW2, P10000002.RW2… in order.
Hit Start. Tether shows a countdown to the next frame and a running counter.

Interval math you'll regret skipping

Final clip length at 24 fps = frame count ÷ 24. A 10-second clip needs 240 frames. At a 3-second interval that's 12 minutes of shooting; at a 30-second interval, two hours. Sketch this before you commit to leaving the camera somewhere.

Exposure smoothing for sunset / sunrise

LUMIX Tether's AE Smoothing option averages exposure changes across consecutive frames, which eliminates the strobing you get from auto-exposure stepping between EV values. Enable it on any "golden hour" lapse. For day-to-night, the cleaner technique is the holy grail manual ramp: shoot manual, nudge ISO/shutter one click every 20 frames as the light drops, let DaVinci Deflicker clean the result.

RAW vs JPEG

Always RAW. A six-hour lapse fits comfortably on a 256 GB SSD and the grading latitude is the whole point of using a LUMIX over a GoPro for time-lapse.

Assembling the video

Drop the folder into LRTimelapse, then into Lightroom, deflicker, export 1920×1080 ProRes or DNxHR. Or skip Lightroom entirely with DaVinci Resolve's Image Sequence import — it accepts RW2 directly since v18.5. Either way, the heavy lifting starts after LUMIX Tether is done.