How many photos for a memorial slideshow

The arithmetic

To work out how many you need, turn the minutes into seconds and divide by seven. Five minutes is 300 seconds, and 300 divided by seven is just under 43, so 42 photographs fill it.

Seven seconds is an unhurried pace. Guides from funeral and slideshow services suggest anywhere from about four to ten seconds a photograph, with the longer times for group pictures and for the photographs that matter most. A slower pace gives guests time to find a face they know.

Each figure is the length in seconds divided by seven and rounded down, so that the photographs fit inside the time. A title slide and a closing slide add a little to the total.

At a quicker pace, the same time holds more. At five seconds a photograph, five minutes holds 60.

Counting in songs

If the slideshow will play songs the family has chosen, it can help to count in songs. A song of three to four minutes holds roughly 25 to 35 photographs at about seven seconds each, and two songs of that length hold roughly 50 to 70. For any other mix, add up the running times of the songs and find that length in the table.

Songs vary in length, so check the running time of each one you choose. If the music ends before the photographs do, add another song, or let the last photographs play in silence. If the photographs end first, let the music fade out gently rather than stop in the middle of a phrase.

When it loops through a reception

At a reception, a slideshow can play on a loop, starting again each time it reaches the end. Then its length matters much less. Guests come and go, talk and look up, and see it in pieces.

A short loop comes around often. Over a two-hour reception, a five-minute slideshow plays about 24 times, and a ten-minute one about 12. If the family will sit near the screen all afternoon, a longer loop will feel less repetitive.

If the slideshow plays once during the service and then loops at the reception, choose the length that suits the service. The loop takes care of the rest. How to set a loop on a laptop, a television or a PowerPoint computer is in playing a slideshow at the service.

If you make the slideshow here, it can hold up to 90 photographs. The file that plays in a browser shows each one for about seven seconds, with a slow drift and a crossfade: forty photographs run around five minutes and then start again, so it can play through a whole reception. The MP4 video moves a little faster, so the same forty run just under four minutes, and the PowerPoint shows each photograph for four seconds.

Fewer, better photographs

When the family has been generous with photographs, it is tempting to use every one. A slideshow is better for being chosen with care:

• Every photograph has its seven seconds. A blurred picture, or a near-copy of the one before it, spends them.
• One picture for each moment. From a run of similar pictures taken on the same day, keep the best one.
• A balance across the years. Make sure one decade does not crowd out the others, even if it left the most pictures.
• The person at the center. Pictures with family and friends belong, but the person should be in most of them.

Forty photographs that each earn their place make a better slideshow than ninety that include every near-duplicate. What makes a photograph worth including is much the same as for a printed program, and there is more about it in choosing the photos for a funeral program.

The photographs that do not go into the slideshow still have a place. An album or a board of prints at the reception can hold as many as you like, and guests can linger over them in a way a slideshow does not allow. June Alvarez's family, one of the example families in these guides, kept an album by the door at the reception after her service for guests to add memories. If you would like guests to bring photographs of their own, ask in the death notice or when you invite them, since the program reaches them only at the service.

If you have only a few photographs

Some families have hundreds of photographs to choose from, and some have a handful, especially for someone who avoided the camera, or whose younger years came before everyone carried one. A small number is not a problem. Twenty photographs run a little over two minutes, and on a loop at a reception that is plenty.

Pictures of the places and things in their life can stand beside the portraits: the house, the workshop, the garden, a car they loved, a card in their handwriting. Friends, colleagues, neighbors and the members of a church or club they belonged to may have photographs the family has never seen, so it is worth asking them too.

A simple way to decide

1. Ask where the slideshow will play, and for how long.
2. Find the number of photographs in the table, or count the songs.
3. Choose that many, starting with the ones you would least want to leave out.
4. Watch it through once, and take out any photograph that feels like a repeat.

If you are still at the start, how to make a memorial slideshow goes through each step, from gathering the photographs to the test run.