Why is the backup so long?

I am using a Macbook Air, and the hourly back ups are taking very long. Seems like 10-15 minutes every hour. I have excluded my Mail folder which I have read changes frequently and has large files but I don't know what else would require so much time. Is there a way to find out? Seriously interferes with use as it slows everything down.
Thanks,
Richard

It wouldn't surprise me that during "preparing" there was a lot of data received as Time Machine and the Time Capsule "discuss" what needs to be backed up.
But as to why that (preparing) is now taking so long and why so much data is being backed up each time has me puzzled to say the least.
All I do most of the time on my MacPro is some browsing (mostly FireFox) and Mail.
I looked st the system.log file (accessible vis the Console app (Finder: Applications/Utilities/Console - On the left is a list of many log files, the system.log is the 1st when expanding LOG FILES)
Here is what it reported as the size in MB of each hourly backup for 4 days last month:
5/25: 10.3, 3.8, 97.3, 107.9
5/26 47.8, 4.8,4.4,3.8
5/27 14.9, 10.6
5/28 23.6. 5.6, 4.5
Certainly a lot smaller than you are seeing...why - I don't know.
I don't know about the structure of iPhoto. If it maintain some kind of database that is updated every time you do something with a picture this could be an issue. I know that Adobe Lightroom is that way and I exclude all things photographic from Time Machine and back them up via different scheme. I also exclude the Downloads folder as well as the folders of Firefox, Parallels(for Windows) and .Trash (I think this is automatically excluded.)
Things downloaded - explicitly or implicitly - in Safari or Mail could be large and if not cleaned up could be contributers.
I don't know of any way to directly determine what is in each backup. The information in the system.log file is a total. (actually it breaks it into 2 totals one of which is very small, but no indication of the constituents.)
If you had any suspicions, you could, in theory, enter Time Machine in Finder and poke around to see if any thing obvious changed in terms of a new file in the backup, but this is certainly tedious and hit or miss at best.
If you search the discussions you'll find some discussions (and the web) of what to exclude - I did at the time of installing the TC in April, but didn't keep the pointers. Search the Time capsule discussions for "exclude" and "file" - you'll get a lot of hits.
Sorry I can't offer any better suggestions at the moment.

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