A lovely, warm, clear night and I'm as far south as you can get in Europe on a mission to shoot a time lapse of the milky way including the colourful galatic centre, which barely gets over the horizon at midsummer at my home latitude of 53°N up in North Wales.
But here on the Greek island of Crete, in the Aegean Sea at a latitude of 35°N the galatic centre is visible pretty much all year round, and it's a lot warmer too!
So during our two week holiday here, my wife Liz and I headed up into the mountains one evening to see and film the stars.
This video was my first of two attempts, and although the weather was ideal we struggled to find a viewpoint that was clear of streetlights and passing traffic.
In the end we settled on a layby just near the small town of Kera, with a southerly view towards the Orosira Dikti mountains and with the town in front of us.
This proved to be a mistake, as the lights of Kera were much brighter than the relatively faint stars overhead, but even so I managed to get an exposure setting that showed the milky way while still retaining some detail in the lit foreground.
And then there was my second mistake, as I'd positioned my camera too close to the road and my very wide angle 14mm lens caught the headlights from the odd passing car, and although the cars' headlights didn't shine directly on the lens there was enough reflected light around to add a disturbing flicker to the final video, which i didn't notice while shooting the still images of the stars.
So all in all, a lovely evening spent star gazing in the company of my wife, but a bit of a disappointment concerning the final quality of the video I'd set out to shoot.
Filename - crete milky way timelapse 01.mp4
Camera - Canon EOS 6D
Lens - 14mm prime
Exposure (start of sequence) - 15 sec @ f2.8, ISO6400
Exposure (end of sequence) - 15 sec @ f2.8, ISO6400
Filters - None.
Shooting interval - 15 seconds
Location - Near Kera, Crete
This clip - HD 720p, 30fps
Clip duration - 16 seconds
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