Close to midsummer's day 2024 and I'm on my annual pilgrimage to Llandudno to catch the sunrise at 4.45am over the offshore turbines of the Gwynt-y-Môr wind farm out in the Irish sea.
But this time I've come armed with two cameras and tripods, so it was a good job my filming position was only a few yards from where I'd parked my car!
So what's the story?
Well, in past years when I've only owned one camera, the Canon 6DMK2, so I had to choose between taking in a great swathe of sky and foreground with a wide angle lens, or to fit my 100-400mm zoom and concentrate on just a couple of turbines, hoping that the horizon would be clear for the sunrise.
But this year, having purchased a used Canon 250D, I had the option of shooting 4K video on the 250D along with full frame stills on the 6DMK2.
So I decided to take advantage of the 250D's crop sensor to give me a bit of extra magnification, and fitted the 100-400mm zoom lens to the smaller camera to focus in on the turbines, while going wide angle on the full frame 6DMK2 to take in the whole of the sky, the beach, the sea and the iconic Victorian pier in one composition.
The 100-400mm zoom fitted to the 250D proved to be a winning combination and gave me a great view of the sunrise behind the turbines, which I later converted into separate time lapse video by significantly speeding up the clip in Adobe Premiere Pro.
But the wide angle lens on the Canon 6DMK2 also proved to be highly sucessful, giving me the hundreds of still images I needed to create this alternative time lapse sequence of the midsummer sunrise at Llandudno, with a great fan of cloud coloring up beautifully as the sun rose inexorably into the morning sky.
Filename - llandudno sunrise timelapse 06
Camera - Canon EOS 6DMK2
Lens - 17-40mm zoom @ 17mm
Exposure (start of sequence) - 1/2 sec @ f/4, ISO100
Exposure (end of sequence) - 1/60 sec @ f/4, ISO100
Filters - 2/3 Stop neutral density reverse graduated filter used to reduce the brightness of the sky close above the horizon.
Shooting interval - 4 seconds
Location - North Shore promenade, Llandudno, North Wales
Music - Kiss the Sky - Aakash Gandhi
This clip - HD 720p, 30fps (4K and 1080p HD formats also available)
Clip duration - 34 seconds
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2024 unless otherwise stated.