About an hour after sunset I was parked up at Pen Barras in the saddle between the twin peaks of Moel Famau and Foel Fenlli in the Clwydian range of mountains near to where I live in North Wales.
I'd just finished shooting stills for a time lapse video showing clouds streaming towards me over the town of Ruthin down below me in the Vale of Clwyd and was packing my camera away for the night when I looked up to see the full moon just rising above the slopes of Foel Fenlli.
Clouds were streaming across the moon's face and catching its light in a most dramatic fashion, a la Hammer House of Horror, so I unpacked my ggod old Canon 5D, loaded a fresh memory card and pointed my lens skywards.
The biggest technical issue I had to overcome in making this video was getting the exposure right. If I exposed correctly to show the clouds lighting up then the moon was horribly burnt out, but if I exposed correctly to retain all the detail in the face of the moon then no detail was visible in the clouds.
In the end I sort of solved my problem with a compromise, partially over exposing the moon to retain some detail in the clouds.
Shooting stills in the camera's RAW file format helped me to retain as much detail as possible in the moon and clouds, and allowed for some very drastic contrast manipulation in Adobe Camera RAW in Adobe Lightroom.
Filename - moon timelapse 01.mp4
Camera - Canon 5D
Lens - 100-400mm zoom @ 400mm
Exposure - 1/4 sec @ f11, ISO100
Shooting interval - 2 seconds
Location - Foel Fenlli, North Wales
This clip - HD 720p
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2024 unless otherwise stated.