I had wanted to make this video for ages.
Stars wheeling over Snowdon, reflecting in the still waters of Llyn Llydaw, maybe with a dusting of snow on the high peaks glowing in the moonlight - I had it all planned out.
Clear nights in Snowdonia are a rarity, so when my wife Liz booked a trip over to Ireland to see our grand daughter and family I eagerly scanned the weather forecast for those nights and, to my delight, found that conditions would be perfect, clear and cold.
The only fly in the ointment would be the three quarter full moon, which would effectively brighten the sky and reduce the contrast of the stars, but I reckoned that that would be a small price to pay, and I could use the passage of the moon in the resulting video anyway.
I was planning on an all night session, going from dusk to dawn with the light transitions at either end giving a natural start and finish point to the video.
Sleep? Who needs it when there's stuff this this to be experienced!
Technically speaking I had enough fully charged batteries and memory cards to last me for six hours or more, so I was good to go.
But in the end it was the technology that let me down, with a corrupt file about 2/3rds the way through the session that I didn't spot. After the file corruption the camera kept clicking away and displaying thumbnails on the back as usual, but nothing more was being saved to the card.
So here is 2/3rds of my planned video. I hope you enjoy this incomplete work, and I hope that circumstances and weather combine again in my favour for another go.
Filename - snowdon timelapse 01.mp4
Camera - Canon 5D
Lens - 17-40mm zoom @ 17mm
Exposure - 30secs, f4, ISO800
Location - Llyn Llydaw, Snowdonia, North Wales
This clip - HD 720p
Clip duration - 18 seconds at 25 frames per second.
Shooting interval - 35 seconds
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