With staycations being the order of the day in the summer of 2021, my wife Liz managed to book us a couple of days holiday in a pod on a farm in Ceredigion, near the welsh coast just a bit inland from the seaside resort of Newquay.
I was quite excited at the prospect, as the skies over this part of Wales are reknowed for their lack of light pollution and thus their brilliant, starry nights.
So I was looking forward to some astrophotography that didn't involve freezing my backside off halfway up a mountain - that would be a nice change!
So as darkness fell over our campsite I set up my favoured astrophotography gear, comprising (from the ground up) my Manfrotto tripod, Canon EOS6DMK2 camera, 14mm f/2.8 prime lens, interval timer and battery powered home made lens warmer, to keep the dew at bay.
When I started shooting the skies were clear, with the moon setting to the south and the brighter stars just starting to appear, but it wasn't long before a bank of cloud rolled across the heavens, blanketing the stars.
It was then I discovered that trying to film dark skies in a campsite wasn't really a good idea, as security lights and cabin lights lit up the area like a manic disco.
But having gone to all the effort of setting up the camera I wasn't going to abandon the shoot, so I went to bed and left the camera outside, clicking away every 10 seconds, recording what it would while I slept.
I woke up around 5am with the sky already bright outside and staggered out to see what had happened overnight, only to find my camera still manfully clicking away after a solid six hours exposing.
Quite an impressive performance on one battery and memory card!
I was in two minds as to whether to bother actually processing this time lapse video, but I'm glad I did as, although I didn't catch many stars, the lightshow around the campsite and the clouds streaming by overhead made for quite an interesting, if not very artistic, result.
Filename - ceredigion night timelapse 01
Camera - Canon EOS 6DMK2
Lens - 14mm prime
Exposure (start of sequence) - 10 secs @ f/2.8, ISO3200
Exposure (end of sequence) - 10 secs @ f/2.8, ISO3200
Filters - None.
Shooting interval - 10 seconds
Software - Adobe Lightroom and Premiere Pro
Location - Somewhere in Ceredigion, mid-Wales
This clip - HD 720p, 30fps (4k and 1080p HD formats also available)
Clip duration - 58 seconds
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2024 unless otherwise stated.