High summer on the North Wales coast, which places the sunset as far to the northwest as it can reach at our latitude of 53ºN.
This has the sun hitting the horizon directly behind the huge offshore turbines of the Gwynt-y-Môr windfarm, way out in Colwyn Bay.
So with a good forecast promised, an evening trip to the seaside was on the cards, to try and catch the sunset on camera.
After scouting the coastline along the Rhyl waterfront I ended up at the harbour, which gave me a great vantage point and a good angle from which to catch the action.
Now normally when shooting time lapse videos I'll capture hundreds, if not thousands, of still images on my trusty Canon 6DMK2. (I don't know how the shutter mechanism survives!)
But on this occasion I decided to try shooting 4K video on my newly aquired Canon 250D.
Thre reason for this is that I wanted to create real time video, with the blades of the turbines rotating at normal speed, and then have the option to speed up the sequence quite markedly (around 2000%) to create a time lapse sequence showing the complete sunset.
I ended up shooting two videos, totalling around ten minutes, capturing two phases of the sunset which I've combined together to create this time lapse effect showing the complete sunset over a mere forty seconds, as I'd planned.
And the fact that it was a spectacular sunset, with dramatic clouds in just the right places, helped a great deal!
Filename - windfarm sunset timelapse 11
Camera - Canon EOS 250D
Lens - 100-400mm zoom @ 400mm
Exposure - 1/100 sec @ f/11, ISO100
Filters - None.
Location - Rhyl harbour, North Wales
Music - Anomalous Hedges - The Mini Vandals
This clip - HD 720p, 30fps (4K and 1080p HD formats also available)
Clip duration - 40 seconds
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2024 unless otherwise stated.