Buffavento (Cyprus) in a time lapse and pictures

Hi.

We all know it. We find something interesting in the internet (or wherever). Something which touches us personally.
A friend of mine found a time-lapse video some time ago. Someone made a time lapse video of a time range of 24 hours. So, the camera was shooting 24 hours the same scene. In general was it a bit boring… but the idea was interesting.

If you are not familiar with time lapse videos. That are movies where it looks like the world is turning faster. :) Like that it’s possible to squeeze 5 hours into 5 minutes.
For what it’s good? For things which happen slowly, for example. Like clouds moving on the sky. Or stars in the night. Or even the live on the street can look very interesting like that.

We decided to try it by our own. It works actually very simple. You take your camera, you put it on a tripod and you make sure that both is not moving at all. The camera should have an interval setting. Set the interval up and lean back. The camera makes now ever x-second a picture. As long as you like.
But a few things you should have anyway in mind:

• Keep an eye on the battery, because the session can take several hours. So you should take care that the camera is not running out of power and switches off.
  Have enough spare batteries and maybe even a charger with you.
• Btw battery. Switch off everything you don’t need at the camera, to save power. Focus and then switch to manual focusing (nothing will change at the focus point usually… so, focus at the beginning and thats it). Switch off the display, its not needed. The camera will also not need the image stabilizer, it’s on the tripod and you made sure that it will not move ;)
• My Nikon D5200 have an interval timer which is shooting maximum 999 pictures. For a proper time lapse you’ll maybe shoot several thousand pictures. So, take care that the camera doesn’t stop shooting. Start the interval new from time to time… latest immediately after the camera took this 999 pictures.
• Does the weather is changing? Nothing is worse then a wet camera or its gone with the wind… and maybe even destroyed.
• Remember to have enough space to save all the pictures (several thousand). Big memory cards. Several are good, in case the 1st, 2nd, 3rd,… is full.

So we were thinking how to do it best possible, to get a good result. I didn’t wanted to do it often. As I said, the camera have to make thousands of pictures. And that is not the best for the shutter mechanism, which works at the DSLR still mechanically. Ok, you could say now ‘Ahh, that few pictures… that is not a big deal for the shutter.’. But lets say this part of the camera survives around 150.000 shots and we make during this day 15.000 pictures… then is 1/10 of its life time gone… in one day.
That much? Yes. The day have 86400 seconds. Lets say we make every 5 seconds a picture… then the camera will shot in 24 hours 17.280 pictures. So, better to think before when and where to do it. That every shot counts.

The single pictures will be later merged by a software on the computer. And then you’ll have a time frame movie. :)

And which place could be better as the abandoned castle Buffavento. The view from the second highest mountain in the Pentadakylos mountains. The plan was made and the preparing was next. 24 hour time lapse at the castle. That was the plan.
Which means we have to take everything with us. Food, drinks, sleeping bag, camera equipment (Nikon D5200 and GoPro Hero 2) with tripod(s), solar system to charge the batteries and so on. We had to plan it carefully, because the climbing up to the castle takes around 40 min and it’s not half bad.
If we would forget something in the car (or even at home)… it would be annoying ;)

The day came closer. We got even company from 3 Couchrsurfer. They liked the idea of the trip and had straight the chance to get a great adventure which they will not forget that quick. :)

Unfortunately there are things which nobody can affect. The weather, for example. It was foiling our plan of the 24 hours time lapse. It was middle of February and we reckoned with bad weather… but were hoping the best. But we were unlucky. We were only able to make some shorter shoots and some normal pictures. But the footage we got was also great. How the clouds move over the mountaintop is also great (till it started raining). But that was not the original plan.

So, we decided to go again, 2 weeks later. For a 2nd try. But it was the same. Rain in between. Now we wait until the summer… which is almost there.

But anyway… here the footage we could make during these days (the video is just from the first time… still have to process the second time). But it’s already very impressive to see that. (Pictures are below)

Best wishes
Gordon