Sunrise time-lapse with my Go Pro camera

One morning while near a lake in Tomahawk Wisconsin, I waited for sunrise. I looked at my phone and the weather app said that sunrise will be around 5:25ish. This was the perfect time to set up my Go Pro for that awesome sunrise to come.

I set it up on a tripod by the dock, turned off the lcd screen and set up time lapse mode. This camera is way easier to setup for time lapse than a dslr with a timer. I know because up to this time I still haven't used the time lapse module that I bought for my dslr...it's still in the packaging, brand new and unused.

So I pressed the button and the camera just shot frame by frame...once every 5 seconds. I managed to take 837 images, and processed everything using Adobe Premiere. All in all it gave me about 27 seconds of video.

Early morning shooting

Saturday of last week I woke up really early to catch a glimpse of the sunrise. Even though it was kinda hard, I managed to grab my camera bag and take my bike to a nearby park to take shots on a beautiful morning. I packed my 17-40L and my 70-200 2.8L together with my 5d, and a sturdy tripod as well.

As soon as I got out and the sun was just peeking out of the horizon, I realized that it was raining...though the clouds were still beautiful to look at, so I continued on to my journey. It was a saturday so I didn't really care if I got drenched in the rain as I can just head home and change. No work that day so everything was good.

The first thing I did was find a shed so I can go under it and shield myself from the rain. I grabbed my tripod and then mounted my camera into it with the 17-40L installed. I then waited for a beautiful cloud formation and color. As soon as I saw the cloud formation looked pretty I took a shot.



The shot from under the shed. You can see how wet the wood is from the rain.

I got out of the shed and I then repositioned myself to take shots of the horizon from different angles. I also then adjusted my white balance to get different color effects in my images straight from the camera.



I moved closer to the wooden rail, to take an alternative shot.

The rain was getting worse and I don't have a rain cover for my equipment. Good thing the 17-40L and the 5d is weather resistant, though I'm not taking my chances. So I got back in the shed and waited the rain out.

On my way back I passed along this patch of flowers along the trail. I snapped a graduated neutral density filter into my lens as the sky was getting brighter, and I started shooting.



I should have used a faster shutter speed and a narrower aperture on this shot but I was too lazy to grab my tripod again. Not bad though.



I took another shot further away from the flowers so I can have them border my shot.

The ultra wide angle lens did an excellent job in showing the field of flowers. That's why I don't go out without carrying one as you'll never know what you will see along your path.

Now that I had a good experience with this, I think I am going to do this more often!