Patience to film timelapse

Last saturday I went out to film some timelapse photography. I was about to test the Canon 60D with Magic Lantern v2.3. First to test was the bulb ramping option to get smooth transition from day to night. Sun was shining and it promised a good sunset to film.

I took Canon 60D with Magic Lantern 2.3 installed and went to Ounasvaara. It´s a small hill next to Rovaniemi and there´s a view tower where you can see the city and the sunset (in winter). I was walking down the path when I met a group of young people who were finding a place to make a fire. I said that there´s a bonfireplace at the view tower where I´m going so we can join as a group. It seemed out that it was a group of exchange mediastudents from all over Europe. I said that if they want to join me later on the night for timelapse trip little bit more north they are wellcome.

View from the Ounasvaara view tower

I climbed up the tower and set the camera to film the scenery with bulb ramping. Sunset mode and +0,5EV maximum change in exposure. Bulb ramping is a method how to film timelapse shots where you have so big dynamic change in the light that camera sensor can´t handle with static exposure values. For examle if you are filming sunset and starting when the sun is still shining your images will be darker every second the sun is setting down. In one point the sensor can´t handle it anymore and the images are only black. In bulb ramping you take couple shots from that scene and tell the camera that I want the exposure to be like this. The camera analyses the scene and when the timelapse it´s on it will change the shutterspeed to maintain the correct exposure for the ambient light. It can go for example from 1/200 sec to 20 seconds. This method works much better than auto exposure, which will result a flickering timelapse video. In Magin Lantern there is a setup for sunset and sunrise modes. In those modes the exposure can go only up or down and the shift between night and day should be smooth. Anyway there´s alwayes some littele fixing that you have to do in postproduction.

Here´s the result that I got from the view tower. This is still pretty raw with no processing so there´s little bit flickering and the colors are not as good as I´ll get them later on. Unluckily I ran out of card and I didn´t get the stars so well. I should have had been filming there at least for one more our.

Later on I called the students and asked if they still want to go for an adventure. Three brave ones, Dominik, Jakub and Tommaso had the guts to step into my caravan car "Skyvan" and travel into the wilderness 40km north from Rovaniemi. The mission was to find some auroras or shootingstars.

It was -20 celsius and pretty foggy everywhere. You couldn´t see the sky in Rovaniemi. First we drove to Olkkajärvi where you have good parking place near a lake with good view to sky. It was foggy but you could see the stars. We decided to find a better view a bit north from there. We drove to Misi and stopped in one of the bus stops in the middle of nowhere. It was hard to understand for the students why you need a bus stop in the middle of nowhere. Maybe they are for the reindeer :)

We built the shuttlepod pointing the northern sky and started the timelapse. This time we were not lucky to get any big auroras. Only a slight green shining on the horizon. The view was still amazing. We were there for a little bit more than 2 hours and the extra clothes that I brought seemed to be a good idea. Dominik, Jakub and Tommaso volunteered to join the aurora expeditions later on this winter. And we hear more about those trips later on. Here´s the star view timelapse that we got.

-32°C, In the wildernes, filming Landscapes & Northern Lights

31th of Jan - 01st of Feb 2012 we had a commercial shoot at Levi. We filmed Huskies and Reindeer and it was pretty cold, around -30°C. The wind was also pretty rough between 5-10m/s. Pretty much the hardest weather I´ve been filming. After the shoot we drove back to Rovaniemi and our producer Pera drove to Saariselkä to pick our snowmobile.

Between Levi and Inari, in the middle of nowhere Pera called me and said that "there´s 100km of moneyshot landscape scenery in here and the freezing weather makes it only better. You just can´t let this be unfilmed" It was already sunset and we were driving to Rovaniemi. We decided that we´ll load the batteries over night in Rovaniemi and then we´ll head back to north to film some moneyshot scenery.

So the Adventure started.

Our writer/director P.J.Piippo was voluntary to join the extreme trip. We would have had accomodation in Saariselkä Tunturihotelli, but I wanted to film some night sky timelapse in the wilderness. So the name of the game was to sleep over night in my caravan car in the middle of the nowhere.

It was pretty cold and of course there´s no electricity out there. We were pretty well prepared though. We had car battery(65Ah), caravan battery(120Ah), Shuttlepod battery(65A/h), 2Kw generator, battery loader, 10l gasoline, two 11kg bottles of liquid gas and just in case 500ml of finish brandy called Jaloviina (if everything goes wrong)

The morning didn´t start like it should have. All the odds were saying that you shouldn´t go on that trip. I tried to start my caravan in the morning and of course it didn´t start. It was in the electricity 2h before the start but still no.. I took the 120Ah reserve battery and broom.. it started. I drove to the office and kept the car running while we packed the equipment. We drove to the gasoline station to fill the diesel. I stopped the car on the wrong stop and when I tried to start it again it didn´t say a thing.. "SHIT" this can´t be happening, I wanted to go so much. I opened the hood and realized that the battery connector has broken in the pieces. Little bit of MacGyverness and I fixed it with almost the correct sparepart that I found in my car. They didn´t had any in the gasoline station. At this point I thought that with this luck we´ll die in the wilderness with these temperatures, no matter how well prepared.


The plan A was to stop at Levi to film some sunrise shots but because our luck we were behind the schedule and we had to drive fast to get the sunset pictures between Kittilä and Inari. And when we arrived there I understood what Pera was saying.

There was fairytale landscape as far as you could see. We stopped on the road and built the camera. There was practically no traffic in the road. We walked 100m from the road and from there where ever you pointed your camera you had just amazing picture. We took maybe 10-15 shots and then we continued the journey. We drove about 50km and stopped every now and then to take the moneyshot pictures. We filmed mostly 4K and 4K HDR video which means that we can use it as a video or we can take good stills from it easily. I would have filmed 5K but our Zeiss mkII cine lenses don´t cover the full 5K frame you´ll get vingeting in the corners.

I´m really waiting for the Ti-Canon mount so I can use Canon L-Primes at least in scenery filming.


After the sunset we started to seek a good place where we could stop our car and build our camp for sleeping and timelapse. It was a narrow road so it was difficult. When we got closer to Inari we lost the snow from the trees. It was bit of a disapointment but there was no place to camp in the moneyshot landscape. We found a wider part of the road little bit closer the Inari and we made our camp there. There was no NorthernLights in the sky but the sky was clear and it was almost fullmoon (really bright). We checked the compass and built the shuttlepod pointing to the northern sky. First time I had really problems with the temperature. It was -32°C. I had very good and many layers of clothes, but my fingers and the electrical equipment were suffering. Oracle controllers were slow as hell. When you pressed a button it took 5sec. to get to next page of the menu & so on. So it took about 2hours to build the shuttlepod and get the camera (60D with magic lantern) to take the timelapse. I almost gave up because it was so cold and the equipment didn´t do what I wanted them to do. Finaly I thought that the timelapse and motorized dolly started working. I knew that it wasn´t exactly what I wanted but I couldn´t do any better. I set it 30s exposure and 1min interval. It was too slow for northern lights but good for star timelapse
(there was no northern lights and I didn´t had any fast lens with me).

I took a swig (a couple) from our rescue bottle and went inside the caravan. It was +4°C inside and the heater was almost full power. I said P.J. that I rest a while and asked him to wake me up in midnight so we could do another timelapse. I had my winter clothes and couple felts over me, My dog Jedi also came under the felt to warm himself. I totaly passed out and didn´t woke up when P.J. tried to woke me up. Whole day & evening in -30°C made the job and I didn´t have to wait for sleep.

In the morning it was already +10°C inside. Luxury you could say. I went out and took the camera from the shuttlepod. Scrolled the pictures and found out that the whole northern sky was full of northern lights in the night.. Nice!

I pulled the generator on and started to heat the car. I wonder why I don´t have to heat the generator to make it start in -30°C. Maybe the engine is not as big as in the car.. We wraped the shuttlepod and packed it in the car and waited another 30min for car to get heated.

With second try it started without a problem. And I have to say that my car is from 1989.

We filmed the sunrise at Inari & Saariselkä and the weather was hardcore. -30°C and the wind was up in the hills 10-15m/s. You just couldn´t show any bare skin on that wind. But the scenery was awesome!


I am really waiting for more these kind of trips. Lapland is full of these fairytale landscapes if you just go little bit further from the normal spots.