52 Week Anamorphic Cinematography Challenge Week 23: Landscape - Weather

Well here we are everybody, finally all caught up! It's been a little bit hectic trying to get all of these done quickly but I'm really happy with how they have all been turning out! As I'm sitting here writing this I'm enjoying a very delicious summer beverage and I am excited to share this week's shot with you all.

The prompt for this week involved the elements...weather you like it or not! Ha, great terrible pun right? Okay fine, no more puns....this week. So yeah, the prompt was "This week should be as unpredictable as the weather! Feature the weather in this week's landscape." 

As it just so happened, the weather was doing interesting things when I needed to shoot this! I had just driven home through an INSANE thunderstorm and found that by my apartment the weather was kind of just going around us. 

I decided what better way to film this than to shoot a short time lapse of the sun peaking through the clouds! So let's go ahead and watch this week's shot!

So for this week, I shot with the Sony a6300 in 4K, 24p, 2500 ISO, 1/50 shutter, at f20.0 using the Canon 75-300mm lens. Rather than shooting standard time lapse, I decided to just shoot continuously for about 25 minutes then speed up the shot in post. 

I mainly decided to do that because I was too lazy to set up the camera with an intervalometer and didn't have time to buy the time lapse app for the a6300. In the end, the shot came out really great. 

This week I want to start with the good. The best thing about this shot was that it is the sharpest shot I have ever gotten shooting with the adapted anamorphic set up.

This was simply due to shooting at f20. It's funny too because not only have I never shot at f20, but I didn't even realize that the lens went to f20 until I started stopping it down. It also allowed me to capture great detail in the clouds and sky.

The other thing I really liked about this shot was the way that the sun spread across the shot almost like an anamorphic lens flare. At first that's what I thought it was until I watched the clip a few times and paid attention to the clouds and saw that it was just the way the sun was hitting the edge of the clouds. 

Now let's talk about the one bad thing that came up while shooting this week's shot. The biggest issue I ran into was the actual weather. When I set up the camera it was dry, no signs of coming rain over us, everything was good to go.

Right near the end of the time lapse it actually started to rain and because I was already filming I couldn't put any rain gear on the camera or I would cause the camera to shake.

So thinking quickly I grabbed the nearest thing to the door to my porch (a snow shovel, because an umbrella would be too normal) and held it over the camera for the remainder of the shot. 

So beyond a few drops of rain on my camera and lens and tired arms from holding a shovel over the top of my camera, this week basically went off without a hitch! 

That's it for this week! If you are participating in your own 52 week photography or cinematography challenge, please share your image for this week in the comments below!