New Video: Road Trip to Photograph the World’s oldest working Lighthouse at Sunset.

In early January we took a road trip to capture sunrise and sunset in the southeast of Ireland, starting with the world's oldest working Lighthouse: Hook Lighthouse, Co. Wexford, followed by a spectacular sunrise over the estuary of the river Slaney. Finally, we visited a Co. Wexford Beach made famous for being used in the movie “Saving Private Ryan”.

The funny thing about this is that I wasn’t even going to make a video at first. It was really just a short get-away trip with some planned photography time added on. We had been to Hook Lighthouse a few years ago, but it was in the height of summer and at midday, so the light was pretty flat. At the time we said we’d definitely get back at either sunrise or sunset, so when we were in the vicinity we decided to go for it.

When we began the drive from our hotel just outside wexford town, the light was so good, I thought that I’d regret it if I didn’t at least try to capture it. So I got out my iPhone and used the Blackmagic app. I was originally going to use my little Sony ZV1 to record, but the stabiliser isn’t as good, and it’s difficult to hold steady on what are very bumpy roads. Even with the superior stabiliser in the iPhone, it’s still challenging to hold it steady. (Our old car doesn’t have the best suspension either).

In the end, I kind of like the bumpiness. It adds to the effect. I was amazed at how well it came out too. Shooting into the low sun like that, I really didn’t think I would be able to get a good image from the phone, but apple log is pretty impressive. It’s not like the phone sensor has amazing dynamic range or anything, so like I said, it’s pretty impressive. I wasn’t shooting ProRes either. You can shoot compressed Apple Log with the Blackmagic app and this was fine, although some people have posted videos about how much better it is if you actually shoot pro res. Unfortunately, I don’t have a huge amount of space on my phone and I didn’t have a suitable SSD to connect.

When we got there, again, I wasn’t really planning a whole video, but I just shot a few clips because the scenery was so amazing. It was incredibly cold, though. I talked a bit about this in the photo essay I did, so check that out when you get the chance. Most of the stills in the video were on the Canon R6II. I’ve had this for 6 months now, and I really like the quality from it. The files are quite pliable although to be honest, in many cases I didn’t have to do much to them. I used one of my presets from my FilmLUX classic pack, (Mostly the preset FilmLux Classic 4) dialled back to about 70% to give them a little film look, but on most there isn’t a huge amount of editing. A little sky grad or vignette here and there.

The sunset shots are probably the most edited, and that was really just bringing up the shadows. I had exposed for the sun to protect the highlights from clipping, but it’s a bit of a balance, as too much in the shadows, and they will get noisy, even at ISO 100. The R6II is quite clean, but no camera will let you push the shadows so much and be noise free. Luckily, that's not really a problem anymore with Lightroom’s Denoise or DXO Pure Raw.

The sunrise photos and video were also mostly on the Canon. This was shot at ISO 3200 and 6400 from the balcony of our hotel. We had a remarkable room looking right out over the estuary. We had set an alarm to wake up for the sunrise, but wasn’t expecting such an amazing sight, especially with all the birds. Again, the canon performed admirably here, especially the video.

All the video from the R6II was shot in C-Log 3 and graded in Final Cut Pro using Film Convert Nitrate. If anyone is interested in a tutorial as to how to do this, please let me know. The defaults of Film Convert will be quite flat, so you need to do a bit of editing to the basic setup to get it to look this good, but when it does it's kind of amazing. I used Film Convert on the iPhone video too. (This is not sponsored or anything, I just really like film convert !)

Anyway, in the end, when I was putting together some shots to send to family, I realised I did have enough to make a video. So I put this together, and I’m really happy with how it turned out. If you get a chance, please watch it (and watch in 4k if you can) and send it to whomever you think might like it!