A Few From Tonight (Stars)

Tim_axe

Gawd
Joined
Dec 12, 2003
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946
photos_img_05050518.jpg

ISO 100, f/1.8, 320 second exposure, 85mm

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"Moon Rise" -- ISO 100, f/2.0, 5 second exposure, 85mm

photos_img_05050527.jpg

Section of the Big Dipper (hey, there's even a shooting star in the top right corner - what luck!)
ISO 800, f/1.8, 5 second exposure, 85mm


These are just the ones that look good (so far) from tonight. I also tried a large panorama, but waiting 20 seconds for each frame wasn't fun, and I eventually got scared away after hearing some animal moving and breathing threateningly in the fields around me (I drove about 6-10 miles out of town to escape light pollution, and there would be nobody around to help me if a cougar came out and killed me :p). I probably needed a 30 second exposure per frame for that panorama anyways (x12 frames).

Enjoy & cheers.
 
Ivan_Only said:
Very nice shots

Agreed. :)

I've been wanting to get out of the house and do some late night shooting as some major constellations. I got some pics of the last big eclipse that went over which made the moon look nearly blood red in color on the outer edges. Kind of neat, but was hard to get a crisp clear shot from a tripod when the wind is blowing out. :rolleyes:
 
Just curious.... is there a reason you went with a f1.8 instead of a higher value? With a longer DOF, you would have had to use a longer exposure, but I think it would have made the sky a little sharper?

I love the pics though... I need to work on my night photography.
 
cmosdos said:
Just curious.... is there a reason you went with a f1.8 instead of a higher value? With a longer DOF, you would have had to use a longer exposure, but I think it would have made the sky a little sharper?

I love the pics though... I need to work on my night photography.


Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. With long exposure night time stuff, you want small aperatures and low ISO... give you sharper images.
 
Wow that is so awesome, all three. Must be fun to do besides being scared of being eaten my a large predator cat. :p
 
cmosdos said:
Just curious.... is there a reason you went with a f1.8 instead of a higher value? With a longer DOF, you would have had to use a longer exposure, but I think it would have made the sky a little sharper?
Even at the modest focal length (85mm) he was using, I don't think it would take all that long for the motion of the stars to be apparent in the image. Take that first shot, for example. Assuming that's roughly the full frame, in width at least, those star trails are on the order of a couple of hundred pixels long in the original. So very roughly, the stars are moving on the order of one pixel per second.

It's probably an overestimate, but that's the basic idea. I shot a whole series of Jupiter and its moons quite a while ago and found out afterward that all of the photos were blurred roughly the same distance in the same direction. Very frustrating! I recall having basically the same trouble shooting the recent lunar eclipse, too. I ended up bumping up the ISO a few notches during totality to combat the motion of the moon.

Anyway, great shots! I've got to get out and try that soon. My last attempt with my E-10 was pretty lame.
 
Just curious.... is there a reason you went with a f1.8 instead of a higher value? With a longer DOF, you would have had to use a longer exposure, but I think it would have made the sky a little sharper?

Stars are an interesting photography subject from a technical point of view because they don't follow the exposure rules that other objects traditionally do.

For example, you'd get a brighter star with say a 400mm f/4 lens @ f/4.0 than say an 85mm f/1.2 @ f/1.2. You may wonder why because the 85mm f/1.2 in the example is over 3 stops faster than the 200mm f/4.0...

Well, the reason is simple -- the brightness of a star is only affected by the size of the apeture. 85mm @ f/1.2 = 85/1.2 = 70.8mm apeture diameter. 400/4 = 100mm diameter. Point sources of light (stars) don't really care about the "f-value" but pure apeture size.



The reason I mentioned that was because I wanted the stars as bright as possible. If I stopped down, the stars would become dimmer even if I doubled the time to compensate. With dimmer stars...I think you get the idea. :)

Anyways, that explanation should help when you go around shooting stars (obligatory pun) in the future. :D
 
Must be fun to do besides being scared of being eaten my a large predator cat.

I found out what it was! It was in 2 of the pictures in a series before I got scarred away by it! (I was lucky that night -- a shooting star and finding out what freaked me out)





It...





Was...





A...




Killer Deer!
:eek: :p



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100% crop of the beast that tried eating me
(20 second, f/1.8, ISO 100 (EV +1))

photos_img_05050553_crop.jpg

Another 100% crop of the beast that tried eating me
(20 second, f/1.8, ISO 100 (EV +1))
 
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