One of my resolutions is to write a blog. I want this to be somewhere I can go to discuss what went right and what went wrong with some of my photos or photo shoots. A place to give a little more detail about behind the scenes, and some of the challenges faced and overcome or complete failures lol!
No photo shoot is a complete failure, as long as you learn something from it. Having said that, I consider the next photos to be failures, although I did learn an awful lot on the shoot.
I decided this summer to try my hand at star photography. I believe the word I used was "try" lol! It did not turn out as I hoped or expected.
I did a little research online, and put some heavy thought into my shoot.
Where would I go, what did I need to take with me, what did I need to know of astronomy and constellations, when was the best time of night and what was the best night.
I know a little about the constellations, which turned out to be handy. Knowing how to find the north star turned out to be pretty important, since all of the stars in the northern hemisphere rotate counter clockwise around the north star. I felt this an important piece of information, and thought that it could be a help in the composition of a few shots.
I wondered about dew and condensation, and read that if you take a hot-pocket with you and tie it to the lens of the camera it will stop that from happening. I took it with me, but did not end up needing it since it was a dry warn night.
I knew that the perseids meteor shower was in August, and had a look on-line to see when would be the best night, and I was in luck since it was a new moon as well, so no distracting moonlight to interfere with my shots.
I grabbed some drinks, a lawn chair, my lantern, some snacks, all of the camera gear, and set off at 1:00 am. Yup AM!!!
I originally headed to the Eugenia Causeway thinking that getting a reflection off the lake would be pretty neat. Once I arrived, I realized that all of the outdoor lights on the lake would make it impossible to be able to get a proper exposure, so I continued on.
I found a dark place in the middle of the country on a little hill top, and pulled over to set up camp.
What I didn't look up was what settings to use for this. I played all over the map with my ISO and length of time. Everything looks great on a 2 inch screen on the back of the camera. It's not until I got home, uploaded and eagerly started scrolling through the pictures that I realized I had made really big boo boo. I was running exposure times at anywhere from 30 seconds to up to 2 minutes. I should have left the ISO at 100 and left it alone. Instead I had, for the most part, chosen to go with ISO 400. I thought this would give a little break on length of exposure and I have worked with it before, the amount of noise from 400 in the past has been workable.
I was not taking in to account the length of exposure. At ISO 400, anything over, say 10 -20 seconds of exposure, turned into a noise party. I didn't even know that noise came is so many colours before this lol! To top it off, I never did catch any of the shooting stars/meteors on camera. I captured more then one airplane, and though they were neat, they were not what I was after. I saw many meteors, but with the camera pointed in another direction. That's the fun of working with lengthy exposures, no reaction time lol!
So I will post a few of these photos. These have been re-worked. I will shout that right off the bat. I put these shots through a heavy heavy round of noise reduction, to the point of compromising the entire photos, then sharpened them again to help make up for it. This made them mildly presentable for the web, but they would not stand up under any close scrutiny. They will be posted here to, but I doubt that they will make it into any of my other galleries as the quality was so poor.
This was just over 1 minute, and the lights of Barrie (over an hour's drive away) lit up the dark horizon to make it look like twilight instead of the middle of the night. The same for the photo below.
After looking closely at this photo, I may have actually captured one meteor in the very top left hand side of the screen lol.
This next one is of the north star. This was around 1 minute as well. Towards the outside of the shot, around the right side you can see the blur, or drag of the stars as they are moving around the north star. It's an interesting fact and it makes you think harder about what you are looking for in your shot. This shot originally had some very heavy red noise all across it. I was able to remove it, but it was a hard lesson to learn.
So I spent an hour and a half in the middle of the night shooting stars, and not one photo was a real keeper, or usable for sale.
I learned quite a bit from this excursion, and will have better care with my settings the next time I try this. And there will be a next time. I look forward to seeing if I can produce some usable shots the next time.
On a separate note, I almost stayed out longer. Sitting on the side of the road in the night, alone, in the middle of the country, tends to spook one out a little. After about an hour I heard the distant howling of coyotes. I thought it was quite nice at first. A lovely midnight serenade just for me. About 10 minutes later when another chorus of yips and howls rent the night air, I realized how much closer they were. The pack was on the move and coming closer. Another round of throat song that sounded like it was directly over the hill had me packing my camera and tripod in a hurry. As much as I love animals, I did not want to be surrounded by curious coyotes in the night. As I turned my headlights on, and turned the car around on the narrow gravel road I saw my headlights bounce off of several pair of gleaming red eyes, out across the field. Yup definitely time to hit the sack on that one.
Happy New Year to all.
See you again next week,
Mandi
