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Thank god for narrowband filters. Without them I would have spent the weekend cursing the moon. Click
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Nov 25, 2012 22:40
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Visiting grandparents in Oklahoma, first three taken back in July, last two from thanksgiving earlier this week:    
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Nov 26, 2012 01:00
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Impact Damage posted:Visiting grandparents in Oklahoma, first three taken back in July, last two from thanksgiving earlier this week: These are great, very clean!
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Nov 27, 2012 16:53
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Impact Damage posted:Visiting grandparents in Oklahoma, first three taken back in July, last two from thanksgiving earlier this week: this is good stuff. may i ask how you took these pictures?
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Dec 1, 2012 18:30
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 London Eye. by Clwn, on Flickr  Southbank Winter Festival. by Clwn, on Flickr
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Dec 1, 2012 20:08
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Do you guys use the viewfinder or live view for focusing? I was practicing some the other night, and focusing was the hardest part for me. The viewfinder was dark, and the live view was just not that good. What are some techniques do you use? I am using a Rebel XSI.
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Dec 4, 2012 05:59
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I usually just manually put the focus to infinity and pull it back a hair. 
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Dec 4, 2012 07:13
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phootnote posted:Do you guys use the viewfinder or live view for focusing? I was practicing some the other night, and focusing was the hardest part for me. The viewfinder was dark, and the live view was just not that good. What are some techniques do you use? I am using a Rebel XSI. You could jot down a few aperture / distance combos from http://dofmaster.com/dofjs.html for your preferred night-lens and then just dial in the foot-distance on the lens barrel markers? For long exposures you're tripodded anyway, so closed down apertures aren't going to be a problem and the resulting big DOF means you should get things in focus without too much hassle  Of course if you want thin DOF long exposures go right ahead 
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Dec 4, 2012 16:19
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phootnote posted:Do you guys use the viewfinder or live view for focusing? I was practicing some the other night, and focusing was the hardest part for me. The viewfinder was dark, and the live view was just not that good. What are some techniques do you use? I am using a Rebel XSI. Split Prism and Manual focus is how i do it. Unless the scene is completely dark my AF has few issues. Some consumer grade cameras will have AF hunting issues in really dark situations.
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Dec 4, 2012 16:32
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I point my car at a tree, turn the headlights on, and focus the camera on that. A flashlight can work too but the tree will have to be a lot closer. Then I'll take a couple test shots at high ISO. Take picture, zoom in on a star to check focus, adjust if needed. Someday I'll have a proper lens that has a focus scale on it, but today is not that day. You can also focus on the moon if it's out.
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Dec 4, 2012 17:14
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nervana posted:this is good stuff. may i ask how you took these pictures? Camera + Tripod. I happened to be using an X100 but you could achieve it with anything, the odd color palette has to do with how I set my white balance. I took another look at them: first ones were taken on a clear night with the WB set to 5100K and the kind of apocolypsey ones were taken on a cloudy night with the WB set to 5950K. No particular reason for those WB choices besides setting them during the day and just kind of sticking with them throughout the night. Exposure times were ~30 seconds.
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Dec 4, 2012 17:46
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My first picture of Jupiter with moons! 
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Dec 6, 2012 15:40
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InternetJunky posted:My first picture of Jupiter with moons! Nice! Jupiter's tough to get both the moons and the disc at the same time, without multiple exposures and a bit 'o HDR, it's just so bright! dedian fucked around with this message at 15:56 on Dec 6, 2012 |
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Dec 6, 2012 15:50
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dedian posted:Nice! Jupiter's tough to get both moons and the disc at the same time, without multiple exposures and a bit 'o HDR, it's just so bright!
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Dec 6, 2012 16:03
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Fireworks!      I had to end up shooting through glass, I posted a brief explanation about how on my blog if anybody cares: http://ryanmkelly.com/blog/hollydazzle-fireworks-and-why-a-scarf-really-is-a-photographers-best-friend/12/6/2012 And then I found that this thing exists: http://www.lenskirt.com/ It's $50 but even if I only do this once or twice a year it's bound to be worth not having to deal with the hassle of creating a gobo each time.
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Dec 6, 2012 16:35
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InternetJunky posted:Yeah, I purposefully overexposed just to get the moons to show up. Moisture in the air last night (despite being -20) made it impossible to get any details on the planet itself. Does it make sense that I saw 4 moons (3 visible in the picture with the 4th being directly over Jupiter's right side)? Sure - That's Europa, if you shot around 9PM Central time? To roughly find that out, I just went into Stellarium and zoomed in on Jupiter and went back in time to last night. Edit: nevermind, I don't know, I was on the wrong date  But, that's basically how you figure out which is which anyway
dedian fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Dec 6, 2012 |
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Dec 6, 2012 19:31
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BobTheCow posted:Fireworks! Thank you both for the fireworks pics (they're great) and the lens skirt thing!
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Dec 7, 2012 10:58
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A pic I have been shooting last week. This was the first time I actually used colored gels in my remotely operated flashes. Very fun, indeed. Exposure time one minute at F4, using 200 ISO Fuji film.  Modena as la petite ville lumiere di maxmars70, su Flickr
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Dec 7, 2012 16:40
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 o2 Arena. by Clwn, on Flickr  Canary Wharf. by Clwn, on Flickr Clown fucked around with this message at 12:28 on Dec 9, 2012 |
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Dec 9, 2012 03:14
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 Raise the drawbridge by HelloWorldEp1, on Flickr  Scoop by HelloWorldEp1, on Flickr  HMS Belfast by HelloWorldEp1, on Flickr Used the cheat guide of shooting iso 6400 first, getting the exposure time, then putting it on manual and setting the exposure time to 64x the iso 6400 test shot @iso 100.
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Dec 9, 2012 11:18
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I cheat even more by using liveview. Your way sounds like too many maths for me to think about!
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Dec 9, 2012 12:29
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Testing out a QHY8L one shot colour CCD camera on IC410 the other night. I had some issues with the camera not sitting square in the focuser (now fixed my tapping in a couple of extra thumbscrews) which resulted in stretched stars and some oddness. Hopefully most of the issues are fixed now so I can test it without distractions. I'm still working out colour calibration issues and processing with it, but it's coming along.  ic410 by tmarkuk, on Flickr Also Jupiter, composed from a 2 minute video taken with an OpticStar PL-130c high speed USB camera. Think fancy webcam with a cooling arrangement.  Jupiter, Io and Ganymede by tmarkuk, on Flickr
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Dec 10, 2012 20:32
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2012/12/12/geminid-meteor-shower-thursday/1761763/ Meteor shower tomorrow night! I've never shot anything like this before, any tips? I'm in Virginia, so it should be decent conditions, I just need to figure out a place to bug out to without light pollution. How far away from a city center do I need to be for that? Or is it as I expect and wildly variant from one place to another?
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Dec 12, 2012 17:40
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Guess what, there's a website for that! http://www.jshine.net/astronomy/dark_sky/ short version: you're pretty much screwed unless you can make the drive to Monongahela.
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Dec 12, 2012 18:31
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xzzy posted:Guess what, there's a website for that! Starting with this and then googling around for more tips has led me down a rabbit hole I wasn't prepared for. Holy hell astrophotography is a whole other world, and I am completely unfamiliar with it.
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Dec 12, 2012 19:29
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Jekub posted:Testing out a QHY8L one shot colour CCD camera on IC410 the other night. I had some issues with the camera not sitting square in the focuser (now fixed my tapping in a couple of extra thumbscrews) which resulted in stretched stars and some oddness. Hopefully most of the issues are fixed now so I can test it without distractions.  BobTheCow posted:Holy hell astrophotography is a whole other world
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Dec 12, 2012 19:33
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xzzy posted:Guess what, there's a website for that! Whoa. The closest actual dark to me is out in the middle of Lake Huron.
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Dec 12, 2012 21:54
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a foolish pianist posted:Whoa. The closest actual dark to me is out in the middle of Lake Huron. I think the blue/green areas are actually "okay" for most people.. that is it'll be fairly dark, but maybe not dark enough for an astronomy nerd to resolve dim objects. But I bet city glow would be low enough that you could get some meteor shots without issue.
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Dec 12, 2012 23:02
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Yeah I'm banking on blue, or green if I get lazy and don't feel like driving 90 miles.
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Dec 12, 2012 23:16
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InternetJunky posted:I'm still waiting for a clear night -- there hasn't been a decent one since I got all my gear more than a month ago. This is astrophotography, some lucky people live near deserts or mountains and can drive out to clear, dark skies. Some of us do not and have to do the best we can with whatever the weather chooses to do on any given night. Last night was clear for two hours, followed by a freezing fog out of no where. You get used to looking at all your expensive kit while you wait for that perfect clear night, which will no doubt neatly coincide with a full moon anyway. You spend the time patiently checking and testing everything, safe in the knowledge that something annoying is not going to behave itself anyway regardless of what you do. Eventually though, it all works out and you get to take a picture and everything seems worth it in the end.
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Dec 13, 2012 10:19
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If you live somewhere that gets snow, this site may be of interest as well: https://sites.google.com/site/3davel/home/light-pollution It's more or less the same data with some more recent updates, but recalculated based on snow coverage from the original data set (which registered some areas as brighter than they are without snow). It gives you a bit better idea what the light pollution is without snow on the ground.
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Dec 13, 2012 14:55
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doodle_duck_dandy posted:Used the cheat guide of shooting iso 6400 first, getting the exposure time, then putting it on manual and setting the exposure time to 64x the iso 6400 test shot @iso 100. I just wanted to share that with my NEX I get better results if I open up aperture (e.g. F2 instead of the F8 I usually shoot with) before upping ISO. A new night shot, haven't cleaned negative from scratches but I like the lights and colors in this one.  Night train di maxmars70, su Flickr
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Dec 14, 2012 10:20
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Looks great, love the colours.
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Dec 14, 2012 13:47
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I done shot myself a meteor. I had one hell of a time processing this, I've never shot anything like it before. I've got half a dozen different versions saved with various colors and contrasts going on. This one ended up being my favorite because the sky looked the best, but I'm worried that everything's too dark. Thoughts?
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Dec 14, 2012 14:15
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BobTheCow posted:I done shot myself a meteor. Hard to say without looking at the rest of the bunch, but on principle this is sound since you wanted the sky to be the main focus of the picture. A backlit / dark foreground is ok with me, gives a context to the sky without distracting. The non dark piece of construction (btw, what is that?) also adds mystery. You may go the HDR route but I'm not keen on it so I won't comment.
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Dec 14, 2012 17:00
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Quantum of Phallus posted:Looks great, love the colours. Thanks QoP, I'm just getting into non-HDR night photography (probably will be main focus for next year) and I'm playing with light and colours. It's fun!
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Dec 14, 2012 17:06
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How long did you expose for?
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Dec 14, 2012 18:26
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Quantum of Phallus posted:How long did you expose for? About 17 secs at F/8. Film is ISO 200.
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Dec 14, 2012 21:34
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BobTheCow posted:I done shot myself a meteor. Hi meteor friend! I agree with maxmars that the backlit/dark foreground really isn't much of a detractor so I wouldn't worry too much about it. I like it a lot as posted! Good job. I wish I could have scouted out a location better than my backyard, but being sick I didn't plan on shooting anything to begin with until I was lying in bed at 3am and it was nagging at me enough that I had to get up and try for awhile. 
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Dec 15, 2012 10:04
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I had a frustrating and cold night of astrophotography. It was the first time in more than a month that we had a clear sky, so this was the first chance I had to try out my Orion Autoguider. Turns out I have no clue what I'm doing because I couldn't get an image to show up that showed any stars, so no autoguiding Without autoguiding the best I could do was about 1 minute exposures, and even then I had to stick to about 70mm. It's better than my first attempt, but still a pretty crappy Andromeda Galaxy:  I wanted to take more exposures but by this time my wife and I had been outside for about 4 hours and were getting too cold (it was -15).
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Dec 15, 2012 15:57
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