Watching the skies

Thought I'd have a go at taking some pics of Jupiter, which has been very bright this week - and nice crisp, cold, clear night tonight seemed a good time to do it. Pretty amazed that a 300mm cheapie Sigma lens performs well enough to show three of the four moons (assume the fourth is being coy behind Jupiter itself) All done on tripod with a remote release. Experimentation showed low ISO with longer shutter just resulted in blurred images - too much vibration or wind shaking the tripod. Higher ISO (800-1000) allowed shutter speeds of 1/15 or 1/30s which worked much better. Couldn't get a clearer shot of Jupiter itself - any longer exposure lost the moons without bringing out any more detail on the planet. Shot of moon and Jupiter a composite of two exposures, one for moon, one for Jupiter. Moon shot f8, 1/160s at ISO 200.

Time lapse nerdery

As usual, trying to constrain the detailed nerdery to here, rather than Facebook.

Was hoping to do a sequence like this under the dark and clear skies of Scotland, but ironically, got the best results out the back of my folks house in the suburban sprawl of the North East.

After a few false starts on previous nights, best results seemed to come from M, 30s, f8, ISO 800. Camera was on tripod, with focus preset to infinite and as wide as possible (I shot from inside, through french window, so was a little limited on framing).

I switched NR on this time, but would probably do without next time I try.

D300 interval shooting menu is an absolute masterpiece of confusing UI - however I eventually worked out how to set it to take one exposure every minute, leaving a 30s gap between.

Camera set to shoot jpg, at medium settings to allow around 700 images onto a 4GB card.

However all three times I tried this over the week, battery never lasted longer than 200-300 exposures. Everything done to optimise it, switched off image review, freshly charged battery etc. I'd probably try again without NR, which I suspect eats up some power, but figure people who achieve eight hour exposures use the AC adapters or some sort of jury rigged power unit based on car battery for remote use.

Earlier experiment with camera on tripod in car, shooting through windscreen, saw even fewer exposures - due to cold draining battery quickly.

Images were then dragged into iMovie untouched (I probably could have set up a PS action to process them all identically but for this initial test, didn't see the need), set to display for .1 sec, then exported as a medium sized MV4 file.

Challenge 6 - Tom's first

Been thinking about something like this for a while, but as always, in practice what seems like a good idea...

Tripod not quite tall enough to get the camera over the bridge railings, so had to shoot through the bars, which limited angle and how wide I could shoot. Bugger to focus as well, as the road surface itself is too dark to ge a lock on and the cars are obviously travelling a bit to fast to get a reliable point on. In the end manual focussed on one of the white lines and then locked it.

Also had to cope with a) busy-body PCSOs interrogating me on what I was doing and b) gangs of chavs trying to interrogate me on what I was doing.

Experimented from 1 sec all the way up to 30 secs. 30 secs too long in that light and for traffic that speed - in my opinion. Light trails too dense and surroundings too lights.

Top my favourite (f8, ISO 200, 5 sec, 16-85@85mm), but below was a close run second (f8, ISO 200, 15 sec, 16-85@58mm). Too busy I think.

The Toon

Small selection from my trip to Newcastle last week, starting with some ironwork for Kevin!

Last two with the tripod - worked really nicely and definitely wouldn't have bothered lugging anything bigger or bulkier round with me, so couldn't have got them without the new one.

Uploaded entire set (minus all the beer tasting pics, which will only be of interest to CAMRA readers) to Facebook.

Xmas: Toby's Second

This is my attempt at the Xmas lights theme. It's not really straight, but I'm not going to spend ages in PS tranforming it.

18-105@18mm, f3.5, 1/13sec, ISO 1000. 

CHrimbo Challenge - Tom's Second

16-85mm@80mm, f5.6, 1/10s, ISO 400

Christmas Eve, wandering back from Pizza Express after Sarah's 40th with a very sleepy Sam. Would not be surprised if Toby has a very similar shot tucked away somewhere, which is why I'm posting it first! ;)

Convinced it's not straight, but I've had too many wines to work it out and chap walking across the frame is too close to the bottom to do any straightening anyway.

Challenge 2 - Tom's first

16-85@16, f8, 20s, ISO 200.

Only bit of weather so far has been a bit of a deluge on the drive home a few nights ago - luckily enough when I was playing around with the camera, the remote, a tripod belted onto the passenger seat and some long exposures at night. Definitely a technique in progress, but thought I'd share anyway! Must do better.

More dark arts

More messing around with the camera in the dark - wedding fireworks. Pro snapper did something very clever where he managed to get a shot of the couple, with fireworks in background, I'd guess he did something similar to what I tried with the dancing, long dragged shutter and flash to expose Mr and Mrs sharply in the foreground. Meanwhile, I was messing around with my tripod and ridiculously cheap but very functional wireless remote gadget, just arrived from Hong Kong. Went for 10 sec exposures, left the camera on the tripod out of everyone's way and returned to the crowd to enjoy and just randomly press the remote release every now and again. If I'd been paying attention and reviewing every shot, I probably would have tried a shorter exposure for a "cleaner" trail, but pretty pleased with result (especially considering I generally only get one chance a year to experiment!).

Again, just converted RAW to JPG and not got around to doing any PP or cropping with this yet.