Night/Star + Landscape Article

For quite a while now, I've been working on a detailed article on my night photography. I've finished the first draft, and you can download it here: http://www.texbrick.com/photo/notes/starshots.pdf.

The article is based on my experiences and covers shooting conditions, locations, gear, and post processing. I hope to update this as time goes on and I gain more experience with this type of photography.

click to read article

Feb. '10 Update and Photos from Last Year

January has slipped by, and I haven't used up my camera in anger in a long while. I've been busy with LEGO stuff as well as remodeling our kitchen at home.

I have a bunch of photos taken at the High Lonesome last November and December that I need to edit and process. I've quickly done three of my favorites:

click to see larger

I also made another time-lapse video of the night sky last December. This time, the exposures were much longer: 25 sec. instead of 8 sec. as the previous time-lapse video.

This video (click thumbnail below) is composed of 100 photos played at 8 frames per second. Each photo was shot at: 25 sec., f/1.8, ISO 3200.

click to see video
(1.5 MB, Windows Media File)

The files were shot as small JPGs on FINE with heavy noise reduction turned on. The long-exposure NR was turned off. Again, this was done using my "low-light" combo: the Canon 5DII and 24mm f/1.4II lens.

Night Sky Time Lapse

And now for something completely different:

6MB .WMV Video - click to watch

This is a short video made from 297 photos taken over a period of nearly 45 minutes. Each photo was 8 seconds long (shot at 24mm, f/1.8, ISO 12.8k), and there was a break of 1 second between frames.

I turned off the long exposure noise reduction, but turned on the high ISO noise reduction. It did help some, but I still applied noise reduction in post processing. The files were shot as small JPGs. I contemplated shooting sRAW, but didn't want to deal with file sizes 4 to 5 times larger than a fine quality JPG.

This was an experiment to see if it could be done, and I think it worked quite well. The movie is a little jerky - probably a resut of 0.125 sec. per frame (i.e. 8 frames per second video). I'd like to redo this in the future with different software and perhaps make it faster (maybe 15 frames per second).

Dark Skies Over the High Lonesome, Part 2

click for larger pic
19.4mm (eff.), 44 minutes, f/4, ISO 200

click for larger pic
24mm, 25 sec., f/2.2, ISO 6400

Dark Skies Over the High Lonesome

I spent last weekend at the High Lonesome Ranch in the Texas hill country. The weather was clear and the moon was new- perfect conditions for...

click for larger pic
24mm, 25 sec., f/1.8, ISO 6400

The greenish light was from an aerial light near our cabin. The yellowish glow on the horizon was a distant small town or maybe another ranch.

The white streak in the upper left could possibly be a plane, but at 100% I cannot see the usual dot-pattern that results from blinking lights typically seen on planes. It might very well be a meteor, but I was not looking at the sky during the exposure, so I really don't know.

The white, fuzzy glow (middle right) looks like a galaxy. I'm not sure which one, perhaps Andromeda (M31)? This shot is looking roughly NNE about 2 hours after sunset.

click for larger pic
24mm, 25 sec., f/1.8, ISO 3200

It's kind of hard to see in this small web-sized pic, but there is a bluish glow on the tree. I inadvertently light-painted it with my LED headlamp.

I set this shot up and hit the shutter, then turned my back to the camera and paced around a bit (while talking to my wife on the cell). All the while I had my headlamp on. I was careful not to look in the direction of the shot, but the light reflected off the ground, then off the tree, and was recorded by the camera. It's just that sensitive!

Sabinal River Gallery Finished

I've completed the photo gallery from our recent trip to Utopia, Texas:
http://www.texbrick.com/photo/utop_sab09

click to view gallery

It's been since March that I've gone outdoors and seriously photographed. My time in the field was short but very enjoyable. I miss doing that, and I'm glad I miss it :-)

Dark Skies

Self portrait with the summer Milky Way (near the Sabinal River in Utopia, TX, July 2009).

click for larger image

Canon 5DII with Canon 24mm f/1.4 II
25 sec.
f/2.5
ISO 3200

Big Bend at Night

Before I post more on the badlands series, I thought I'd share a few night scenes.

Rattlesnake Badlands
(click for larger version)

Study Butte
(click for larger version)

Tent and Stars
(click for larger version)

All of these were shot at about the same settings as the tent, stars, and meteor shot I posted last week.

Camping Under the Stars

I spent three nights camping in the backcountry of Big Bend National Park last week. The weather was nice and the nights were mostly clear and definitely dark. It was a great trip.

click for larger image

Canon 5D II with 24mm f/1.4L II
f/1.8, 25 sec., ISO 1600

I had a very specific photographic mission this trip. Well, two missions, acutally. One was the night skies, and the other? just stay tuned... :-)

I have just begun the post-processing process, and I'm chewing my way through 16 GB worth of files. I will post more photos from the trip in the coming weeks. I'll also write up a field report describing my techniques and experiences in shooting star scenes like the one above.

Comet Lulin and More

I tried hard last weekend to see and photograph Comet Lulin. Unfortunately, the high amounts of light pollution here in Houston prevented me from seeing the comet with the naked eye (the comet is now bright enough to see, but only in very dark skies). It did, however, show up faintly in a long exposure:

Comet Lulin - Wide Angle (Feb-22)
Canon 40D with 24mm f/1.4L II
f/1.8, 6 sec., ISO 800

Comet Lulin - Telephoto (Feb-22)
Canon 40D with 400mm f/5.6L
f/5.6, 4 sec., ISO 1600

Since it was not visible to the naked eye (or even my 10x42 binoculars), I resorted to taking 6 second exposures with my 24mm lens and then scanning the LCD screen to look for it.

The first night I tried it (two days prior to the photos above), I couldn't find it. I gave up and photographed other things in the sky.

Crescent Moon (Feb-20)
Canon 40D with 400mm f/5.6L + two 1.4x teleconverters
f/16 (eff.), 1/4 sec., ISO 800

Saturn (viewed at 100%) (Feb-20)
Canon 40D with 400mm f/5.6L + two 1.4x teleconverters
f/16 (eff.), 1/90 sec., ISO 1600

One note on using stacked 1.4x teleconverters: when used on the f/5.6 lens, the maximum aperture increases two stops to f/11. I stopped down one to increase sharpness a bit, so the above photos were effectively at f/16.

And just for fun, while I'm posting astrophotography stuff, here's a shot of a nice moon halo we had in early January. Again, this is from my backyard here in Houston.

Moon Halo (Jan-7)
Canon 5D with 24mm f/1.4L II
f/2.0, 6 sec., ISO 800