Tag: night sky

Hit and Miss

Published on by greavesadmin3 Comments

A couple of thunderstorm systems passed just south of us just after sunset last night. Lightning and thunder played tag in the air. Between 9 pm and 10 pm I shot 87 images in attempt to capture at least one with a streak of lightning

lightning shoot thumbnails

The camera was set with my 17-50 mm at 17 mm, ISO 1600, f/2.8 and BULB so I control exposure length. I was using my Trippertrap remote shutter for the second time.

Triggertrap webpageIt works through the app on the smart phone. It has lots of great features but I really miss the feel of a button. The ‘trigger’ on the phone is a small dot at the bottom of the screen so it is difficult to find by touch. Perhaps there’s a setting for any part of the screen to set off the shutter – will have to look in to that.

Anyway, there was a lot of lightning but most was sheet lightning.  Even when I thought I was capturing a streak of lightning, the extreme brightness caused the lines blended into the overexposed sky. It was tricky to react like a trained game show contestant with a buzzer and at the same time calculate how long to leave the shutter open relative to how bright the flash of light was! But about the 65th try, I got one!

lightning streak in sky

1.0 sec, f/2.8, 17 mm, ISO 1600 with Canon EOS 7D

 

early bird

Published on by greavesadminLeave a comment

It was worth getting up early this morning to catch the lunar eclipse.

A quick glance out the window confirmed the event was actually visible and under way. I had set up the camera and tripod the previous night so I wouldn’t have to fumble with gear at the sleepy hour of 5:30 am. I stepped out on to the landing, pointed the camera at the moon and set about getting a shot. The air was a fresh -10C but reasonably calm; still chilly for one in a fuzzy robe and winter boots. After snapping a couple test shots, I headed back indoors, dressed more warmly and returned for more of the show.

lunar eclipse

A system was moving in and just as the moon was half gone, it was all gone!

about to disappear lunar eclipse

I snuck back inside and curled up on the couch to watch for the cloud cover to break. After about a half hour, I gave up and climbed back into my toasty warm bed.

 

Night lights

Published on by greavesadmin3 Comments

Didn’t see the expected meteor shower at 1:30 this morning but was treated to the beauty of a moonless night sky!

Night Sky

 

I found this article very helpful in getting my gear set properly the evening before so I wouldn’t have to do it ‘in the field’ in the dark. I used my widest, fastest lense a Tamron 17-50mm at f/2.8, 17 mm, ISO 3200 set the mode to BULB and used my wireless timer remote shutter. It was impossible for me to see well enough to fine tune the focus so I crossed my fingers. made sure it was on manual focus and dialed to infinity.

Because of the brightness of our yard light, I took several images with different exposure times. In Lightroom, I selected the image shot at 25 seconds for the horizon and sky (on the left below) and one with a 4 second exposure for the foreground.

exposure time comparison

 

The two images were then layered in PhotoShop. I added a layer mask to the darker shot then applied the gradient tool to reveal just the bottom of image for the foreground.

layered image

All definitely worth the effort, I’d say. 🙂