Full Moon at 1000mm

Bad Moon Rising

The moon has enthralled mankind since we were first able to look up at the night sky.

A few weeks ago a friend of mine loaned me his 500mm mirrored lens with 2x tele-converter. At 1000mm, plus the crop factor of the DX sensor, it is easy to literally fill the frame with the moon.

The downside to the technology used is that it is a fixed f/8 lens which means a slower shutter and high ISO to compensate. And at 1000mm the camera shake generated simply by the shutter actuation was shocking and frustrating, even on the most stable tripod Manfrotto makes. To prevent the shutter actuation from making the image blurry, getting my shutter to 1/1200 of a second, I had to ramp the ISO up to 3200 which means noise was awful.

I am still intrigued with getting one of these for myself. They are affordable at about $190 for the kit. I just wish they can make them at about f/4. But until they do, I will make do with what I have available and my friends who love to share their technology with someone eager to try new things.

To find out more feel free to visit, Amazon.

Shooting for the Stars

An hour before sunset

August is a great month for photographing stars and other celestial objects, especially here in Oregon.

This post is an introduction to photographing the stars and celestial events.

Equipment List:

• Camera
• Tripod
• Wide angle lens (less than 30mm)
• Remote shutter release
• Flash light 

The first thing you need to do is find a location away from the lights of the cities. Even a small town, 350 people or less, can generate enough light pollution to wash away any chance of seeing and capturing decent star fields.

Ideally, your location will be hundreds of miles from the nearest town, but unless you live in the middle of the Mojave Desert, say Death Valley, this isn't likely. So find a location that is as remote as possible, ocean beaches away from large populations area  good choice.

The Beauty of Death

The next thing you need to do is to arrive early, a least an hour before sunset.

This is a great opportunity to capture some golden hour images of interesting subjects. But more importantly this allows you investigate the area during daylight hours to find your location to shoot from.

Look for spots that don't have too many objects in the field of view. Ponds, fields, distant hills, farm equipment and trees in the distance are great subjects to add to the impact of and give scale to vast expanse of the sky.

Don't expect much star action to show up until an hour after sunset. Two hours is better. Bring a book to read. Photograph other things. Find something to do to blow the two hours you will wait.

277 seconds, ISO 100 - Not Long Enough

The secret to photographing the stars is to take a minimalist approach. Place the horizon as low as possible in the frame, but keep the horizon in the frame to anchor the image. The stars by themselves are pretty boring, little white dots on a black or blackish screen can be as boring as connect-the-dots and no pencil.

Much like the Ying-Yang, one can appreciate the light only because of the dark. One can appreciate the beauty only because of the ugly. The horizon as an anchor allows to appreciate the infinite expanse of the universe by grounding it to the finite world we live on. As a point of note; too much horizon, having the horizon too close to the center of the frame narrows the view of the sky, eliminating the impact.

33 seconds at ISO 3200 - Exposing the Sky

When exposing the sky, there are two different methods I use; High ISO/Fast Shutter and Low ISO/Slow Shutter. In either case I use a remote shutter release.

My typical camera settings are as follows:

• Camera Mode: Manual
• Shutter: Bulb Mode
• Aperture f/3.5 or lower if possible
• ISO: Depends

If I am trying to capture the star field, or even the Milky Way, it is  important to have the shutter be fast. By fast I mean at about 20 seconds. Anything longer than 20 seconds will lead to blurring of the stars. Remember, the world keeps turning so the stars position in the sky are always shifting as you will see in the images below. The image to the right was shot at 33 seconds. The image above-left was 277 seconds.

To capture all of the stars possible in twenty seconds means having to jack my ISO up high. For this type of shot, above-right, I typically use ISO 3200. You can see the number of stars captured is greatly improved over the image shot at 277 seconds using ISO 100.

18 Minutes at ISO 100.

1127 seconds sounds like a long time. It is a very long time when you are waiting for a photograph to be taken. 18 minutes can last an eternity. Einstein was right; time is relative.

Because the ISO was set so low, only the brightest of stars make an appearance in the star trails. Look again at the image exposed for 33 seconds, above, at ISO 3200. Look at the shear number of stars. The image to the left is the exact same scene, but because the ISO is only 100 the number of stars present are limited to only the brightest.

I could shoot a long exposure at ISO 320, but the light at the horizon, city lights from a small town 30 miles away, would have exposed the entire scene white. That is the issue with light pollution. The more remote you can get, the more you can play with higher ISO scenes.

http://www.astro-observer.com/dark/lpmapusa.html This is a link to a map of light pollution is the United States. Unless you can get to one of the black areas on the map, you will have to deal with light pollution.

30 Minutes at ISO 100

The longer you expose the more chance you have of capturing other objects in the sky, such as airplanes and occasionally even a satellite, if it is bright enough.

In the case of the image on the right, the stars are uniformly making the same pattern in the sky. There is one particularly bright anomaly. Welcome to the Perseid Meteor Showers.

Capturing events like the Perseid Meteor Shower is one part being prepared and one part being lucky.

If a meteor is flashing in front of camera during exposure, you are lucky. If it is bright enough to to be captured you are lucky, unless your ISO is higher than 100.

Be patient. Experiment. Have fun.

I would like to thank my friend Janeen for hosting this interstellar kegger. She was a wonderful host to our ragtag band of photographers.

Luck - The Good and the Bad

Sunset on the Water

Seneca, a first-century Roman philosopher, once said luck is when preparation meets opportunity. That is a great explanation of good luck. Bad luck on the other hand is the cause of one of two things; the lack of opportunity or the lack of preparation. 


I take ownership of my own luck, at least as much as I can. If I am not prepared it is my own fault. That's right, my fault.


If I know there is something that I want to photograph, I make sure sure to do what I can to make myself available to do it. 


Sometimes luck means I have to abandon something else that I want to do, like stay at home and have a quiet evening with my wife. But each and every time, luck requires me to say yes to opportunity when it comes knocking. 


And opportunity knocked on my door yesterday. And I said yes.

Faded Brillance

My friend, and fellow photographer, Liz Smith, called me up yesterday and asked me if I heard about the possible Aurora Borealis happening. I said, "No". 


She asked if I would be interested in going out and shooting it. I said definitely. It has been a goal of mine to just see an Aurora Borealis since I was a kid and learned about them. One of the biggest challenges has been my luck.


See I have spent my entire living at or below the 45th parallel, that is halfway between the North Pole and the Equator, in Oregon. As luck would have it, the Aurora Borealis don't dip down to the 45th parallel very often. 


Another bit of luck is the fact that I live in the state of Oregon. If you are not from around here, there tends to be considerably more overcast days than not here in Oregon. That is not a complaint, but simply an observation supporting my story of luck. I don't complain about the weather like so many others I know. I love cloudy skies during the day because cloudless skies are boring for a photographer.

Starry Sunset

To be an aspiring astrophotographer living in a perpetually overcast state like Oregon usually can be, is sort of bad luck. Being an aspiring astrophotographer looking to photograph the Aurora Borealis and living beneath the 45th parallel is a double tap to the bad side of luck. 


So when opportunity presents itself, even if it is only a thirty percent chance, I jump on it. Thirty percent was the chance that the  Aurora Borealis would be visible at the 45th parallel.


The skies were clear; opportunity. The sun had sent a sizable, M-Class, coronal mass ejection (CME) right at us; opportunity. I made myself available; prepared. I tracked the coming solar storm online; prepared. But alas the Aurora dream would remain such, a dream. 

The Aurora Borealis never made an appearance at the 45th parallel because the CME was not strong enough; no opportunity.


But I didn't let that take away from the beautiful evening and great company of my wife and Liz. 


We even had a surprise encounter with another photographer friend, Nathan Smith and his wife and son, Heather and Noah.


All of us made the best of the Aurora Borealis show, sans the Aurora Borealis, and had a great time and captured some amazing images of sky, both during and after sunset.

In the end the Aurora Borealis never made the opportunity available. But I made some beautiful photographs and shared a beautiful evening with some wonderful friends and my wife. It was a lucky day after all.


Are you prepared? If not; Why not?