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Astrophotography |
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Milky Way - Craters of the Moon |
Posted: August 29, 2019 |
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I went to Craters of the Moon National Monument yesterday
with the primary objective of taking Milky Way photos.
Craters is designated as a "dark sky" area and I thought
a change of venue from the Swan Valley old schoolhouse
was in order as well. This was very much a learning
experience for me.
One objective I had was to try to achieve better focus
in my astrophotography photos. For those of you who have
been following my blog, you have heard this before.
Another objective was to discover what the difference
might be in shooting in a "dark sky" location.
This wasn't an objective going in but I really learned
how MUCH you cannot trust your eyes to determine the
beauty of the Milky Way. I didn't even think the
galactic core was in the sky all night long! I shot from
around 10 pm until 1 pm hoping that the galactic core
would magically appear. As far as I knew at the time, it
hadn't and I finally gave up and drove my car to my tent
and warm sleeping bag.
The statement I often make when someone asks me if I got
a good picture (I won't know until I get home and look
at them on my computer) is true in spades when it come
to Milky Way photography!
To demonstrate this last point, the slide show above
will display eight of the best ones from last night. The
photos are presented in pairs (sixteen total slides).
The first of the pair is the photo as it came out of the
camera (i.e., no post processing). The second of the
pair is the post processed version.
For those of you who
are photographers and may be interested in how I took
these photos:
Equipment: Canon 5D Mk IV, Canon 24-70 mm f/2.8 lens,
Manfrotto tripod
Focus was achieved by setting the lens to Manual focus.
I then pointed the camera at the brightest star I could
see in the sky. I set the camera to Live view, set the
camera to magnify that view by 10 times and manually
adjusted to achieve the sharpest focus I could discern
on the camera screen. I left the lens at this manual
setting for the remainder of the evening's shoot. If
you would happen to change the focal length, you would
have to go through the focus process once again.
I readjusted the camera on the ball head to achieve the composition I
wanted... in this case with the lava formations included
to provide some interest and perspective.
My camera settings were: ISO 3200, f/2.8, 24 mm focal
length, 10 second
exposure, 2 second delay on the shutter button
Note: After I posted these photos, I noticed that all
of them will need to be reprocessed with some noise
reduction!
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Blood Moon |
Posted: January 25, 2019 |
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I had planned to go to Forest Park
in order to get some foreground interest in the shot.
As I came out of my front door and looked up in the sky,
I realized that the moon was too high in the sky to get
a shot with any foreground interest so I set up my
tripod in my driveway. It was quite cold out but I was
dressed for that. I was out there for about 45 minutes
taking photos.
As you can see from the photo above, I am not very
skilled at obtaining a sharp focus on celestial objects.
If you follow this blog, last summer's Milky Way photos
also highlighted this weakness as well.
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Milky Way plus
the Following Morning |
Posted: July 12, 2018 |
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Went down to Swan Valley again for the Milky Way. This time I was
the only photographer there. I used my light to
illuminate the schoolhouse from my shooting location. I
seemed to have the best luck with the light on its
lowest setting lit for about 2/3 of the time the shutter
was open.
I once again slept in my car and got some more photos as
the sun was coming up. |
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Milky Way plus
the Following Morning |
Posted: June 24, 2018 |
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I drove down to Swan Valley for my first ever Milky Way
shoot. As I was getting setup, another photographer (Bob
Seidel from Idaho Falls) arrived. Bob is an experienced
Milky Way photographer so it was nice to have a
knowledgeable person on hand.
Bob's plan was to create some images that featured the
schoolhouse along with others to feature the Milky Way
and then composite them in Photoshop. Since I am not a
Photoshop user, my plan was to take a single photo to
process in Lightroom.
Bob setup some lights for the evening inside the old
schoolhouse. They were a bit too bright for my single
image as you can see with the photo above.
My resultant photos are pretty crude in my opinion.
Other than the lighting problem mentioned above, the
stars are not in focus. Clouds, at times covering the
Milky Way, were a bit of a problem as well.
We finished up around 2:30 AM. I wound up spending the
night in my gasoline powered tent (my car) with the
intention of taking some more photos the next morning.
I also went to Fall Creek Falls and had breakfast at the
South Fork Lodge before returning to Casa Budde West.
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How to Photograph a Solar Eclipse |
Posted: April 15, 2017 |
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On August 21 of this year, we will
experience a total solar eclipse. Driggs Idaho is on the
prime path of this celestial event and I have some
friends who will be visiting during that time to view
the event.
I ran across this informative article that covers the
topic of photographing this event.
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Photographing the Milky Way |
Posted: March 15, 2015 |
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I found a link to a very detailed and well
written article on the topic of Photographing the Milky Way. I
hope you benefit from it as much as I have.
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