Night_Sky_052LAZ_1553
From a country road a few kilometers from my home.
From a country road a few kilometers from my home.
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Jan, 2016Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
Taken from the Boonah area in Queensland Australia. The charming and vibrant country town of Boonah is nestled among world heritage listed areas, rich in natural beauty. Proud of its farming history, the town retains its traditional ‘high street’ where country shopping, friendly locals and a talented arts community welcome visitors to their town. The surrounding towns of Aratula, Harrisville, Kalbar, Mt. Alford, Roadvale & Warrill View each has their individual centres of various size and nature and encompass the fertile Fassifern Valley.Time
Taken at approximately 9pm in the winter of 2016Lighting
Experimenting with the ISO of the camera. In this case, on the Nikon D5500, ISO was 3200. Lessons learnt (from this and others photos I have taken) was to wait approximately 1 hour after sunset to avoid light still emanating from the sun after it has dropped below the horizon.Equipment
Nikon D550018-55mm Nikon lens, ISO 3200, 28 secs, f/3.5Inspiration
I took this photo earlier in my trajectory in photographing the Milky Way /Galactic Core. It was from this, and many others, that I learned about ISO, night focus as well as what lens to use and at what shutter speeds. Something about the night sky fascinates me and I find several times a year drawn to the nearby mountains to photograph the Galactic Core.Editing
A little in light room usually for noise reduction.In my camera bag
Nowadays, I cray a bag specifically for night shooting that includes 2 cameras (Nikon D5500 and D500) 2 wide angle lenses the Tamron 10-24mm and the Samyang 14mm as well as a 50mm Nikor. My tripods are Manfrotto and Velbon with the Manfrotto being the sturdiest. A couple of torches and lights including small red flashing LEDs and safety cones as I spend many a night on mountain country roads. The last thing I want is to have a car come around the bend and clean me up :-)Feedback
Use a ws wide as angle lens as you can. Find a location away from city lights, the further the better. Get there whilst still light and set up facing the direction of where the milky way will rise. (the app "photopills" is good to determine where this will be) With camera in Manual mode, pre-focus on something as far away in the distance as possible. Set you ISO to at least 1600 to start with and perhaps even high ie 3200-6000 depending on the camera and lens. Shutter speed should be about 20-30 secs, again depending on camera and lens. Use the 500 rule to determine your exposure time. Ie: a 10mm lens, divided into 500 = 50 secs. (500/10) That is 50 sec max exposure. Beyond that, the stars will start trailing. This assumes you have a full frame camera, which I do not.I have a DX format camera with a 1.5 crop factor. So, in my case my 10mm lens is actually 15mm (10mm x1.5=15mm) 500 divided by 15 = 33.3. So I can exposure my night sky photos for about 33 secs before any adverse affects. I just go with 30 secs to be safe. You will want your aperture to be as open as possible (to start with). When I use the 14mm Samyang, it has an f-stop of 2.8, which I find pretty good. So is starting new, A sturdy tripod. manual settings, pre-focus the camera work out the lens you are going to use and how long of shutter speed, lowest f-stop you have, and about a 1600 ISO to start. Best also to use a remote to trigger the shot. Happy shooting - Larry
