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Nightsky Shooting
It's Leonid time. I'll be up on the mountains and out of the Bay Area,
thanks to a week off, and the weather will be very clear here in Cali'. Anyone have any experience taking night sky photos with digital cams? I have an Olympus C-755 4Mp. Might it be worth picking up a cheap tripod at Wal-mart and giving it a go...? Any other advice? Thanks. Zach |
#2
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"zach" schrieb im Newsbeitrag om... It's Leonid time. I'll be up on the mountains and out of the Bay Area, thanks to a week off, and the weather will be very clear here in Cali'. Anyone have any experience taking night sky photos with digital cams? I have an Olympus C-755 4Mp. Might it be worth picking up a cheap tripod at Wal-mart and giving it a go...? Any other advice? Thanks. Some cameras have a night modus, you should try that. If not, you should definitely experiment with exposure offsets. Maybe you can do that beforehand and check images on your PC so you have some basic data to carry with you and don't have to spend the whole night figuring the correct metering. :-) Kind regards robert |
#3
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"Robert Klemme" wrote in message ...
"zach" schrieb im Newsbeitrag om... It's Leonid time. I'll be up on the mountains and out of the Bay Area, thanks to a week off, and the weather will be very clear here in Cali'. Anyone have any experience taking night sky photos with digital cams? I have an Olympus C-755 4Mp. Might it be worth picking up a cheap tripod at Wal-mart and giving it a go...? Any other advice? Thanks. Some cameras have a night modus, you should try that. If not, you should definitely experiment with exposure offsets. Maybe you can do that beforehand and check images on your PC so you have some basic data to carry with you and don't have to spend the whole night figuring the correct metering. :-) Yer right... I think it does have a night mode. I've only had it a little over a month and have only had it out in the woods twice taking pictures. I haven't delved into the manual yet (hate reading manuals), but I will to figure out to manually change the settings. |
#4
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"zach" schrieb im Newsbeitrag om... "Robert Klemme" wrote in message ... "zach" schrieb im Newsbeitrag om... It's Leonid time. I'll be up on the mountains and out of the Bay Area, thanks to a week off, and the weather will be very clear here in Cali'. Anyone have any experience taking night sky photos with digital cams? I have an Olympus C-755 4Mp. Might it be worth picking up a cheap tripod at Wal-mart and giving it a go...? Any other advice? Thanks. Some cameras have a night modus, you should try that. If not, you should definitely experiment with exposure offsets. Maybe you can do that beforehand and check images on your PC so you have some basic data to carry with you and don't have to spend the whole night figuring the correct metering. :-) Yer right... I think it does have a night mode. I've only had it a little over a month and have only had it out in the woods twice taking pictures. I haven't delved into the manual yet (hate reading manuals), but I will to figure out to manually change the settings. Often cameras have a bracketing feature (my Canon Powershot G5 has it) where you press the release once and get three pictures with different exposure. For some models you can even select the exposure difference. But you should drop your resistance against manual reading - if only to avoid "RTFM". ;-) Kind regards robert |
#5
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"Robert Klemme" wrote in message ... "zach" schrieb im Newsbeitrag om... It's Leonid time. I'll be up on the mountains and out of the Bay Area, thanks to a week off, and the weather will be very clear here in Cali'. Anyone have any experience taking night sky photos with digital cams? I have an Olympus C-755 4Mp. Might it be worth picking up a cheap tripod at Wal-mart and giving it a go...? Any other advice? Thanks. Some cameras have a night modus, you should try that. If not, you should definitely experiment with exposure offsets. Maybe you can do that beforehand and check images on your PC so you have some basic data to carry with you and don't have to spend the whole night figuring the correct metering. :-) Kind regards robert Manual focus, long exposures, continuous drive. You will definitely need a tripod, it won't need to be fancy, just steady and able to point your camera towards the sky. Depending on light pollution, angle towards the vertical and ISO rating you'll probably be looking at exposures of 5" upwards - experiment by photographing the stars. Continuous drive, if your camera has it, will allow you to catch some semblance of action without having to keep manually releasing your shutter, thus avoiding much camera shake. In fact use a remote control or remote shutter release or even your camera's timer to take your photos. Dress appropriately. regards Esmond |
#6
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"Esmond" schrieb im Newsbeitrag ... Dress appropriately. I liked that one. :-) robert |
#7
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"Esmond" wrote in message ...
"Robert Klemme" wrote in message ... "zach" schrieb im Newsbeitrag om... It's Leonid time. I'll be up on the mountains and out of the Bay Area, thanks to a week off, and the weather will be very clear here in Cali'. Anyone have any experience taking night sky photos with digital cams? I have an Olympus C-755 4Mp. Might it be worth picking up a cheap tripod at Wal-mart and giving it a go...? Any other advice? Thanks. Some cameras have a night modus, you should try that. If not, you should definitely experiment with exposure offsets. Maybe you can do that beforehand and check images on your PC so you have some basic data to carry with you and don't have to spend the whole night figuring the correct metering. :-) Kind regards robert Manual focus, long exposures, continuous drive. You will definitely need a tripod, it won't need to be fancy, just steady and able to point your camera towards the sky. Depending on light pollution, angle towards the vertical and ISO rating you'll probably be looking at exposures of 5" upwards - experiment by photographing the stars. Continuous drive, if your camera has it, will allow you to catch some semblance of action without having to keep manually releasing your shutter, thus avoiding much camera shake. In fact use a remote control or remote shutter release or even your camera's timer to take your photos. Dress appropriately. All right... I'm back. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate with me, nor did the moon. I was a bit annoyed, but then thought, "the stars aren't going anywhere." I had played with the manual setting on the camera, and set the ISO to the max (400), and then lowered the aperture, however, my camera only has a max 16" exposure. I got one decent shot, but when I switch from manual back to other modes, or turn the camera off, the resolution setting goes back to "HQ" (~2K x 1.7K), so the one good photo I got came out with some of the fainter stars as single pixels. Curses! Other events, and the rising moon precluded my trying again. Here, I was setting the camera on a log and aiming upwards, so I didn't have a choice of sky. A few days later, a friend of mine went down to Wal-mart and I requested her to pick up me a tripod (I was staying at their house, and we are like 18 miles from the nearest real town). She brought it back as a late b-day present to me. Yay. Now, this was much better. By this time, however, I had to wait for the moon to set. Monday or Tuesday night, I think, I went outside around 1AM, and Orion had risen enough from behind the trees that it looked good to shoot. However, high clouds were coming in. I took a few shots anyway, just to see how the brighter starts turned out. They looked good... but most were obscured by these thin clouds. Curses again! F-stop 2.8, ISO 400, 16" exposure, the longest my camera has. If I can post something somewhere, I will... maybe later. What I did find out, except for the problem described below, is that I should be able to get some nice sky shots when it turns clear, expecially when it is dark enough that I can see the Milky Way with the naked eye. What I did run into, however---- and maybe someone can help me with this, is a faint reddish area on the images at the upper left hand corner of the array. Does anyone have an idea what this is? All lights were shut off, it was pitch black except for starlight and residual moonlight (turned the LCD off on the screen, etc...). This seems familiar somehow, but maybe the chip is just bad... hey, just now I thought of taking a dark image (with the lens cap on) at the same settings to see if it is there. I will try that later and see. |
#8
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zach wrote:
[] What I did run into, however---- and maybe someone can help me with this, is a faint reddish area on the images at the upper left hand corner of the array. Does anyone have an idea what this is? [] It might be "dark current". Does your camera have a "noise reduction" or "dark frame subtraction" setting, which doubles the picture taking time? If so, try it. Cheers, David |
#9
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"David J Taylor" wrote in message ...
zach wrote: [] What I did run into, however---- and maybe someone can help me with this, is a faint reddish area on the images at the upper left hand corner of the array. Does anyone have an idea what this is? [] It might be "dark current". Does your camera have a "noise reduction" or "dark frame subtraction" setting, which doubles the picture taking time? If so, try it. Yeah, I would think dark current would be evenly distributed, but maybe it is higher near an edge of the chip near where I/Os outside the pixel array are switching more. The basic manual, which is what I had with me, didn't have how to take a dark image, but now that I am back, I will check the manual on the CD and see (and for noise reduction... or maybe it is the same function). I hope so. |
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