4921 seconds

I left my 10D in a room-temperature storage area, with a small slash
of light filtering in through an open door (the room illuminated by
what was reflecting from the floor and some of a wall). I set the
timer to 2 hours (after making some trial exposures), ISO 100, pointed
the camera to a dark corner, and went to bed.

Alas, the damn battery died at 4921 seconds, leaving me with a 2EV
underexposed image. Heck, even the 2 hours, had it worked, wouldn't
have been enough...

A 4919 second dark frame was collected in the morning.

The result: a surprisingly good, but somewhat noisy (underexposed)
picture of my Kona Stuff.

Looking at the dark frame's raw histogram, it looks like there is
still ~2 stops of exposure before the amplifier glow and/or dark
current saturates. This would be, roughly, the maximum exposure time
(4919sx4 ~ 6 hours), since "holes" would start to appear in the
dark-frame subtracted images. Since most of this would be on the
right side of the image, even more exposure may be possible for the
rest of the frame. At some point, though, the picture will start to
look like someone took a shotgun to it...

I have various "full crop" images of the raw, dark, raw-dark, and a
"digitally pushed" final. For giggles, I even tried a dark-subtracted
the in-camera JPEG's. Fairly gruesome image, but one that shows the
"shotgun" effect that may await even longer exposures. Interested
parties can send me email.

That is impressive! I want a 10D (or Digital Rebel)!

--
Clear skies,

Michael A. Covington
Author, Astrophotography for the Amateur
www.covingtoninnovations.com/astromenu.html



wrote in message
om...
I left my 10D in a room-temperature storage area, with a small slash
of light filtering in through an open door (the room illuminated by
what was reflecting from the floor and some of a wall). I set the
timer to 2 hours (after making some trial exposures), ISO 100, pointed
the camera to a dark corner, and went to bed.

Alas, the damn battery died at 4921 seconds, leaving me with a 2EV
underexposed image. Heck, even the 2 hours, had it worked, wouldn't
have been enough...

A 4919 second dark frame was collected in the morning.

The result: a surprisingly good, but somewhat noisy (underexposed)
picture of my Kona Stuff.

Looking at the dark frame's raw histogram, it looks like there is
still ~2 stops of exposure before the amplifier glow and/or dark
current saturates. This would be, roughly, the maximum exposure time
(4919sx4 ~ 6 hours), since "holes" would start to appear in the
dark-frame subtracted images. Since most of this would be on the
right side of the image, even more exposure may be possible for the
rest of the frame. At some point, though, the picture will start to
look like someone took a shotgun to it...

I have various "full crop" images of the raw, dark, raw-dark, and a
"digitally pushed" final. For giggles, I even tried a dark-subtracted
the in-camera JPEG's. Fairly gruesome image, but one that shows the
"shotgun" effect that may await even longer exposures. Interested
parties can send me email.

That is impressive! I want a 10D (or Digital Rebel)!

--
Clear skies,

Michael A. Covington
Author, Astrophotography for the Amateur
www.covingtoninnovations.com/astromenu.html



wrote in message
om...
I left my 10D in a room-temperature storage area, with a small slash
of light filtering in through an open door (the room illuminated by
what was reflecting from the floor and some of a wall). I set the
timer to 2 hours (after making some trial exposures), ISO 100, pointed
the camera to a dark corner, and went to bed.

Alas, the damn battery died at 4921 seconds, leaving me with a 2EV
underexposed image. Heck, even the 2 hours, had it worked, wouldn't
have been enough...

A 4919 second dark frame was collected in the morning.

The result: a surprisingly good, but somewhat noisy (underexposed)
picture of my Kona Stuff.

Looking at the dark frame's raw histogram, it looks like there is
still ~2 stops of exposure before the amplifier glow and/or dark
current saturates. This would be, roughly, the maximum exposure time
(4919sx4 ~ 6 hours), since "holes" would start to appear in the
dark-frame subtracted images. Since most of this would be on the
right side of the image, even more exposure may be possible for the
rest of the frame. At some point, though, the picture will start to
look like someone took a shotgun to it...

I have various "full crop" images of the raw, dark, raw-dark, and a
"digitally pushed" final. For giggles, I even tried a dark-subtracted
the in-camera JPEG's. Fairly gruesome image, but one that shows the
"shotgun" effect that may await even longer exposures. Interested
parties can send me email.

wrote:
I left my 10D in a room-temperature storage area, with a small slash
of light filtering in through an open door (the room illuminated by
what was reflecting from the floor and some of a wall). I set the
timer to 2 hours (after making some trial exposures), ISO 100, pointed
the camera to a dark corner, and went to bed.

Alas, the damn battery died at 4921 seconds, leaving me with a 2EV
underexposed image. Heck, even the 2 hours, had it worked, wouldn't
have been enough...

I would be interested to see the result.

Just this morning I was reading the November 'Popular Photography'
magazine - on pg 16, theres a short blurb on Michael Wesely and his
three ~year~ exposure of New York City!

And you thought you needed batteries... ;^)

Bob ^,,^

wrote:
I left my 10D in a room-temperature storage area, with a small slash
of light filtering in through an open door (the room illuminated by
what was reflecting from the floor and some of a wall). I set the
timer to 2 hours (after making some trial exposures), ISO 100, pointed
the camera to a dark corner, and went to bed.

Alas, the damn battery died at 4921 seconds, leaving me with a 2EV
underexposed image. Heck, even the 2 hours, had it worked, wouldn't
have been enough...

I would be interested to see the result.

Just this morning I was reading the November 'Popular Photography'
magazine - on pg 16, theres a short blurb on Michael Wesely and his
three ~year~ exposure of New York City!

And you thought you needed batteries... ;^)

Bob ^,,^

Bob Harrington wrote:

Just this morning I was reading the November 'Popular Photography'
magazine - on pg 16, theres a short blurb on Michael Wesely and his
three ~year~ exposure of New York City!

ISO 0.05 film with an f/512 aperture?

Bob Harrington wrote:

Just this morning I was reading the November 'Popular Photography'
magazine - on pg 16, theres a short blurb on Michael Wesely and his
three ~year~ exposure of New York City!

ISO 0.05 film with an f/512 aperture?

Matt Ion wrote:
Bob Harrington wrote:

Just this morning I was reading the November 'Popular Photography'
magazine - on pg 16, theres a short blurb on Michael Wesely and his
three ~year~ exposure of New York City!

ISO 0.05 film with an f/512 aperture?

Pretty darned close!

http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2004..._11-20-04.html

With my luck, I'd come back after three years to find I had either left
the lens cap on or had forgotten to advance the film...

Matt Ion wrote:
Bob Harrington wrote:

Just this morning I was reading the November 'Popular Photography'
magazine - on pg 16, theres a short blurb on Michael Wesely and his
three ~year~ exposure of New York City!

ISO 0.05 film with an f/512 aperture?

Pretty darned close!

http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2004..._11-20-04.html

With my luck, I'd come back after three years to find I had either left
the lens cap on or had forgotten to advance the film...

Andy Blanchard wrote:
On Wed, 03 Nov 2004 04:50:33 GMT, Matt Ion
wrote:

Bob Harrington wrote:

Just this morning I was reading the November 'Popular Photography'
magazine - on pg 16, theres a short blurb on Michael Wesely and his
three ~year~ exposure of New York City!

ISO 0.05 film with an f/512 aperture?

A stack of ND filters about as long as your forearm would have been my
guess; Sunny 16 and an ND400,000 filter... You could probably get a
vaguely similar result by stacking a series of timelapse exposures in
an image editor, but that doesn't quite have the same coolness factor.

So, for those of us without the magazine, how is it done Bob?

Very short blurb - all they say is "custom-built large format cameras
(...) some as large as 6 x 9 feet"

A little more at the MOMA site -
http://moma.org/exhibitions/2004/Mic..._11-20-04.html

Bob ^,,^