Just a quick test from overnight - lots of clouds moving through so there are broken trails, but this will give you an idea how far the stars will move in 11 hours with a 14mm lens. The closer you are to the North Star, the shorter the trails, etc.
Posted by Larry Fischer on January 11, 2010 at 8:53 AM
Tim, once again a very nice capture. I very muchlike the old barn in the foreground.
Please submit this to spaceweather.com or the NASA Astronomy pic of the day.
This was with the Nikon 700s???? Guess your batteries lasted, eh? The new sensor seems outstanding if this is the 700s.
the fisch
Hey Fish, there is no 700s, although I'm sure a lot of folks wish for it (this was taken with the D3s). The D900-something is probably the next out of the gate for Nikon - we'll see in just a few weeks (if it turns out to be the rumored 16-18mp, it won't be nearly as clean at high ISO nor long exposures as the D3s, but a step forward certainly in some areas). I'm using a 20-pound external battery that can do an all-night exposure at 0 degrees and still heat up hot chocolate for breakfast! The new D3s battery can do about four hours plus at 30 degrees. which is quite amazing for an in-camera battery, but not nearly long enough for my needs.
The guys who submit to those astro sites spend a lot of time an energy combing many images into one, using lots of software tricks along the way. Very few images that you see posted there are straight shots. They produce some amazing composites for sure - mine are mostly just snapshots for now...
Posted by Larry Fischer on January 11, 2010 at 7:00 PM
Well dern, that's the first mistake I've made this year...
I meant the d3s I guess. You did a "noise" study for 4 hours.
This looks like the new sensor did well.
Now, how do we carry a 20 lbs battery attached to our cameras??? (grins)
Thanks for the test.
And some of the shots on spaceweather.com are single exposure. The barn makes your photo. Submit it. Has to be 1,000 kb or less.
I'm not actually interested in submitting. Sorry...
I'll get to hump that 20# battery six miles during the night later this week if the clear skies hold out - a small price to pay though for so much power (actually the battery was $300, my sweat to hump it is free!).
Well heck there are lots of places I have in mind that require a six mile round trip or even longer, in fact some are much longer. And 20 pounds for the battery is really no big deal considering that my camera bag would normally weight 30-40 pounds anyway, and when doing these nighttime images where there is only a single image going to be taken, I only have to carry a single lens instead of an entire bag full - so the battery is not much more weight than a bag full of lenses, especially those German suckers! Even if I had to pack 50 extra pounds, if that is what I needed to do in order to get the photo I would just do it - that's part of the job. Of course, with these nighttime images you never really know if you have an image or not until you fire up the computer later on - especially with the long ones - no way to see what you have in camera or on the LCD - it is a gamble.
I once spent three days making a single photograph high in the Wind River Range in Wyoming. Long story, but it had to do with a full moon at sunrise. And then I had to wait two weeks to get the film back from Kodak to see if it turned out or not. It would have been much easier with digital, but that was 25 years ago. And while the photograph did turn out exactly as I had planned, I've never used it for anything and only looked at it just once - I wonder where it is? I have something on the order of two million trannies of all sizes sitting up on the hill in the warehouse that may never see the light of day again - most of them should have been tossed in the trash in the first place, ha!
Posted by Isaac Szabo on January 11, 2010 at 9:32 PM
It is really amazing what the D3s is able to do with these night shots, and it's nice you never have to worry about your battery dying during an exposure now.
Those are some really long star trails... I never really thought about it before, but I guess it should be pretty easy to get a fairly accurate estimate of the exposure time based on the length of the star trails (as long as the North star is in the frame). Perhaps you could withhold the exposure time with your next star trail shot, and we could have a little guessing game.
Posted by Darren Huski on January 12, 2010 at 6:07 AM
Tim must be an insomniac with the night images he has been doing of late
That is quite nice capture for a single image on any digital. You need to run out west someplace and do that where you could get some really dark skies.
Yup, there is no place finer than Arches or Canyonlands and places like that for nighttime stuff (or high elevations in Colorado or Wyoming), and I have a family fun trip planned for later this year to visit four corners. However for my serious stuff I'm really only interested in Arkansas - we've got lots of great places to shoot here and that is what I do. Dark skies are a real issue with long exposures with so much light pollution, and I'm afraid those days (or actually nights) of black skies are long gone for this part of the country. I've heard that some of the newer types of outdoor lights and technology that focuses the light on the ground instead of letting it escape actually increases light pollution since the light bounces off the earth and then back up into the sky. But that's OK - it is just simply where we are headed.
Doing these long night images is really easy and in fact you don't have to lose any sleep at all. I can now set up the camera in the afternoon with a timer to have it begin the exposure whenever I want it to, and also shut the camera down whenever after however long an exposure I want. Then I can go back home and return the next day to collect the camera, getting a full night's sleep in the process. When I do a remote shoot I just set the timer and then crawl into my sleeping bag for the night. I guess I really need two of these camera setups so I could get more than one image a night!
Posted by Aaron Szabo on January 12, 2010 at 11:23 AM
I really don't think there is another camera that could handle 11 hours without NR. Are you finding any hot pixels yet? Last year when the ice storm hit and everything was dark for a while probably would have been a good time to shoot long exposures. I really want to get out and play with my rotating telescope tripod and try using a big lens on the distant planets and nebulas, but it's seem too challenging. Hey, it would be convenient if they put a compass inside that camera.
Posted by PAMERNST on January 12, 2010 at 12:12 PM
Have not seen any hot pixels yet. I agree that this is a very special sensor that is quite a bit beyond the D3. Of course, all of them will be like this and even better in the years to come.
The new Sony HX5 has a compass...
Posted by Bill Dark on January 12, 2010 at 2:39 PM
Forget about finding hot pixels...heck, I'm going to be keeping an eye peeled for abandoned D3s's out in the woods!
Posted by Wayne Rhodus on January 12, 2010 at 3:06 PM
I was thinking the same thing Bill ... but I wasn't saying it. I'd never leave a camera unattended around here!
Discussion
13 repliesPlease submit this to spaceweather.com or the NASA Astronomy pic of the day.
This was with the Nikon 700s???? Guess your batteries lasted, eh? The new sensor seems outstanding if this is the 700s.
the fisch
The guys who submit to those astro sites spend a lot of time an energy combing many images into one, using lots of software tricks along the way. Very few images that you see posted there are straight shots. They produce some amazing composites for sure - mine are mostly just snapshots for now...
I meant the d3s I guess. You did a "noise" study for 4 hours.
This looks like the new sensor did well.
Now, how do we carry a 20 lbs battery attached to our cameras??? (grins)
Thanks for the test.
And some of the shots on spaceweather.com are single exposure. The barn makes your photo. Submit it. Has to be 1,000 kb or less.
the fisch
I'll get to hump that 20# battery six miles during the night later this week if the clear skies hold out - a small price to pay though for so much power (actually the battery was $300, my sweat to hump it is free!).
I once spent three days making a single photograph high in the Wind River Range in Wyoming. Long story, but it had to do with a full moon at sunrise. And then I had to wait two weeks to get the film back from Kodak to see if it turned out or not. It would have been much easier with digital, but that was 25 years ago. And while the photograph did turn out exactly as I had planned, I've never used it for anything and only looked at it just once - I wonder where it is? I have something on the order of two million trannies of all sizes sitting up on the hill in the warehouse that may never see the light of day again - most of them should have been tossed in the trash in the first place, ha!
Those are some really long star trails... I never really thought about it before, but I guess it should be pretty easy to get a fairly accurate estimate of the exposure time based on the length of the star trails (as long as the North star is in the frame). Perhaps you could withhold the exposure time with your next star trail shot, and we could have a little guessing game.
That is quite nice capture for a single image on any digital. You need to run out west someplace and do that where you could get some really dark skies.
Doing these long night images is really easy and in fact you don't have to lose any sleep at all. I can now set up the camera in the afternoon with a timer to have it begin the exposure whenever I want it to, and also shut the camera down whenever after however long an exposure I want. Then I can go back home and return the next day to collect the camera, getting a full night's sleep in the process. When I do a remote shoot I just set the timer and then crawl into my sleeping bag for the night. I guess I really need two of these camera setups so I could get more than one image a night!
The new Sony HX5 has a compass...