Monday, September 24, 2018
Sunday, September 23, 2018
September 23, 2018: More practice with the Orion nebula
My adventure with astrophotography is going quite well except that I'm a dusk and dawn target for mosquitoes. Tracking is improving. Vibration control is improving. here is the Orion Nebula - cropped and uncropped.
Orion Nebula uncrossed: ISO 8000 Exposure, 10 sec 400 mm |
Friday, September 21, 2018
Sept 20, 2018: Long duration lighting
I have a Pluto Trigger, a gift from my son, and slowly I'm learning to use it. My current curiosity is how to capture lightning. The Pluto Trigger has a lightning mode where you set the sensitivity, and it's internal light sensor triggers the camera shutter each time some light event changes. Lots of false positives, but a few quite interesting photos.
Last evening we had an almost storm - i.e. dark clouds, lightning and no rain. Perfect for trying to capture lighting. I managed to capture one event in about 300 - but that event was quite interesting. Two consecutive triggers a second apart displayed the same lighting event - suggesting the duration was > 1 sec. Here are the images and its clear (at least to me) that they represent the same event - a discontinuous upper segment and the lower segment follows the tree limb. I'm shooting at ISO 100, f/8, 1/10 sec exposure.
First event: 19:11:49 - a discontinuous top (probably hidden behind something) and the lower segment follows the tree limb |
Second event: 19:11:50 - Same less bright, probably because the duration is less than 1/10 sec (exposure time). However this suggests the total duration of the event was > 1 sec. |
Friday, September 14, 2018
Sept 13, 2018: Lightning and Astrophotography
Photographing LIghtning
I have a Pluto Trigger that works quite well for water drop collisions. I've decided to try to photograph lightning. There was a convenient storm in the afternoon. I set up looking out the back window through the screened area. I got 1 success out of 322 exposures. I saw several lightning flashes that triggered the camera but the exposure missed it. I'm thinking that the delay between camera trigger signal from the Pluto Trigger and actually activating the shutter is too long - its the next problem to solve.
Here is the result from the storm (18mm, f/16, 1/20 sec, ISO 100)
Sunday, September 9, 2018
Thursday, September 6, 2018
Sept 5, 2018: Dolomedes and more
Mating dragonflies, an elephant mosquito and a cooperative Dolomedes triton
Elephant Mosquito (Toxorhynchites sp) |
Two mating dragonflies - in flight |
Two mating dragonflies - stationary on a twig |
Mating dragonflies - different presentation |
Dolomedes triton |
Dolomedes triton |
Unusual wasp |
Dolomedes triton |
Dolomedes triton |
Mating water bugs |
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