Monday, 19 March 2012
The Planets
I have just invested in a remote shutter release for my camera. This has enabled me to take manual time lapse and long exposures. I tried it out this evening with an attempt to photograph the planets.
My first attempt was OK, at least the images were still and spherical. Mars was glowing red, Saturn was grey and Jupiter was just bright - very bright. This was the best of 46 images with the camera set on time lapse, F8 with a 410mm focal length lens.
Having closed down the aperture to F22 and increased the time lapse, these images were my best results. The inset shows the position of each planet in relation to the main stars in Orion. Jupiter was about 28 degrees above the horizon. I need a better lens for star gazing.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
You may want a better lens but I'm impressed with the photo, to be able to just see the Saturn rings to me is good. Have to agree though it would be great to take really good images of the night sky. Hope it's quite dark where you are. Suzy
The final images are obtained from RAW using a 300mm lens with a 1.7x converter at F22 for 25 seconds at ISO 3200, with a tripod and cable release. I am not prepared to say how many images I took before I found some good results. There is a lot of light polution around our garden all night.
Footnote
Some of my exposures were of 200 seconds. At that timespan, using a fixed tripod, you will get enough displacement from the Earths rotation to make the images appear as long oval shapes.
Post a Comment