P365 Day 155
- At October 05, 2013
- By Neil Creek
- In p365
0
This one is a 70 minute single exposure star trail.
70min f4.5 ISO100 15mm
via Flickr http://flic.kr/p/go1U9R
P365 Day 64
- At July 05, 2013
- By Neil Creek
- In p365
- 0
30sec f2.6 ISO6400
via Flickr http://flic.kr/p/f31gF8
P365 Day 54
- At June 18, 2013
- By Neil Creek
- In p365
- 0
1/160sec f6.3 ISO100 @500mm
via Flickr http://flic.kr/p/ePStjK
Chasing a Comet, Finding Much More
- At March 03, 2009
- By Neil Creek
- In Night
- 11
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My good friend and exceptionally talented astrophotographer, Phil Hart invited me to go with him last weekend, to a country observing site to photograph Comet Lulin, and test out the 5D2 as an astrophotography camera. As you can see above, we were successful!
Below are a selection of my favourite photos and multimedia from the night, with descriptions. There are two embedded movies and two panoramas, which require Flash 9 to be installed [Download Flash]. Make sure you look at the panorama at the very bottom. I’m very proud of that one! :)
Top: The comet image was taken with Phil’s camera and lens, but I chose the composition and setup, and merged the images before processing. I guess you could call it a colaboration! Canon 40D, 200mm f2.8, 8 x 120sec exposures stacked and processed.
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Above: A beautiful young moon watched over us as we set up our equipment.
Above: Phil carries his telescope, used only for astrophotography, from the car to the tripod. Watch this movie in High Def at YouTube.
Click here to view a larger version of this panorama.
Above: A spherical panorama of our observing field, at the Leon Mow dark sky site, near Heathcote, owned by the Astronomical Society of Victoria (ASV). There were another dozen or so people observing on a different field, dedicated to telescopic observation, rather than astrophotography.
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Above: For much of the night, Phil used my new 5D MkII on his telescope, as seen above, to photograph the comet and to test the capabilities of the camera. I was content to let him use it, as I’m very curious to know its astrophotography capabilities. First impressions from Phil is that it is a very capable astrophotography camera. I entertained myself by continuing to shoot with my 350D.
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Above: Phil uses the 5D2 on his 530mm f3.3 telescope to photograph Comet Lulin, which can just be seen as a tiny green dot to the left of the bright blue Altair, above Phil’s hear near the top of the photo.
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Above: Phil and I weren’t the only ones photographing the comet. Another ASV member is seen here controlling his telescope from an attached laptop. All of these photographs with foreground elements and the stars behind were captured in single exposures, and not composited. They were typically 30 second exposures at 18mm f3.5 and 1600ISO on the Canon 350D. It’s amazing how good a dark sky can look in camera.
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Above: While the 5D2 was clicking away shooting an automated sequence, we visited the observation field, and were able to observe Comet Lulin through a gigantic pair of binoculars, 100mm (4in) in diameter. It was truly an incredible sight.
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Above: I also turned my 350D to the iconic Southern Cross for a 30 second exposure with my 50m f1.8. The stars are incredibly dense and beautiful in this area of the sky.
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Above: Once Phil had completed his tests with the 5D2, I was itching to get the fisheye lens onto the camera, to take advantage of the full frame and photograph the whole sky in a single shot. I did a sequence of almost 200 photos to create a time lapse, but for the photo above, I stacked 14 of the exposures together to minimise the noise and increase the brightness of the stars.
Night Sky Time Lapse by Fisheye.
Above is the full time lapse sequence built from the nearly 200 photos taken. Unfortunately the compression in the video at Vimeo doesn’t look great, but it’s better than the dreadful quality of the version at YouTube.
Click here to view a larger version of this panorama.
Above: Finally, I experimented with the all-sky photograph, as seen above, and turned it into an interactive panorama that you can click on and drag to look around the whole night sky. It’s really worth seeing this one bigger, so please click the link above. This has inspired me to try an photograph an all-sky panorama with my 50mm lens, and stitch all of the image together, to make a highly detailed interactive panorama of the night sky!
[Update] Phil just posted his own blog entry on the evening. Go check it out and see how a REAL astrophotographer shoots a comet – his photo is *gorgeous*: http://www.philhart.com/node/127
Milestones, New Sponsor, 10 Astrophotos and a Giveaway!
- At November 28, 2008
- By Neil Creek
- In Admin
- 0
This post is a bit of a “bitsa” as my grandma used to call a meal made up from various left-overs, and remains of almost emptied packets. I’ve found it extremely hard to motivate myself to post lately, possibly because of the crappy weather, maybe because I’ve been up too late watching anime. But I’ve got some good news, and a giveaway! So read on for more.
Stats Success
Recently I’ve achieved some significant milestones in my online endeavours:
The blog has passed a quarter of a million views:
As have my Flickr photos:
And the blog’s feed has been read nearly 140,000 times:
New Advertiser
This week, a new advertiser signed up to support the site in one of the new smaller 4×4 grid of ad blocks I’ve made available at the top right of the blog.
Please welcome the Flickr Lister Photography Blog. I don’t know much about the site yet, but it looks like it’s just an ordinary blog, like mine, that is looking to get more visitors, and not some advertiser selling a product. I like this! It feels cool to be in a partnership with a fellow blogger. Make sure you check out Dave Adams’ Flickr Lister. He has some very nice photos there, and some very interesting HDR photos for sale on ImageKind.
If you’re interested in advertising yourself or your product here on the blog, you can secure one of the 125×125 blocks at the top right for just $10usd/month. Read more here: http://buysellads.com/buy/detail/620/.
Astrophotos by Phil Hart on DPS
Last week, I wrote my first post for DPS for a while, featuring the spectacular astrophotography of my good friend Phil Hart. The post was very popular and deservedly made it to the front page of Digg. If you missed it, make sure you go check it out, you won’t regret it, Phil’s photos are breathtaking.
Forum Giveaway
The new Learning Photography with Neil Creek Forum has got off to a good start, with 63 members so far, but everyone seems to be a bit shy. So far there are fewer posts than there are members, and the active community I was hoping for hasn’t appeared yet. So I’ve decided to help it along.
To encourage more active posting, I’m going to be giving away a free 20x30cm (8x12in) print of any photo from my collection to one lucky forum member (I wouldn’t want to speculate what the print is worth ;) ). I’m not completely sure how I’ll choose the winner yet, but I’m leaning towards a “raffle” type arrangement, where every post that contributes to the forum community by a member counts as a ticket in the draw. So the more useful posts you make, the better the chance you have of winning. This competition is open to anyone around the world, and I reserve the right to change how the winner will be determined at any time.
I should stress that only posts that contribute to the community will be counted as entries. “Me too” posts or anything that blatantly inflates ones post count just for the purposes of winning the prize will not count, and may lead to the banning of the offender. However any other kind of post, whether it be a question, one of your photos, a link to an interesting site, or even just a fun conversation between friends are all helpful to building the community.
So if you’ve signed up to the forum , but haven’t had much to say yet, get chatting! If you haven’t signed up yet, it’s not too late. I’ll start counting posts from Dec 1st, up until the end of the year. Who knows, if this turns out to be successful, I may even make this a monthly affair! So see you on the forum and good luck to all :)
One of the photos you may like to win as a print.
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