Shooting Saturn

[wyogirl]

So-- lets chock this up to a live and learn kind of thing. I planned a camping trip to align with the new moon and specifically picked my campsite to overlook the southern sky with the Flaming Gorge in the shot. I have been wanting to photograph the night sky for quite some time, but decent weather in Wyoming is hard to come by and I'm just not die hard enough to go out in freezing, windy weather-- so I picked June for this excursion. The weather was mild, but cool overnight around 50 degrees F. The wind was (amazingly) not that bad and I had a wonderful view.

Low and behold, I go to my trusty camera bag only to find that I forgot the 2 most important things for this specific shoot.... my remote shutter release and my 11-16mm 2.8. DOH-- my inattentive ADHD was in full swing! OH well, I had a 28mm with me and I used the 10 second timer... ok-- lets get shooting.

I whip out my iphone and use a star chart app to figure out where to point my camera and discovered that the bright star in the sky was actually Saturn-- BONUS! OK, so I'm pretty stoked. I set up my tripod, get everything ready to go and realize that my camp neighbors lights are messing up my ideal composition that would allow me to get most of the milky way into my shot.... well crap-- at least I got Saturn.

I think I should have used a shorter SS and higher ISO so that my stars didn't start to get oblong, but for a first attempt I like it. I'll perfect it at a later date-- Ive got a night photography workshop next month.

1.) Night at Lucerne 1 by Amanda McClure, on Flickr

2.) Night at Lucerne 2 by Amanda McClure, on Flickr

3.) Night at Lucerne 3 by Amanda McClure, on Flickr

 

[zombiesniper]

Very nice.
I think I deleted my first attempt.

 

[snowbear]

Very nice, indeed. I've yet to try this where you can actually see the stars, We are suburban, so the night sky is a reddish-brown muddy color.

 

[Rick50]

Cool, They do need more exposure though. You'll figure it out.

 

[sw_]

Nights like that are frustrating, you're not alone though. I had similar issues Saturday night, remote decided to die after the first exposure (swapped in a fresh battery that morning), a family was fishing in the spot I had planned to shot, literally a stretch of 400 yards and they were camping in the exact spot lol. Moved to my backup spot only to have a 20-25 mph wind coming off the bay, and around 0230 the humidity level went way up creating a nice haze so everything looked muted. Misplaced my hothands so the lense would fog over after about 10 minutes.

If it was simple there wouldn't be any fun in it.

 

[wyogirl]

Cool, They do need more exposure though. You'll figure it out.

Can you elaborate please? I'm really trying to get better in this area.

 

[Rick50]

I use a canon 5D MkIII and either a Sigma 35mm 1.4 lens or a Canon 16-35mm 2.8 zoom.
I use ISO 3200 as the camera seems to handle it. You need as high as you can get.
I use a formula (which I sorta copied / invented) which is 350 / focal length to get max. exposure time to not get footballs.

So the 16mm I open to 2.8 (max) and use ISO3200. 350/16 = 21.875 so I use 25 secs max exposure time. Close enough.
And the 35mm I open to 1.4 (max) and use ISO3200. 350/35 = 10 so I use 10 secs exposure time.

It's interesting that the 35mm gives more exposure because of the 2 stops bigger aperture but sometimes it's too narrow.
This was 30 secs (oops I went over a tad) at F/2.8 with 16mm. By the way this is Sept 4 at 9:30pm so the milky way is pretty straight up then.