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TPF Noob!
- Joined
- Dec 14, 2011
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- 173
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- Location
- Atlanta
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There's a meteor shower tonight, or tomorrow morning rather, that will be active on the East coast of the U.S. from 3-5am, perfect night for it here in Atlanta because it's cold & clear skies with virtually no clouds forecast...and the moon will set at 3 so the sky will be as dark as it gets until sunrise. Anybody have any success shooting meteor showers? The meteor will shoot across the sky in less than second so I'm assuming a wide open aperture and relatively high ISO will be the only way to capture anything since shutter speed over a second doesn't matter when the light source only exists for 1 second.
So here's my plan, and it's random guesswork. So since they randomly shoot across the sky I don't know how many trial & error opportunities I'll have so anyone with experience please correct me where you see fit:
1) drag butt out of bed at like 2:30am
2) drive up to the top of Red Top Mountain where there are no city lights nearby and a beautiful horizon
3) set up my 60D on a tripod aimed to the sky with the treeline and lake framing a big opening in the sky for a nice composition
4) I dunno, which one should I do:
4a) use my 18-135 kit lens at 18mm to capture as much sky as possible since there's no telling where it'll shoot
4b) use my 50mm 1.8 to allow for a bigger aperture since it'll be a small amount of light streaking across for less than 1 second
5) To figure out a good ISO setting, do test shots of fairly dim stars at open aperture & 1s exposure (to simulate how long the meteor exists), tweaking ISO until they expose the way I want...I'm guessing around 800.
6) Frame up my shot from #3 again (ok I can skip #3 & just do it here now that I think about it) and set my aperture wide open & ISO to what I found in #5, then do a series of 30 second exposures for the rest of the morning until I either freeze to death, capture the perfect meteor shot, or start taking beautiful sunrise pictures instead.
7) go home, and drag my butt back into bed until its time to go to work.
8) say screw it, photoshop a meteor across one of the pictures because nobody will know any better anyway, and call it the perfect shot!
So here's my plan, and it's random guesswork. So since they randomly shoot across the sky I don't know how many trial & error opportunities I'll have so anyone with experience please correct me where you see fit:
1) drag butt out of bed at like 2:30am
2) drive up to the top of Red Top Mountain where there are no city lights nearby and a beautiful horizon
3) set up my 60D on a tripod aimed to the sky with the treeline and lake framing a big opening in the sky for a nice composition
4) I dunno, which one should I do:
4a) use my 18-135 kit lens at 18mm to capture as much sky as possible since there's no telling where it'll shoot
4b) use my 50mm 1.8 to allow for a bigger aperture since it'll be a small amount of light streaking across for less than 1 second
5) To figure out a good ISO setting, do test shots of fairly dim stars at open aperture & 1s exposure (to simulate how long the meteor exists), tweaking ISO until they expose the way I want...I'm guessing around 800.
6) Frame up my shot from #3 again (ok I can skip #3 & just do it here now that I think about it) and set my aperture wide open & ISO to what I found in #5, then do a series of 30 second exposures for the rest of the morning until I either freeze to death, capture the perfect meteor shot, or start taking beautiful sunrise pictures instead.
7) go home, and drag my butt back into bed until its time to go to work.
8) say screw it, photoshop a meteor across one of the pictures because nobody will know any better anyway, and call it the perfect shot!
