Star Trails

Shooting star trails was a mystery until I recently watched the B & H video on night photography presented by Gabe Biderman. One of the take away messages was converting exposure at ISO 6400 to exposure at ISO 100.  I may have mentioned this method on an earlier post but here it is again. Take the exposure at ISO 6400, keep the same f stop, change the ISO to 100, then covert seconds to minutes. I use aperture priority to get the initial shutter speed, then change to bulb for the actual shot. This was a 15 minute exposure facing north with a faint limb of the Milky Way and city lights showing.  The image was cropped to vertical because of the bright ground lighting to the east. Give it a try. 

Star Trails

I learned a new technique for night photography. If you expose with a fixed aperture at ISO 6400 then change the ISO to 100 at the same aperture just convey the number of seconds at 6400 to minutes at 100, i.e. 5 seconds at ISO 6400 = 5 minutes at ISO 100. This was a 7 minute exposure. The fine line is a jet passing through the image.  More information, including this technique, can be found at the B & H YouTube channel.

Dusk

Dusk, the transition to night, is a magic time.  Natural sounds of frogs calling, birds singing, and the wind flowing become more acute, man made sounds diminish as everyone goes indoors. Landscapes darken and the sky takes over as the focus of attention.