Travel Tuesday: infinity

 

 

On our last night on the Isle of Skye, we were sitting together in the living room of the vacation home and chatting about many different topics i.e. reviewing the just past week when suddenly the topic Astro Photography popped up.

When I started with photography back in the 1980s, I got a magazine in my hands having an image in it showing how the earth spun under the Northern Star, Polaris. I was fascinated at the first moment. I thought carefully, about how the photographer could have created that image, because there was no further information in the magazine. 

Needed equipment:

1. camera, able to keep the shutter open for a long time
2. tripod to keep the camera in the exact position
3. film – what kind and which ISO?
4. cable shutter release with a screw to keep the shutter open (had to be bought at once)

So, that was the easier part. I opted for a slide file with ISO 400 and kept the shutter open for an hour. No problem at that time.

Surprise, surprise – the settings were guessed right and the spinning stars were on my slide as planned. Unfortunately, the lab decided to cut that slide because they assumed having an underexposed image in that place. Thus, I was still without such an image.

I took that image in a rural area, quite far away from my home. So, there was no option to retake it. Over time, I forgot it. But, on that night on the Isle of Skye, all these memories came back. I had everything with me. The only difference is the approach how to capture the starts. Back in film days, it was no problem to keep the shutter open for so long. Nowadays, you have to make sure, your sensor does not overheat. Therefore, you take many, many images of each 30 seconds or so and stack them in postprocessing. We were in a quite dark place on the Isle of Skye and had a clear sky. So, I set up my tripod, put my widest lens on my camera, and dialed in a timer to automatically do a series of 30-second long exposures for a total of about 15 minutes.

The image above is not perfectly aligned with Polaris, but I like it anyway.

 

Next week, I going to start a new series. You have the opportunity to choose:

a) Northern Wales  – 70%
b) Iceland 
c) Norway – 10%
d) Graubünden (a Kanton in Switzerland) – 20%

Simply type your wish in the comments. I don’t trust the polling tool below very much.

Update: the poll tool seem to have worked. I put the results behind the options-

Take care!

Throwback Thursday: In the Alpes

Two weeks ago, I was visiting my brother in Switzerland. I hoped for better conditions for star photography. You know, I’m living in one of the worst parts of Europe for this kind of photography because of the enormous rate of light pollution (get a light pollution map and find the purple area in the middle of Europe. South-East of it, in the red area, you can find my home area).

I was right, the conditions were much better, but not as good as they were in northern Norway.

The small, bright line heading from the center to the lower-left corner, is a falling star. In mid August you can spot the presides shower. While we saw some of them in the sky, I only captured this one with my camera.

Take care!

Throwback Thursday: Let’s do the timewarp …

In 1982 I saw an image of star trails for the first time in a magazine (I still have that magazine in my bookshelf) and was blown away by its beauty. Starting from that moment I wanted to create my own image of start trails.

Some time later, I was in northern Germany with some friends for celebrating Easter together. One night, when all the others already were in their beds, I was still up. At that time we didn’t have a problem with light pollution as we have nowadays. Although, that region is still a quite dark region. But, all over Europe you have serious problems seeing the stars.

Back to my story. That one night, while all of my companions were sleeping, I sat alone in the dark beside my camera loaded with a slide film, mounted on a tripod and equipped with a cable shutter release to keep the shutter open for the next about 60 minutes. Back home, I brought the film to a receiving office to get the film developed. About a week later, I got the film back. Unfortunately,  the film was cut in small pieces by the laboratory: one for each slide. But, they assumed the one darker image as underexposed. So, they used that space for cutting the film improperly. So, I got a wonderful star trail image cut in two pieces: 1/3 and 2/3. You can’t imaging how angry and disappointed I was. When would I be able to have a second chance?

You need:

1. a starry night
2. no moon in the sky (new moon or an early moon set or an extremely late moon rise)
3. no light pollution (a very dark region) about 70km away from the next city (even from the small ones – I tell you later, why)
4. no clouds
5. a camera with bulb mode
6. tripod or something similar to give your camera a solid foundation
7. a good lens without or disabled AF (in 1982 the first AF lenses appeared in the market)
8. no image stabilizer (not invented in 1982)
9. a fast lens (f2.8 or so)
10. time (at least an hour exposure time)

I used a 28-70mm f3.5-4.5 zoom lens at 28mm. Not very fast, but ok.

Here in Germany, at least the weather will be happy to disturb you in your plans and send you some clouds when you don’t want them. So, I never had an opportunity to redo it. And, over time some priorities changed.

When I started with digital photography about 10 years ago, I still wanted to create a star trails image. In the meantime you were able to check online, where prosperous regions are. When looking on these maps, I got more disappointed: in Germany there is no location reachable from my home town. I’m living in the red to violet area. Even with a 200km drive it’s nearly impossible to find a location. Germany and middle Europe is very dense populated. So, only vacations would enable me to get such an image. Despite that, I checked some areas and even made some test images.

When I was on the Isle of Skye in April, per incident our talks went in the direction of photographing stars and the night sky during our last day. The weather that day was fine. Scotland is one of the darker areas in Europe and the Isle of Skye also. Everything I’d need was in my bag. I checked the weather every now and then after dinner and set my camera up at about 11 p.m.

The technique changed a bit during the last decades. Digital sensors overheat easily and the results get bad when having such a long exposure time. Instead, you have to take a series of images. All images with the same setting. Back home, you have to merge the single images into one to get your final star trails image.

In the image above, you can some clouds moving over the sky while I was photographing. Three planes (or satellites or the ISS) were passing by and in the right lower side you can see some light pollution from Broadford or Kyealakin (or both). The urban light spreads in all directions. Even the street lights are reflected by the road surfaces and send up to the sky and got reflected by the clouds. Because of the origins of the light and the kind of light this light is reflected in this ugly orange.

The light at the bottom in the middle is a house located on the other side of the Loch, about one km away, located directly at water level with the lights reflected in the water.

The above image is unedited. 29 images are merged. Each image got exposed for 30 seconds at f2.8, ISO 400 with a full frame sensor. I used a 14mm lens and a tripod.

When I saw the final result, I came up with the idea to create an animation from the images. My son was able to realize it and lay some relaxing music over the animation. Have fun!

Take care!