“When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars which You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him?” Psalm 8:3-4
Last night was a beautiful sky! The Milky Way in particular was stunning! I took another attempt at some astrophotography. I don’t have a motorized tripod mount, so it rather limits my shutter speeds unless I want star trails. At wider angles like 24mm you can get away with 20-30 second shutter speeds and still get pretty pin sharp stars, depending how close to the horizon you are shooting and the pixel density of your CCD. As soon as you start zooming in past 35mm however, you really need to start lowering your shutter speed or get a motorized head that will track with the sky. For the math gurus, here is the formula to figure out the length of star trails depending on star declination, lens focal length, pixel size/density of your CCD, and exposure time: http://www.wilmslowastro.com/software/formulae.htm#StarTrails
The first image is my first attempt at an astrophotography panoramic. It is six landscape orientation photos stitched together, all at the same exposure. I was pointing southwest at the time. Here are the shooting details:
Images: 6
Exposures: 1
Bracketing: None
Rows: 6
Columns: 1
Size: 28.53 megapixels, 4290 x 6651, 14.30″ x 22.17″ @ 300dpi
Field of View: 118.9 degrees, 6.92mm effective focal length
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: Nikon AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G ED
Lens Focal Length: 24mm
ISO: 6400
Aperture: f/2.8
Shutter: 30 seconds
The second image is zoomed in a little more at 35mm with a slower shutter speed of 20 seconds to compensate. It was also at a higher declination (or angle) so that helped get it sharper too. The third image is the big dipper and a meteor over Joyce’s house. The last image was the opposite northeastern end of the sky. You can see the Andromeda Galaxy in the middle right. Almost dead center is the Double Cluster. The bottom right cluster is Pleiades; it’s a bit streaked since it was very near the horizon.
Here are a couple panoramics I took of a crazy sunset we had earlier this month. It looked like the sky was literally on fire! It didn’t last very long, so I didn’t have time to grab my tripod. I just shot a few frames in portrait orientation with program mode and exposure bracketing (5 frames). I used 4 of the exposures (-2, -1, 0, +1EV, discarding the brightest +2EV) for the sunset over the pond. The sky on fire panoramic is actually not an HDR; I only used the darkest -2EV frames since I liked the shot better with the trees as a silhouette. I stitched them with my usual favorite programs, PTAssembler and TuFuse. It stitched very well for a handheld shot without a tripod since the subjects were quite far away with no foreground objects (no parallax errors).
Here is the shooting data for each image for the curious:
Sunset over Pond
2010-07-10-12342-12385
Images: 36
Exposures: 4
Bracketing: -2, -1, 0, +1
Rows: 1
Columns: 9
Size: 32.73 megapixels, 8164 x 4009, 27.21″ x 13.36″ @ 300dpi
Field of View: 122.6 degrees, 9.74mm effective focal length
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: Nikon AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G ED
Lens Focal Length: 34mm
ISO: 6400
Aperture: f/8
Shutter: 1/40
Sky on Fire
2010-07-10-12387-12422
Images: 8
Exposures: 1
Bracketing: -2
Rows: 1
Columns: 8
Size: 45.28 megapixels, 12579 x 3600, 41.93″ x 12″ @ 300dpi
Field of View: 73.4 degrees, 22.91mm effective focal length
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: Nikon AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G ED
Lens Focal Length: 62mm
ISO: 640
Aperture: f/8
Shutter: 1/60
I’ve been helping Joyce, my sister-in-law, get started in photography. We got her setup with a new website this week. Check out some of her work, it’s very good! http://jvphotos.smugmug.com/
Joyce (my sister-in-law) and I attempted shooting the fireworks at Lincoln’s 2010 Homecoming Festival. They didn’t come out quite as good as the ones I’d taken in Bangor on the 4th. Not that the fireworks weren’t impressive, but our location certainly was not! There was quite a large tree right in the way. Still, we had a lot of fun taking photos and meeting lots of friends down at the waterfront. I got a few good shots with plenty of people in the foreground and reflections in the water to make them interesting, in spite of the tree. 
My camera settings averaged ISO 400, 2 seconds (with a few at 3 & 4 seconds), and aperture f/8 to f/16 depending on how bright the scene was and how many fireworks were launched at the same time. I was constantly spinning the aperture dial to match how many were launched and how bright I thought they might be. The best you can do is just guess! Focal length was anywhere from 45mm to 70mm depending how high they launched and how tight a crop I wanted. I was constantly changing that too.
Here is a slideshow of my favorite images. Click the play button to start and the bottom right button if you want to view them full screen.
This SlideShowPro photo gallery requires the Flash Player plugin and a web browser with JavaScript enabled.
Visit the SmugMug gallery link above if you’d like to view shooting data for specific photos, map location, or order prints.
Here is a link to Joyce’s SmugMug gallery too: http://jvphotos.smugmug.com/Events/Fireworks/
Here is a panoramic I took while out taking a walk last weekend. I didn’t have my tripod with me, but they still stitched pretty well. I had originally shot 5 exposures (-2, -1, 0, +1, +2 EV) for each image, but it was extremely windy and the cows kept moving, so the images didn’t blend well. I ended up taking the middle exposure and saving off a -2 and +2 exposure to create a pseudo HDR image. This is easy to do if you shoot in RAW mode since there is quite a bit of dynamic range in a 14-bit NEF file from a D700. Then I blended everything together with TuFuse and PTAssembler—my favorite stitching software. I took three different variations: 2x5x3 (2 rows x 5 columns x 3 exposures) in portrait orientation @ 26mm (25megapixels), 2x12x3 in portrait orientation @ 70mm (55mp), and 1x12x3 in landscape orientation @ 24mm (20mp).
Here is a zoomable version of the 55 megapixel version. The bottom right button will make the image go full screen. Try the link underneath the image if it doesn’t work in your browser (iPhones and iPods for example).
http://seadragon.com/view/165o
Here are the other variations. Which is your favorite?
EXIF data, stitching info, map location, etc. is available in the link above to the SmugMug gallery.
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