[kite]

[kite]

[DarkHelmet]

Very nice Kite!

[Jim Dockery]

[mike]

Come on! Quit stripping the EXIF data. Inquiring minds want to know.

[DarkHelmet]

A few more from a recent trip to Wing Lake in the north cascades..

Milky Way

The Andromeda Galaxy!

Closeup of the Andromeda Galaxy

Big dipper over Black Peak

[kite]

[Bedivere]

Ack, I can't stand it. I suck! I never get that much detail in my milky way shots with such sharp focus and so little noise. In order to capture that much detail I usually need to go to iso 3200 or higher which gets real noisy on exposures over about 10 seconds. How do you get your camera to focus precisely at night? That's my biggest problem. Getting the detail is probably a matter of getting a better lens. Best I can do is f3.5 @ 16mm and there's something weird going on in that lens so that when it's focused on infinity @ 16mm the focus indicator isn't anywhere near the infinity mark. Zoom out even a little bit and it gets real close to the infinity mark...

[Cyclopath]

Infinity focus isn't always at the infinity mark. I think it's something to do with the temperature. Focus on the moon if you can, or a bright star. Or, focus on something at optical infinity before dark, then put your lens in MF mode and just leave it there. I use a 24 mm f/1.4, which helps a lot. Not only is it more light in the exposure, but the viewfinder is 4x as bright as an f/2.8 lens and 8x as bright as an f/4, which makes it so much easier to find the right composition and to focus in the dark. It weighs as much as my sleeping bag, though.

[Cyclopath]

These two are from the edge of that field where West Fork Teanaway Road meets North Fork Road.

A friend of mine told me the blue in that one reminds her of Maxfield Parish.

That was the first starry sky I shot with the new camera and lens. Blew my socks off. That was before I knew how to shoot stars. This one is 400 ASA for 20 seconds at f/1.4. Not a wonderful or very artistic shot, but it makes me happy.

[mike]

[kite]

For focusing, set the lens or camera to manual, then manually focus to infinity. Next you turn on the LCD display (film users SOL here) zoom the display all the way in. You will see lots of noise, but if you scroll around until you find a bright star, then you can fine tune your focus until the star is sharp.

[Jim Dockery]

Here are a couple I got with my new Samyang 14mm 2.8 in Utah last month. The rocks in the first one were lit by a campfire at the Goblin Valley campground.

Goblin Valley

Escalante Stars

[gb]

Very nice, Jim. On the Goblin Valley shot what is the light illuminating the rock?

[Gil]

Ditto on that Goblin Valley shot -- that's amazing.

Starry, starry night over the Pasayten Wilderness.