Once again Star trail

Readers may get fed-up by reading about the same topic on my blog. But I would not stop until I get a good and satisfactory star-trail photo.

I am nearing to my goal of a perfect star trail photo. The above pic was clicked by Yashica FX-3. 

Due to the moonlight many stars were washed out. Next time I will have to check the moon-rise and moon-set timing and go for the star trail photo.

In the pic, technically all the things are in place. I did take a still object in the foreground to get a nice depth for the photo and also kept the shutter open for 1 hour. 

But the timing was not right. It was 7th or 8th day from new moon. The moonlight was strong enough to spoil the photo. 

Next time hopefully I would be able to take a nice and near to perfect Star-trail photo.

Better Star Trails

Once again it’s been a long time since I wrote anything regarding photography.

But this time I am having some better pics of star trails taken with my new Canon 550D.

I had specially gone to Raigad fort, the capital of Maratha kingdom to get a clear sky. I chose 19^th May 2012 to go to Raigad. Checked the moon rise and moon set timings on http://timeanddate.com and then decided to go. The situation was such that the moon was setting on 19^th evening and was going to rise on the 20^th morning, so I was going to get a starry sky. The site also helped me in checking the weather conditions on the given day which were clear. So completely equipped with my camera and tripod I went to Raigad. For the whole day of 19^th I looked around the fort, took some snaps. My guide provided me lunch. He also allowed me to take an afternoon nap in his house. I also had dinner at his place. My plan was to stay awake full night near the statue of Shivaji maharaj and get some nice star trail photos.

I was ill prepared in two departments. Since it was the month of May I thought I would not need any blanket. But I was totally wrong, it was chilling cold. The second misjudgement was regarding the camera battery. I should have carried an extra battery which I did not and I missed at least 2 photos of star trails of my liking. Nevertheless I am happy with the photos I clicked but not yet satisfied.

Following are the photos and some description regarding them.

This photo does not come under star trail category. This click was just to get idea whether the statue was in focus or not. I had kept the shutter open for around 45 seconds with ISO of 800. Since the stars were bright and clear I was able to get the stars as well in the snap. Even though this was just a trial snap it turned out to be a nice one.

 This is the real star trail photo I wanted to click. It is not a single click. I had kept the camera in continuous shoot mode with the release wire locked for around an hour and each click duration of 30 seconds with ISO 800.There were total of around 120 photos. I compiled all the photos together to get the final result (a drawback of normal digital SLR cameras is that if the shutter is kept open for a longer duration with high ISO a lot of noise is generated in the snap which results in a very bad photo). I used free software called Startrails (http://www.startrails.de/), nice and simple software, to get the final result.

One more star trail photo. The technique was the same as the previous photo. It was taken during midnight. The glow at the bottom of the photo is that of the artificial lights at the foot of the fort.

After the third photo, the camera battery drained out and I had to sleep against my wish L.

This was a nice experience and a big step in learning the star trail photography, which I am keen on improving.

Will post something as soon as I get a nice photo to write about. 

Till then keep on clicking and experimenting!!!

Star trails

This time I have tried to click STAR TRAILS. I have used my SLR camera (film) for the above photograph as my digital camera is not capable to take the above photograph. To get this result I had to keep the shutter open for around 90 minutes. The main requirements for this photograph are complete clear sky and absence of moon and artificial lights.

The best night for this photograph would be new moon day with lots of stars.

The absence of artificial lights and moon would be beneficial for minimizing the chances of over-exposing the photograph and erasing the star trails (personal experienceJ).

Shutterspeed magic

Its been a year since I wrote anything about photography. I did click snaps in between but there was nothing new to explain in those photographs.
This time I would like to share some useful tips about shutter-speed. If you see the above image, you can see the light trails in the background with the still image of the chair in the front. This was achieved by keeping the camera shutter open for about 1 second and using a flash.
The shutter-speed helped me in getting the trails of the lights and the flash was used to get a bright image of the chair.
If only the shutter-speed had to be used, we would have to keep it open for at least 3-4 seconds to get the bright image of the chair. To achieve that you need a stable base for the camera such as tripod or a firm rock, but since I had none of these, I used flash.
If only flash had been used for the chair, then the trails would not have been that prominent.
Hope you understood what I am trying to explain. If not please let me know.
Till the next posting see you (I hope it happens soon ;-) )

Digital Camera is a boon for photographers like me. Whatever I have learned about photography is through some articles and lot of trial and error.

I have a semi SLR camera from Canon (SX100 IS). I tried lot of permutation and combination to get my snaps right. My camera gave me a lot of flexibility in experimenting but with some limitations as well.

I take this opportunity to share some basic tips of photography.

Following are some of the snaps I have clicked and little description about them.

Moon has been my favorite subject for photography. I had to do lot of trial and error to get these snaps. According to me taking a snap of full moon is difficult. If you observe the two photographs you can see the difference in the shadows on the moon. In the first photo the shadows are prominent. In the second snap the shadows seem to be black spots on the moon. These snaps required a lot of manual control of the camera such as ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed. The auto settings of the camera would give you a white circle of the full moon snap and the half moon may not be bright enough. I had to keep my ISO settings to the minimal as higher the ISO, higher the noise (digital camera’s limitation).

This was taken during the sunset. The sky was looking amazing. The clouds gave a nice perspective of the sky. The challenge was to get the silhouette of the buildings and also the colors of the sky. To get the silhouette the shutter-speed was increased. To get the colors the aperture was to the maximum and the ISO was 200.

The color of the wings and the balancing of the bug made me take this snap. To get the detail of the bug I had to change my camera settings to Manual focus (It helps in focusing on a specific object). Due to this setting only the bug and the stick are in focus, whereas the background is blurred. This setting helps in giving the photo a nice depth.

This photograph was a lucky one. There was lot of lightning. I wanted a snap of the lightning. This snap was taken at around 9 in the evening. The sky was totally dark. I did not have a tripod with me so I kept the camera on a car top and waited for the lightning. I had to wait for around half an hour to get this lightning in my camera frame. For this snap the shutter-speed was 13 seconds. To minimize the noise the ISO was lowest and to get maximum light the aperture was highest.

This is one of my favorite snaps. The red lines are nothing but the tail lights of moving cars. As this snap was taken in the night I had kept my ISO to the lowest. To get the lines I had kept the camera shutter open for around 13 seconds. Since the photo was taken on the highway I could get nice straight lines of the lights. The highway was very smooth and free of potholes. I had tried this snap on the city roads but could not get these types of lines, thanks to our roads.

 The above snaps are the result of macro settings of my camera. Due to this setting you can go as close as 5 cm to the subject. I was lucky for the spider snap as the spider did not move during the snap. Otherwise the snap could have been ruined. The second snap is that of an ant standing still on a flower. These were taken at a resort near Pune.

This snap was a result of the zooming (optical) capability of my camera. The Kingfisher was around 50 feet away. The 10X optical zoom helped me in getting me a clearer and closer view of the bird. As it was daylight I did not have to make any drastic changes in my camera settings.