David's Images of the Day Photoblog
Views of the land around the world
Old Havana Power Lines. Image taken with a Leica T camera and 23 mm f/2 lens (ISO 100, 23 mm, f/5.6. 1/640 sec). Raw image processed with Capture One Pro, Focus Magic, and Photoshop CC.
It had been several days post Hurricane Sandy. Many folks were still without power, but PSE&G and the tree folks were in the neighborhood working. I ran out of propane in my RV for the generator, and the local place where I would have gone to have it refilled didn’t have power. The same was true with the local the gas stations — so I couldn’t refill the car with gas or the RV with diesel. At the end of the day it started snowing, and the power went out again. I got my sleeping bag out and pretended I was camping in my house.
More images from the post Hurricane Sandy series. The power was still out and there was not much to do but go out and take some images. Some of the neighbors did use the outlet on my RV to recharge their cell phones.
I decided to do some star & jet trails with a different lens (14-24 mm f/2.8). Unfortunately, I did it in vertical/portrait mode and too much of the top and bottom were cut off by the ceiling and ground so I had to crop the image. Nine years later and still learning best method to do star trails. Also, no meteor trails during this sequence. Clouds moved in as it got toward morning.
Learning from mistakes. It took a while to figure out how to make star trail images with a digital camera. My first attempts to do long exposures ran into problems with digital sensor noise, the length of time the shutter could remain open, and camera battery life — especially on cold nights. The camera had an option for “long exposure noise reduction”, however this required taking a second exposure with the shutter closed and then subtracting the sensor closed image from the sensor open image. The result is missing every other exposure needed for a smooth composite star trail image.
Other than the Big Dipper, Orion was probably the second constellation I learned to recognize.