Backyard Springtime Nature in New Jersey — Firefly Trails.
I repeated the firefly trails image shoot from last night. The moon was still out (waxing crescent) and it was pretty bright. This time I set up my night time camera Nikon D810a with a 105 mm f/1.4 lens (ISO 400, 105 mm, f/16, 240 sec) to take a series of 40 images. Note that I changed ISO, aperture, and exposure time. I also pre-focused the camera while it was still light outside. As before the raw images were processed with Capture One Pro and the composite image generated using Photoshop CC (statistics, maximum). This time the focus was better and I didn’t need to use and post processing focusing tools. I’ve also provided a slide show with enlarged images where the original image was separated into a (6 x 6 ) 36 image grid. Next time I will try with a camera that doesn’t have as high a resolution sensor.
Firefly Trails. Composite of 40 mages taken with a Nikon D810a camera and 105 mm f/1.4 lens (ISO 400, 105 mm, f/16, 240 sec). Raw images processed with Capture One Pro, Photoshop CC, NIK Color Efex Pro. (DAVID J MATHRE)
Daily Power Use (est 52 kWh) from Sense and Solar Production (85.94 kWh) from SolSystems and Locus Energy. The power use is an estimate since there have been a number of data dropouts since Friday about noon. I am waiting on a response from Sense regarding the problem.
Backyard Springtime Nature in New Jersey — Firefly Trails.
I noticed that the fireflies are out. I haven’t done a firefly trails image since last year. It wasn’t be best conditions since the moon was out (waxing crescent) and it was pretty bright. I set up my night time camera Nikon D810a with a 105 mm f/1.4 lens (ISO 1600, 105 mm, f/8, 120 sec) to take a series of 174 images. Even though I tried to manually focus the lens, I didn’t get it right. The images were processed with Capture One Pro and a composite created using Photoshop CC (statistics, maximum). There was a lot of out of focus blur. I tried both Focus Magic and the “Out of Focus Blur” tool within Photoshop. This helped but I still wasn’t happy. I then tried the new Topaz Sharpen-AI tool. This did a much better job than I expected. Still it would be better if I got the focus correct to begin with. Tomorrow nights project.
Firefly Trails. Composite of 174 images taken with a Nikon D810a camera and 105 mm f/1.4 lens (ISO 1600, 105 mm, f/8, 120 sec). Raw images processed with Capture One Pro, and the composite generated with Photoshop CC (statistics, maximum). (DAVID J MATHRE)Firefly Trails. Composite of 174 images taken with a Nikon D810a camera and 105 mm f/1.4 lens (ISO 1600, 105 mm, f/8, 120 sec). Raw images processed with Capture One Pro, and the composite generated with Photoshop CC (statistics, maximum). Focus correction with Focus Magic (20). (DAVID J MATHRE)Firefly Trails. Composite of 174 images taken with a Nikon D810a camera and 105 mm f/1.4 lens (ISO 1600, 105 mm, f/8, 120 sec). Raw images processed with Capture One Pro, and the composite generated with Photoshop CC (statistics, maximum). Focus correction using PhotoShop Fix Out of Focus Blur. (DAVID J MATHRE)Firefly Trails. Composite of 174 images taken with a Nikon D810a camera and 105 mm f/1.4 lens (ISO 1600, 105 mm, f/8, 120 sec). Raw images processed with Capture One Pro, and the composite generated with Photoshop CC (statistics, maximum). Focus correction using Topaz Sharpen-AI (focus, max). (DAVID J MATHRE)
Best to view the images in full screen mode.
Daily Power Use (est 51 kWh) from Sense and Solar Production (80.63 kWh) from SolSystems and Locus Energy. The power use is an estimate since there have been a number of data dropouts since Friday about noon. I am waiting on a response from Sense regarding the problem.
Another clear night and I set up three cameras. Two to record firefly trails, and the other to record the nighttime sky for star trails. I still need to do some testing, but it seems that the Nikon sensors do a better job with low light images (less sensor noise). And among the Nikon sensors, the D810a camera does better with exposures over 30 seconds. In addition to the star trails, I also did a time-lapse video of the night sky.
Firefly trails. Composite of 178 images taken with a Nikon D810a camera and 200 mm f/2 lens (ISO 1600, 200 mm, f/11, 120 sec). Raw images processed with Capture One Pro and composite generated using Photoshop CC (statistics, maximum). (DAVID J MATHRE)
Star Trails looking up and a little south. Composite of 697 of images taken with a Nikon D850 camera and 19 mm f/4 PC-E lens (ISO 200, 19 mm, f/4, 30 sec). Raw images processed with Capture One Pro and the composite generated using Photoshop CC (statistics, maximum). (DAVID J MATHRE)
For the second night in a row the sky was clear so again I set up two cameras. This time using lessons learned from yesterday. One for firefly trails (Nikon D810a camera and 200 mm f/2 lens), and one for star trails looking north (Nikon D850 camera and 19 mm f/4 PC-E lens). This time the focus point for the firefly trails was moved back, and the orientation changed to portrait. I like this better than last night. For the star trails image I rotated the camera to north to get the circle around the north star. The star trail images really needs to be viewed on a large high-resolution monitor. I also made a time-lapse video (five hours compressed to 20 seconds) of the night sky. This is best viewed on a high-resolution monitor in a dark room. The Big Dipper pointing to the north star was one of the first things I learned about the night sky. One note post processing is with these high-resolution cameras it took me all day to do the processing, even with my fastest computer with a video processor (Microsoft Surface Book II Pro).
Firefly Trails. Composite of images taken with a Nikon D810a camera and 200 mm f/2 lens (ISO 1600, 200 mm, f/11, 120 sec). Raw images processed with Capture One Pro and the composite generated using Photoshop CC (statistics, maximum). (DAVID J MATHRE)Star Trarils Looking North. Composite of images (22:20-03:19) taken with a Nikon D850 camera and 19 mm f/4 PC-E lens (ISO 200, 19 mm, f/4, 30 sec). Raw images processed with Capture One Pro and the composite created using Photoshop CC (scripts, statistics, maximum). (DAVID J MATHRE)
Individual images from the slide show can be viewed here.
The sky was clear so I set up two cameras. One for firefly trails (Nikon D810a and 200 mm f/2 lens), and one for star trails looking south (Nikon D850 and 19 mm f/4 PC-E lens). The focus point for the firefly image should have been further back. This is my first star trails image with the high-resolution Nikon D850 camera (8256 x 5505 pixel — 45 MP sensor). The image really needs to be viewed on a large high-resolution monitor. I focused the camera using live view using a magnified bright star. I need to figure out how to do the same thing with the firefly images. I also made a time-lapse video (five hours compressed to 20 seconds) of the night sky. This is best viewed on a high-resolution monitor in a dark room. The brightest object that shows up in the early morning is Mars.
Firefly Ttrails (21:50-03:59). Composite of images taken with a Nikon D810a camera and 200 mm f/2 lens (ISO 400, 200 mm, f/5.6, 120 sec). Raw images processed with Capture One Pro and the composite generated with Photoshop CC (statistics, maximum). (DAVID J MATHRE)Star Trails Looking South (23:00-03:59). Composite of image taken with a Nikon D850 camera and 19 mm f/4 PC-E lens (ISO 200, 19 mm, f/4, 30 sec). Raw images processed with Capture One Pro and the composite generated with Photoshop CC (statistics, maximum). (DAVID J MATHRE)
Individual images from the slide show can be viewed here.
