David's Images of the Day Photoblog
The last few nights were not good for firefly viewing due to rain and cool temperatures. I took a chance with three cameras last night and it didn’t rain. The brown in the second image is where the “mile-a-minute” invasive vine is being eliminated.
The weather held, and I got a second chance to capture an image of the fireflies flashing in my backyard. This time I set up two cameras, reduced the aperture (so a greater distance would be in focus), increased the ISO to increase the brightness (dealt with the increased noise in post processing), and set the focus distance to ~70 feet (locking the focus ring with gaffer tape). This time the composite images were better. I will try again tomorrow.
Fireflies in my backyard. Composite of 110 images taken with a Nikon D3s camera and 600 mm f/4 VR lens. I liked this image, and have used the camera and lens parameters to help get better subsequent images.
It was relatively dark out, and I could see a large number of fireflies out my backyard. I set up a camera, and took a series of images which I used to create a nearly two-hour composite image. I am not happy that all of the fireflies were out of focus — I didn’t guess right with the distance from the camera and/or the focus dial moved as I was setting the camera up in the dark. Weather permitting I am going to try again tomorrow night.
Firefly Trails. Composite of nearly 400 images taken with a Fuji X-T1 camera and 55-200 mm lens (ISO 1600, 100 mm, f/5.6, 30 sec). Raw images processed using Capture One Pro and the composite using Photoshop CC (statistics/maximum).
