David's Images of the Day Photoblog
Firefly Trails. Composite of images taken with a Nikon D810a camera and 70-200 mm lens or Nikon D4 camera and 200 mm f/2 lens. Need to work on getting the aperture and focus synchronized. The first image has both sharp and blurred images, whereas the second one has more blurred images.
The Alien Deer Want My Yucca Flowers. I may have to stay up all night.
The Fireflies Are Back. Backyard Spring Nature in New Jersey. Composite of 600 images taken with a D4 camera and 200 mm f/2 VR lens (ISO 800, 200 mm, f/8, 30 sec). Raw images processed with Capture One Pro 8 and Photoshop CC. The images were combined using in Photoshop using Scripts/Statistics/Maximum. Next time need to increase the ISO or increase the aperture by at least 2 stops.
One Ship Makes it Through the Green Cloud Above Kvaløya (Whale) Island in Norway. Image taken with a Nikon D800 camera and 16 mm f/2.8 fisheye lens (ISO 800, 16 mm, f/2.8, 30 sec).
Perseid Meteor Shower. I know that I said that I was going to go out to get more images of Clearwing Hummingbird moths, but the sky was finally clear last night and I had an opportunity to view the Perseid Meteor Shower. I set up two cameras on the back deck — a Nikon D4 camera with a 16 mm f/2.8 fisheye and a Nikon D800 camera with a 14-24 mm f/2.8 lens. Each was set to take 30 sec images (ISO 400, f/2.8). With the D800 camera and 14-24 lens I took the time to take a set of images to find out where I got the best focus for stars at infinity. For the 16 mm fisheye lens I just used infinity on the lens. This was a mistake. The images I got with the 14-24 lens where I spent the time to test the focus were a lot better, especially with the 32 MB sensor on the D800 camera.
The first image below is a single exposure with a meteor trail using the D800 & 14-24 mm lens. I really don’t understand the physics of other images on the internet of the Perseid Meteor Shower that show long exposures of the night sky (1-6 hours) that show multiple meteor trails where both the stars and the ground/landscape don’t move.
I have included several ~1 hour star trail images that are composites of the 30 second images (using the Startrails.exe program). The sky in New Jersey is not that dark, and the glow in the bottom of the image is the light from Princeton and Trenton. If you look close, several do show 1 or more meteor trails that were visible in New Jersey.
