Night Time Photography - David Mathre Photography

Monday (15-June-2020) — New Jersey

Backyard Spring Nighttime Nature in New Jersey.

More fireflies than last night. It was a bit warmer out. The activity dropped off after 23:30 when the temperature went below 60°F. Composite of images taken with a Nikon D4 camera and 200 mm f/2 VR lens (ISO 800, 200 mm, f/8, 30 sec).

Firefly Trails [2140-2359]. Composite of images taken with a Nikon D4 camera and 200 mm f/2 VR lens (ISO 800, 200 mm, f/8, 30 sec). (DAVID J MATHRE)

Firefly trails — 30 min intervals. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.

Daily Electric Energy Used (41.5 kWh) from Sense. The daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (77.5 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Sun and clouds. A surplus of 36.0 kWh.

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Sunday (14-June-2020) — New Jersey

Backyard Spring Nighttime Nature in New Jersey.

Not as many fireflies as the previous night. It was a bit cooler out and the activity drops off below 60°F. Composite of images taken with a Nikon D4 camera and 200 mm f/2 VR lens (ISO 800, 200 mm, f/8, 30 sec).

Firefly Trails [2130-2259]. Composit of image takens with a Nikon D4 camera and 200 mm f/2 VR lens (ISO 800, 200 mm, f/8, 30 sec). (DAVID J MATHRE) — Firefly Trails [2130-2259]. Composite of image takens with a Nikon D4 camera and 200 mm f/2 VR lens (ISO 800, 200 mm, f/8, 30 sec). (DAVID J MATHRE)

Firefly trails — 30 min intervals. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.

Daily Electric Energy Used (37.6 kWh) from Sense. The daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (90.7 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Much more sun. A surplus of 53.1 kWh.

Weekly Electric Energy Used (338 kWh) from Sense. The daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (550 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. A surplus of 212 kWh.

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Thursday (16-April-2020) — New Jersey

Backyard Nighttime Spring Nature in New Jersey.

The raccoon just ran by and ignored the new bait.

Daily Electric Energy Used (53.7 kWh) from Sense Home Energy Monitor and Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (71.3 kWh) from SolSystems and Locus Energy. Lots of sun (some clouds). A surplus of 17.6 kWh.

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Sunday (09-June-2019) — New Jersey

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.

Current Weather Conditions

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Saturday (08-June-2019) — New Jersey

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)

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.