Night - David Mathre Photography

Wednesday (31-August-2011) — New Jersey

Backyard Summertime Night Sky Over New Jersey.

Star Trails. Following Hurricane Irene, we had a couple of days and nights with very clear skies. You could even see the Milky Way (although a lot dimmer than in locations with less light pollution). I set up a Nikon D3s camera with a 16 mm f/2.8 fisheye lens to do star trails last night. The settings on the camera were manual (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, bulb). The exposure time was controlled with a MC-36 itervelometer (delay 5 sec, long 59 sec, interval 1 sec, N —). In camera long exposure noise reduction was turned off. The 1 second interval is required to allow the data to get transferred from the camera to the card, and effectively have one image taken every 60 seconds (1 minute). The MC-36 is required for exposures longer than 30 seconds. After the images were transferred to the computer, the RAW images were processed with Lightroom, and converted to JPG. The JPG images were then processed using Startrails.exe program to make composites. The following images show a single exposure, then startrail composites of 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 120 minutes, and 300 minutes. Some high level clouds came in for the 300 minute (5 hour) image.

North View Star Trails. Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Single image before using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre) — North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Single image before using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)

North View Star Trails. Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 2 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre) — North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 2 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)

North View Star Trails. Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 5 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre) — North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s camera and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 5 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)

North View Star Trails. Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 15 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre) — North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s camera and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 15 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)

North View Star Trails. Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 30 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre) — North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s camera and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 30 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)

North View Star Trails. Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 60 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre) — North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s camera and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 60 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)

North View Star Trails. Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 120 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre) — North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s camera and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 120 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)

North View Star Trails. Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 300 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre) — North View Star Trails. Image taken with a Nikon D3s camera and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/4, 59 sec). Composite of 300 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)

Wednesday (24-August-2011) — New Jersey

Backyard Summertime Night Sky Over New Jersey.

Late August Star Trails. Since it looked like the sky was going to be clear last night, I left a camera out on the deck to get some star trail images. The first one was before midnight, and the second one after midnight. I did this set with a fisheye lens to get as much of the sky as possible. There is a tree in the front of the house that is blocking the northern star. I also used the images to create a time-lapsed video of the night sky.

North View Star Trails. Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 16 mm f/2.8 mm Fisheye lens (ISO 800, 16 mm, f/5.6, 30 sec). Composite of 326 images combined using the Startrails program. (David J Mathre)

Saturday (13-August-2011) — New Jersey

Backyard Summertime Night Sky Over New Jersey.

Perseid Meteor Shower. Conditions for viewing the Perseid Meteors this year were not good. The moon was full with relatively high humidity and some clouds. I set two cameras up to take images overnight, and got maybe three images of meteors. I’ve made a time-lapse movie from the two image sets.

As a side note, I am running out of hard disk space. I could get another WD My Book external drive, but have run out of USB and Firewire ports on my computer. I’m thinking about a Dobro disk array. What ever I do, I also need to maintain an off-site backup copy. I worry about some of the cloud options, both due to cost and the fact that ATT limits me to 5 GB/month of broadband internet access.

Perseid Meteor and Bright Full Moon. Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3 and 16 mm f/2.8 fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/2.8, 25 sec). (David J Mathre) — Perseid Meteor and Bright Full Moon. Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3 and 16 mm f/2.8 fisheye lens (ISO 400, 16 mm, f/2.8, 25 sec).

Perseid Meteor. Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 24 mm f/3.5 PC-E lens (ISO 800, 24 mm, f/4, 29 sec). (David J Mathre) — Perseid Meteor. Summer Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 24 mm f/3.5 PC-E lens (ISO 800, 24 mm, f/4, 29 sec).

Wednesday (13-July-2011) — New Jersey

Backyard Summer Night Sky in New Jersey. Waxing Gibbous Moon. DSLR Night Video + Telephoto Lens Testing.

After several days having problem with taking video images of the moon with the Nikon D3s, I finally figured out what the problem was. I was pointed to a reference on the net about an undocumented feature in Live View that impacts video capture (Thanks to Howard Ignatius). The secret sauce is “use the OK button”

“- There is some misinformation online stating that the camera does not allow true manual control over ISO, shutter speed, and aperture in video mode. That is absolutely not true. The feature is undocumented for some reason, but if you hit the OK button while in live view, a light meter will appear and it switches to whatever mode that you currently have set on the camera (manual, aperture priority, etc). That means if you’re on manual, then you can adjust all of your settings as you please. Push the INFO button to cycle through different display modes, including a live histogram, horizon level, grid, etc.” http://www.davidbergman.net/blog/how-to-get-manual-exposure-video-mode-on-the-nikon-d3s/

Bottom line, I now have manual control of the camera when taking videos!!!!!

The following video contains 15 second segments of the moon with different telephoto lenses comparing with and without the lens “vibration reduction” being enabled. When on tripod there is a difference. Let me know if you see the difference. The telephoto lenses and telescope used include the 600 mm f/4 VR, 600 mm f/4 VR + TC-E III 20 (1200 mm), 500 mm f/4 VR, 500 mm f/4 + TC-E III 20 (1000 mm), 400 mm f/2.8, 400 mm f/2.8 + TC-E III 20 (800 mm), 300 mm f/2.8, 300 mm f/2.8 + TC-E III 20 (600 mm), and Questar 3.5″ telescope (~1500 mm). The video was put together using Adobe CS5 Premiere Pro.

I’ve also included a still image of the waxing gibbous moon (97%) taken with the Nikon D3s and Questar 3.5″ telescope (ISO 1600, ~1500 mm, f/16, 1/1000 sec).

Tuesday (12-July-2011) — New Jersey

Indoor Summertime Nature in New Jersey.

Moth Attracted by Moonlight. After I was done shooting the moon and deer by moonlight, I saw this Moth. I assume that it was attracted by the moonlight.

Moth Attracted by Moonlight. Summer in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 105 mm f/2.8 macro lens (ISO 800, 105 mm, f/16, 1/30 sec). Raw image processed with Capture One Pro 6 and Photoshop CS5. (David J Mathre) — Moth Attracted by Moonlight. Summer in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 105 mm f/2.8 macro lens (ISO 800, 105 mm, f/16, 1/30 sec). Raw image processed with Capture One Pro 6 and Photoshop CS5.