Revisiting the Moon – Photography

February 5th, 2012 Thomasso

I am going to revisit the Moon. As we are on our third crystal clear night in the middle of winter, the Moon was calling me, again. This shot was just only one of five that I took of it. Using the same setting as I did from Feb 2nd, 2012, I just cranked up the shutter speed as the Moon is now almost full.

The Waxing Gibbous Moon, almost full:

Compared to the last set of shots I took of the Moon, this one is a lot better. I see that the thin layer of clouds from the February 2nd, 2012 shots were darker becuase of it, and having the clear night really makes a difference.

Posted in Astronomy, Bitching about weather, Photographs | No Comments »

Posted my Photos in Video: On YouTube

February 5th, 2012 Thomasso

I spent some time editing a little video of some of the photos, and a short clip, that I took today from my Sony A33. The video a sort of the spur of the moment project, very amateurish, and I put it together in less than an hour.

Basically what you about to see is the short video clip of the bridge going over the Fraser River, then some of the photos I took of that hike along Brae Island outside of Fort Langley, BC. The music is mine – done on the LMMS, and the video production and editing was done suing the OpenShot on my LINUX PC, with Ubuntu 11.10.

Enjoy.

Posted in Around Town, Art, Astronomy, Audio, Photographs, Software, Video | No Comments »

Getting Better Moon Photos With My Sony A33

February 1st, 2012 Thomasso

I have a better understanding of my camera now, and it is all starting to sink in–after further reading the owner’s manual. I had a golden shot of the Moon today, as it was almost overhead, and past the First Quarter position of its month long cycle around the Earth. Within five shots, and about ten minutes of waiting for a small cloud to pass by, I had my money shot of the allusive Moon with my 200mm telephoto lens.

I switched the camera to “M” mode (manual shutter and aperture) and dialed the shutter to about 1/40 to 1/60, and set my shutter to f11, and I was getting really awesome contrast, colour and sharpness in my images. Now, it is too easy to set everything up, but I am still far from being at the point where I can just instinctively adjust the camera to the best settings. The above image is taken at: 1/100, F11, ISO100, 200mm, using a Sony DT55-200mm F4-F5.6 SAM telephoto lens on a Sony A33 camera.

The funny thought I had the last time I was trying to shoot the Moon was I had forgotten how to switch back and forth from Shutter to Aperture settings in “M” mode on my SonyA33. Now, I see the right buttons, and have everything set up and ready for the next time I go Moon shooting. But it was frustrating the last time, trying to figure out why I could not adjust my F-stop. Now seeing the switching button on the outside of the camera, I feel kind of stupid, in a humorous way.

Posted in Around Town, Astronomy, Diatribe, General, Humour, Photographs | No Comments »

A Shot at the Moon

January 27th, 2012 Thomasso

Finally, a shot at the Moon. My luck played in, as the Moon was in the right position, there was a fairly clear evening sky, and I was home with some time to spare; in all, a perfect recipe for a short photo shoot with the Moon. I must have looked like a crazy fool running outside onto the front lawn with all of my camera gear, a tripod, camera bag, and of course my camera in hand. Then fighting to set everything up as fast as I could to start shooting up into the Southern sky. They must have thought I was going nuts.

I am still green with knowing how to access all of the camera settings by memory. I should say, I know what I want, but taking the time to go through all of the camera’s menu functions, left me with a strong feeling of frustration, which was compounded while working in the cold and dark. As soon as I put the camera into “Auto” mode, the moon lit up like an ark of light in the viewfinder, as the sky behind it looked a lovely tint of blue; the exact opposite of what I wanted!

Setting the aperture and shutter speed took the longest. I followed the instructions to the letter from information that I found on the Internet, but somehow my camera was not responding to those setting, giving me the shot that I wanted. So some serious tweaking was involved. I made sure my ISO was set to 100 becuase this would give me the cleanest, clearest background without the noise in the photo. From there I played with the f-stop and shutter speed until I started getting something close to what I wanted. Using my DT55-200mm f4-5.6 SAM zoom lens, I was able to get some really good close-ups of the lunar surface.

I can see that one of my next purchases will be a remote switch for my camera. I have a good tripod, but the ground that I was on was grass, which is bouncy. Even with some weight on the tripod, just touching the camera with shutter speeds of 1/30, the vibrations wrecked some good shots of the Moon for me.

The Photo: The moon is in Waxing Crescent; the Illumination of the moon disk is at 21.7 %; the Moon is five days old. Shot taken at January 27th, 2012 at 5:48pm.

Posted in Astronomy, General, Photographs | No Comments »

Another Shot At Orion – Night Time Photography

December 31st, 2011 Thomasso

Finally another evening with some clear skies that I can just walk out into my back yard and start shooting the stars.

I focused on focusing, becuase this seems to be my biggest issue with this camera. The wide angle lens that I have, is the kit lens that came with the camera, and it does not have an infinity mark on it, so focusing to infinity is difficult. Focusing is frustrating when set up at night with only the stars to focus upon.

The image is 30mm, ISO 200, F2.3 for 20 seconds. Using the 600 divided by focal length rule, I was just outside of the star trail effect with respect to the Earth’s rotation and my exposure time.

Setting stuff like the ISO and F-Stop I have down. Using the timer on my tripod is a huge bonus since I still do not have a remote switch for it yet. But, my night time photography has come along ways since my first night with the camera, just need more time and money.

On my wish list, I really want a wide angle lens, say, something like a 25 or 30mm macro that I can do a vast amount of sky with it. I am really liking this Sony a33. Learning new stuff with it everyday.

Posted in Astronomy, Bitching about weather, General, Photographs | Comments Off

Happy Solstice!

December 21st, 2011 Thomasso

Finally made it. Today, Solstice, is like Hump-day, everything starts to get better once you pass it. I am so looking forward to the nights getting shorter that it is not even funny any more. Sadly, the depressing thoughts linger as we now enter in the new season, called winter, and we all know that there is still four more months of grey cold days ahead. But to be optimistic, the days are getting shorter from now on for the next six months.

Like an old wise person once told me, “it is always sunny on the Solstice,” and today holds that belief to be true. All day was marked with wonderful sun shine, and an almost perfect blue sky in Langley City. It felt nice to have Sun on my face. I even feel ten times better after I was catching the rays.

Oddly, this fall has not deterred some plants from thriving. I think we only have had a dozen nights that have been below freezing. And if this year is going to be like the last one, then we should see more mild nights to come.

Tonight I am going to a light festival to celebrate the Solstice. I will try and capture this on my camera, and post it?

Posted in Astronomy, Events, General, Photographs | Comments Off

I Captured Orion

December 20th, 2011 Thomasso

After five painful weeks of waiting for good weather, tonight unexpectedly gave way to clear skies, and the constellation Orion above my home. I finally captured Orion on my DLSR. Without further ado, Je présente, Orion.

Again, like I said in my December 17, 2011 post, I will put this image in my photo gallery becuase you really need to see it in a larger size to see the colours and detail that this image does not show in this size. I am very imporessed with this! I am getting closer.

The image was taken at ISO300, f4, 10 second exposure, using my 18-55mm lens. Anything longer than 10 seconds trails started to appear from the stars moving across the sky. I am also dealing with a lot of light pollution too in my neighbourhood, and there is a tree in lower right corner of this shot.

This is close to what I am aiming for with my night sky photography.

Posted in Astronomy, Events, General, Photographs | 2 Comments »

Shooting the Stars, But need more Gear

November 30th, 2011 Thomasso

I have being doing more than staying up in the middle of the night taking pictures of the night sky, I have being nursing a cold/flu/headache for the last week too. For the record, I have being spending very little time outside. This evening I took the risk of going outside for a few moments to do one last shoot before I hang up the night-time shooting gig until I buy more gear to get the shots I want. I really need to get better from the flu bug that it killing me, but tonight was clear, and the fog was starting roll in from the river, and I figured that this maybe the time to get shots in before the clouds come back. So I compromised and took ten 30 second shots before retreating back in side to warmth. The fog had just started to cover everything when I finished.

I finally got the “Big Dipper” before it sunk behind the trees. These stars are so low in the sky this time of year during the evenings, I had a half hour window to shoot this.

You can see the fog starting to roll in from this last shot. Remember that these are 30 second long exposures, so the human eye does not see  all of this light that the camera is picking up.

My next purchase will be the remote switch so that I do not have to touch the camera to take the photograph. Even though I am using a tripod, I find it vibrates just enough to make the stars appear out of focus. Also, 30 seconds is just long enough before you start to see star trails from the Earth’s rotation. Perhaps later on I will do a start trails shoot.

Posted in Astronomy, General, Photographs | 1 Comment »

Getting Closer To My Goal of Capturing the Stars

November 27th, 2011 Thomasso

I am getting closer to capturing the stars with my camera that way I want. The storm had passed this afternoon, but leaving lots of clouds, but there were some breaks in the weather around 6:00pm. I grabbed my tripod and camera and headed down to the railway tracks and started taking long exposure shots, but this time starting at my lowest ISO setting, ISO 100 and working my way to a good setting. The flu bug that I caught last week started to loosen up enough so that I could go outside without catching a chill, but still had that drip from my sinuses.It was a good time for night shots.

I found that I seem to be stuck at the ISO200 setting until I can get a remote switch for my shutter. The camera has a 30 second timer for the shutter, so this setting is my bench mark that I am using for these shots. I know I will have to go up to 60 seconds exposures to capture the stars the way I want to with the ISO100. However, I did figure out that the lower the F-stop setting, the happier my camera was at taking these long exposure shots.

The clouds has an interesting effect when taking long exposures. They seem like they are in warp, as if you can almost see them moving in the still photograph.

The widest I can go is 18mm, but one day soon I will get a fish-eye lens – 16mm. Focusing seems to a problem too. Well, it is either focusing or my tripod moves a little while taking these long exposure shots because the stars just do not seem to be perfect points.

Above, you see the “streaking” effect of the moving clouds in the long exposure photograph. The ISO is set to 200, f-stop 4, 18mm at 30 seconds. You can see stars in this shot. I will also post the larger size in my gallery sometime this week so you can see more detail.

Above is my star field shot. I will post this also in my gallery becuase at this size you cannot see half of the details that a larger image can show you. I need longer exposure times, so a remote switch for the shutter is my next purchase. ISO setting at 200, f-stop set to 6, and 18mm for a 30 second exposure.

Posted in Astronomy, General, Photographs | Comments Off

Starlight, My Camera and My Backyard

November 19th, 2011 Thomasso

I am not quite one with my camera yet. I have followed the instructions to the letter, but still, something is not right yet as the allusive “Bulb” setting is unattainable for me with this camera. I have just spent two hours in the frigid cold of a freak cold snap out in my backyard going through every setting I can find on this camera, and still the screen that allows my to manually control the shutter cannot be found.

What I got instead are a couple of long exposures, but these were not controlled by me, it was the camera going into its own auto setting. Added to the frustration, I had to shut the camera off becuase it would just sit and activate the shutter every 15 or so seconds without showing anything on the viewfinder. So I would shut it off and try again. After a couple of hours, and reaching the first stages of hypothermia, I gave up and went back inside.

This shot is as far as I got tonight. I will try again tomorrow when I have some more time. Hoping that the cloud stay away too.

UPDATE: I just figured out what it was I was doing wrong with this camera on getting the “Bulb” setting to work. There are a number of functions that the Bulb setting will not work with, even if you have the camera on full manual mode. I had the “Smile” indicator on, and the Auto HDR set to Auto, so these settings would shut the Bulb setting off on my shutter speed. The handbook is over 200 pages long; not good for someone who wants the camera to work – now. I know, patients. I have none.

Posted in Astronomy, Diatribe, General, Photographs | 2 Comments »