I went out last Tuesday to Joshua Tree to test my new Astro Mount, and even though the moon was at 73% so much brighter then I normally like I set up 2 cameras to shoot timelapses while I played around with my new mount with a different camera.
That sounded confusing reading it back, to clarify my testing of the new astro mount has nothing to do with this timelapse. This timelapse was set up with a plain old tripod, my D810 and a remote release.
One of the hard aspects of processing this is to balance the brightness of the ground and the brightness of the stars and moon. The moon is really bright out in Joshua Tree, so even in the middle of the night I didn't need a headlamp to walk around the desert, the moon casts shadows, it is plain bright. So if I darken the ground too much, then the sky and stars disappear too much, and with the moon so bright the stars really fight to be see anyway. One thing I noticed is the ground looks much brighter when I viewed on my TV at home compared to my monitor where it seems pretty appropriate for how bright the ground was.
Where I stopped to set up to do my Astro mount test, I did it in mind with knowing I also wanted to do some timelapses. So this spot where I shot this is quite far from the road, and also positioned to where I thought even with the loop road through Joshua Tree being a curving and windy road, that in this spot, there wouldn't be any stray headlights. Well I was wrong. And then towards the end of the video the ground really gets lit up, it's like 1:30am and the traffic on the road had died down a lot, but in the pull out about 100 yards down the road some guy pulls into it, but instead of pulling into it parallel to the road (like it's designed) he pulled in at a 45 degree angle and it was like he knew exactly way out in the desert I had my timelapses set up, because he pulled there and sat for several minutes before finally leaving....
Enough talk....
Nikon D810
Tamron 14mm f1.8
This is about 1200 images, 25 secs each at ISO 2000 and f5. I chose f5 because it was so bright out, and while I had thought I might avoid the moon in the image (I aimed North specifically) I am glad I had chose f5 to cut the light instead lowering the ISO, because at f5 it will cause the moon to have spikes, which I think is a cool look for it.
All comments are welcome,
Jim
That sounded confusing reading it back, to clarify my testing of the new astro mount has nothing to do with this timelapse. This timelapse was set up with a plain old tripod, my D810 and a remote release.
One of the hard aspects of processing this is to balance the brightness of the ground and the brightness of the stars and moon. The moon is really bright out in Joshua Tree, so even in the middle of the night I didn't need a headlamp to walk around the desert, the moon casts shadows, it is plain bright. So if I darken the ground too much, then the sky and stars disappear too much, and with the moon so bright the stars really fight to be see anyway. One thing I noticed is the ground looks much brighter when I viewed on my TV at home compared to my monitor where it seems pretty appropriate for how bright the ground was.
Where I stopped to set up to do my Astro mount test, I did it in mind with knowing I also wanted to do some timelapses. So this spot where I shot this is quite far from the road, and also positioned to where I thought even with the loop road through Joshua Tree being a curving and windy road, that in this spot, there wouldn't be any stray headlights. Well I was wrong. And then towards the end of the video the ground really gets lit up, it's like 1:30am and the traffic on the road had died down a lot, but in the pull out about 100 yards down the road some guy pulls into it, but instead of pulling into it parallel to the road (like it's designed) he pulled in at a 45 degree angle and it was like he knew exactly way out in the desert I had my timelapses set up, because he pulled there and sat for several minutes before finally leaving....
Enough talk....
Nikon D810
Tamron 14mm f1.8
This is about 1200 images, 25 secs each at ISO 2000 and f5. I chose f5 because it was so bright out, and while I had thought I might avoid the moon in the image (I aimed North specifically) I am glad I had chose f5 to cut the light instead lowering the ISO, because at f5 it will cause the moon to have spikes, which I think is a cool look for it.
All comments are welcome,
Jim
