About a month ago, I made a first attempt to photograph the night sky over Hay Bay, the Bruce Peninsula and Lake Huron from the shore at our cottage. Conditions were not ideal but seeing the Milky Way appear, lead by many stars as a we sat at the shore enjoying the embers of a campfire, motivated me to give it a go.
Since then, during a week of vacation, an opportunity under much more favourable conditions arose and I was able to make some decent images (blog post 2014-08-18). For that possibility, I had come equipped with a particular lens, with characteristics more suited to night sky photography. I'm not certain how much the improved results were due to the selection of equipment, opposed to the more favourable conditions ...
... but, the results impressed me enough to do some further research on gear and technique in the effort to improve my night sky images more. My research led to an online discussion of lenses and which were recommended for the brand of camera I use. Never needing much of a push to acquire new gear, I picked up a ultra-wide FF lens, the Rokinon 14mm f/2.8, a focal length not already covered by something in my kit.
As luck would have it, the next visit to the cottage looked as though it would offer only cloudy night skies and the Rokinon would see use just for landscape and trial images as I became familiar with it's manual focus and manual aperture control. Well luck changed and on the final night, the sun set through clearing skies and by 9:00 pm the first star was visible. I started to gather the equipment I would need and waited for the night to darken.
The challenge on this attempt, a waxing crescent moon throwing a tremendous amount of light over the bay and into the surrounding sky. At this particular point in the lunar cycle, the moon is just slightly west of the Milky Way when looking south across the bay. After making a number of exposures of just the sky, I decided to try a series that would include some of the surrounding landscape, water etc. I ended up including the moon and it's reflection on the bay. It required a fair bit of processing to get the look I wanted and I'm still not totally satisfied, but here it is ...
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| August Moon & Milky Way |
DJE
i love this one, what a capture
ReplyDeleteI like to see some landscape in the image, not only the starry sky.
ReplyDeleteNot often that one sees the moon in such an image. Great idea.
again... two words... BIG WOW! Like the transition in the sky and the moon...
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by and commenting :-)
ReplyDelete