Week 6 - Signs - It's all Ok!

Still not sure if I like this new look and feel that blogger has when creating a new post.  Why do websites feel the need to keep changing things for those of us who were content?   Oh well, live with it I guess.

So first up, my shot for this weeks Project 52.  The theme was signs.   Naturally lots of people took great photos of various signs around them.   I was kinda hoping to find a "no dog poop" sign and then have Jackson take a shit in front of it, but that would be the stars aligning ;-)     Once again I tried to think about something besides what others were doing, thus the hand sign - ok.

In the process of shooting this I discovered;

1.  My remote shutter cable is to short for me to take a picture of myself,
2.  Guessing at the focus setting, hit the timer, press the shutter and get in front of the lens in time and in focus is a major pain, and
3.  I look much better in black and white ;-)

I thought I was so smart, no one else had posted something like this.  I worked on it for over an hour and once I posted, sure enough, someone beat me by 30 minute - doh!

Had another clear evening on Friday night so this time decided to do the startrail thing again, but this time to the north.   Once again the batteries are just not up to the task when it's cold (-10c) and 30 sec exposures.  The result is only 53 images blended into one.  But now I know exactly where the north star is when I look out my front door.   Just a pain that I have the glow of the city to the north and have to deal with that in my images.

Not a bad week overall.   Still getting the winter blahs on and off a bit, so the occasional self pity party.    Work has been steady but actually been finding some time to do some things that have been sitting on my to do list for the past few months.   Friday I hit an ice snowbank and put a nice dent in the plastic bumper on the truck.  It's down low and not really visible or noticeable to most people, but I can see it and it sucks!  

Been working on a new tattoo design ;-)   Jen and I are booked for the 16th.  Not sure if we'll have time on the 16th to get it done but hoping so.   I'm not going to post the image but it does involve an Inukshuk ;-)

That was my week.   Winter continues but we're surviving!  According to the rodents we're suppose to have an early spring.  I'll believe it when I see it.   Only 6 weeks till I head for Bermuda!  ;-)

Startrails - Week 4 - Up

My first attempt at doing Startrails, something I never seem to think of doing in the summer.

Basically, startails is done by doing either 1 really long exposure (not recommended) or doing a series of long exposures and then putting them into a single image.  My result is below;

Now like I said, this was my first attempt so I didn't exactly do what I wanted.  The horizontal red lines are actually airplanes that crossed while I was taking the picture.  As I hope everyone here is aware, the stars move around the night sky (well actually it's the earth moving, but you figure it out hahaha).  For the most part the north star doesn't move and can be used as a fixed point in the sky and if you do enough or a long enough exposure you can see the stars rotate around it.

Not my picture but here is an example:

Now my image above was looking into the southern sky and not long enough to see how circular it can become.  To the north of my house is the city of Ottawa and it was showing quite a glow on the horizon so I decided to try first to the south just to see if it would work.  AND IT DID!!!!

BUT......it wasn't a complete success.   The temperature outside was -16c.  That coldness combined with 30 sec exposures one right after the other ended up killing the battery in about 32 minutes, not the desired 60-90 minutes that I wanted.

So how did I do it?  Simple!   You need a tripod, a shutter release cable that has a lock feature (you can get them on e-bay from china for about 3 bucks) and a camera with manual mode.  Set the camera to manual mode.  These settings worked for me - Aperture f2.8, shutter 30 secs, ISO 100.   Focus on something far away so that the lens goes into infinity mode (half press your shutter for the focus).  Then turn off your Auto Focus.  Switch your shooting mode to continuous.  Frame your image with the camera on the tripod - normally you want to the north so you can get the circular pattern or you can do like I did.  Press and lock the remote shutter.   Go inside and have a coffee and watch some TV.   Whenever you want, 20 minutes - 7 hours later, go out and stop the picture taking.

Now your left with a pile of photos, what to do with them?  In my case I shoot RAW format so I had to convert them over to jpg.  The reason I shot RAW is so that I can fix issues with the images before conversion if needed but to date I rarely have to do this, so shooting in jpg is fine.  You could combine all the images (I had 50+) in photoshop, but that is one serious pain.   So a bit of digging around the internet found a really nice piece of shareware called Startrails - http://www.startrails.de/html/software.html

Just load all the images into the program and it creates a single image.  Way to easy and way cool!

Another thing you can do, if you have enough images, is you can make it into a time lapse movie.... a project I plan to try when it's warmer.

There are tons of tutorials around the internet on how to make these cool looking images.   Just google startrails and you'll be all set.

If I get another clear evening this week, and it's a bit warmer, I'll attempt one to the north to get the circular effect.