Lunar Eclipse & Blood Moon

The press was full of hype about the longest eclipse and blood moon for a century. So I did want to photograph it and figured Venus Bay would be a great spot to do it. It was until the clouds rolled in. C’est la vie

PS Flickr. Instagram and the various local news programs where swapped with similar images, yet there is some pridein that these are my own.

No Auroa, just a cold mist

Perth by Night

A 3 photo Autostitched Panorama, Taken on HTC Uplay

The school fare was most enjoyable on a warm balmy night and the fish (freshly caught) & chips especially delicious

A Beautiful Dark Sky

I was down at Venus Bay, and one long held desire I hold  is to be able to photograph an Aurora (the Aurora Australis) from there. The crescent moon was setting so I guessed we would have wonderful dark skies but checking the space weather indicated any activity was well south. Oh well the sun spot activity is fairly strong I’ll just have to keep waiting.

What I did find was a really beautiful sky full of stars, and a perfect opportunity to go for a really large image covering a lot of the milky way. I only had one camera (my Canon EOS 1100D) with me and my widest length lens was the EPS 18-55mm IS macro (which is a great kit lens but not so good at focusing in the dark). So I cranked up the focal length to 18ml, opened up the aperture to f4 and ISO 6400 but I still needed the full 30 second than the canon allows its maximum exposure time. The Images are fairly noise (a consequence of the high ISO but lightroom’s detail tools bough this under control without blurring the stars (too much). The next challenge was stitching the images which where essentially a two by two grid. Often stitching star panorama challenges most conventional stitching software but Autostitch did an excellent job. I had given it about 40-50% overlap on the images. However it does leave a ragged edge, so I decided to “hide” this not by cropping back tighter instead I added a sloppy edge from OnOne 10 effects borders.

 

   

This is a big view of the sky from the eastern Horizon to straight above. Taken with only an 18mm lens (on a crop sensor style DSLR)

Starry Starry Night

View of the milky way in the southern sky

PhotoProject :: In Search of the Blue Hour

The past two night have had the classic crescent moon close to a bright planet Venus not long after sunset. This is the blue hour when you can get some wonderful photos as the sky is still partly light and the deep sky is still a little blue not yet black. However this is the time of extended long exposures, so A tri[od is pretty essential, and keeping if vibration free can be a hassle. First step is turning off the anti-shake and the second trick is to use the self timer (I just use the 2 second delay). The other big issue at night is focusing, which can be a challenge for most autofocus system, so it if better to manually focus.Finally there is lost of advice about exposure setting for night scenes,and it a compromise between higher ISO (and inevitable higher noise) and lower F-stops (so decreasing depth of focus) and slow shutter speeds (giving high risk of camera movement blur). These compromises are not so well handled by the light meters in most camera, so it is usually much better to work in manual mode and take a few test shots.A similar configuration of the moon and venus will exist during the blue hour for the next couple of days.

Surviving in the Low Band Width and occasional free WiFi

A pleasant evening in Bandung

Its been almost two decades since I’ve been to this part of Indonesia. Back them I took slides and had to wait till I returned home before I could send then in for development and another week or so till it got back. Now with a digital camera the expectation is to have an image instantly and transmit it globally instantly.  Its not quiet like that what was once a beautiful mountainous area with clean air free from the tropical closeness of the coast is now constantly hazy and the traffic becoming very Jakarta like. Its still a very interesting place BUT internet connections are somewhat hard to fins and the occasional Free WiFi is overcrowded and so slow. Seems eveyone has a smart phone these days in Indonesia, and very few if any have apple logos) , You could also pay exorbitant rate for international roaming but the speed won't be much better.

The solution is simple go back to the old way be patient, dont try and post (or at least wait till you get to the Singapore lounge and good free WiFi.')


This has prompted me to rethink about the fact that some many of the trends in tools for digital photographers are on-line, or as the first step an upload. (Google’s Autobackup and the Flickr’s Uploadr have been going frantic in the low band width. Dropbox has released it should just wait.) I’m quiet happy doing it the old fashion way, but I do carry a laptop that can be my place to upload and edit photos, Trying to access those on-line tools and subsription system are just a real hindrance, I'd rather spend my time wandering around on a pleasant evening.

In Search of Aurora Australis

 Last night had a high K index so I went out for a while looking for Aurora activity, but the ambient light of the city was probably too bright, the maximum activity was over New Zealand and probably I'm too far north anyway. Still I had a little fun doing some low light multi-stitch panoramas. This is a three photo vertarama, created with autostitch.

Looks like its back to the drawing board and a visible copyright icon on my flickr photostream.

PhotoFriday :: Paradise

Paradise  By Night

For PhotoFriday‘s topic Paradise

PhotoFriday :: Melbourne Lights Up

For PhotoFriday‘s topic Brightly Lit

Plenty of Cloud ...No Moon

A series of HDR photos in search of the full moonrise (not seen). The weather forcast for tomoorrow is no better.

   

PhotoFriday :: Nightfall

This week's theme gave me an excuse to practise for Tuesday's not-so-supermoon photowalk,

 more details on the MGA events page.

  For PhotoFriday‘s topic Nightfall

Be prepared for more Supermoon hype BUT….

Just a heads up to let you know there will be (yet another) supermoon next week this time over two nights for Melbourne, The term supermoon is not from astronomy it is more astrological. The event is real enough, the full moon corresponds with the closest point that the moon gets to the earth and it can give those interested the opportunity to get some nice photos, because the full moon will rise close to sunset.  Depending on the local atmospheric conditions this could produce a pleasing coloured moon against a richer sky. However there are a lot of myths about the name supermoon, (read this lifehacker post), so don’t expect the moon to be really large or much brighter and there are unlikely to be major catastrophes. If you haven’t witnessed a moonrise its happens surprisingly fast.

…it is a good excuse to photograph the moon

Having dismissed  the hype, photographing the moon can be fun because it is quiet a challenge for an automatic digital camera (as it also is with film based photography). The main problems comes when you rely on light meters, they average the illumination. However the moon is bright against a dark sky, so most often the moon will appear as a bright circle (or big white blob with flare) perhaps with a purple halo and no internal detail. Our eyes however can better handle the contrast and our brain adjusts to a more balanced illumination and we can usually make out at least some detail. The essence of photographing the moon is finding the right exposure to capture the detail of the shadows and craters. There is a lot of advice on photographing the moon on the net, some a little miss-guided but here is a good place to find additional advice.

For the Super moon (or any full moon) close to the horizon, my suggestion for a good starting point will be to use a tripod, set you camera to manual and use a long lens (or zoom in).  Even though this is a night photo try to keep the shutter speed high (1/100 to 1/500) because the moon moves fast. The aperture can be standard (ie around f8) although if you have a foreground subject you want to include and you have the long lens it might be wise to go to a small aperture (eg f22) to avoid depth of field issues taking the moon or the foreground out of focus. This really only leaves you the sensitivity to adjust to get the desire exposure and it will probably be in the range ISO 400 to 1000. Most modern digital cameras will go up to at least ISO 800. The ambient light of your position and view can make a couple of stops difference to the exposure so it is a good idea to take a test shot or two of the general scene you want to photograph just beforehand (remembering when the moon rises there will be a little extra light, ie slightly under exposed is ok). Finally if you are familiar with taking bracketed exposure, this is the perfect time to set your camera to take 3 (or 5) photos at a range of EV values (-2 to +2 is a good range if your camera allows this) that way you should get at least one good exposure.

The second common surprise most people get when they photography the moon is it always appears smaller than what they saw? This is particularly so if there is something in the foreground. This is really a function of the cameras focal length being a wider angle (ie 50mm for a DSLR). The solution here is easy use a telephoto lens 200mm or longer, or zoom in and stand further back from the object in the foreground.

The Flickr community team have suggested a series of Noctural and Lunar Global Photo Walks for September, and there has already been a focus of events that match up to the supermoon occurrences next Monday & Tuesday. In Melbourne the key times are shown in the table below

Date	Event	Time
Monday 8th. September	Moonrise	5:11 PM
	Sunset	6:03 PM
Tuesday 9th, September	Sunset	6:04 PM
	Moonrise	6:24 PM

Source: WillyWeather.com.au/Melbourne/Wheelers Hill

If you are in Melbourne, we have already had two widely hyped super moons this year, but Tuesday 9th September will be the last opportunity to photograph a super moon from location for the next decade. So cloud cover permitting why not join the flickr global photo walks group and/or a group starting at the Monash Gallery of Art at 6:00 pm, more details on the MGA events page. Even if it is cloudy there should be some good long exposure opportunities.

More Milky Way Mapping

This is quite a large segment of the milky way, now largely overhead. It covers from almost the northern horizon to well over head. Made of 5 photos combined with autostitch with auto straighten turned off. (The image below has it turned on)

Me!bourne By Night by Phone

I tried out a little experiment as I was in the city to go the princes theatre to see “The King & I” which was a great production. Anyway on the way the wet city streets begged to be photographed but I only had my phone. So I took a couple of  photos with HDR Camera+. Next as I waited for the train home I played the Pixlr app creative filters to make the image on the right and then I created a blog post, using a Blogger android app, expecting to be able to utilize the WiFi at the station. However after a lot of non action and spinner on the screen I eventually got a message that the server wasn’t available. However when I got home the photos where already on my Dropbox recent uploads, so dropbox worked just fine.

 

 

HDR Camera+ 2,  Dropbox 2,  Pixlr 1,  def Android/Google Blogger 0

ThePatch :: Real Estate Marketing

I’m not exactly the marketing type and estate agents leave me uneasy, so I figured this theme might be a real challenge for me. I did a bit of research of real estate ads in the paper and a then the little A4 posters in the agents windows. So their photos might in general be ordinary but a lot of effort had been put into the “over the top” descriptive headers. Rather than drive around and look for a specular house, I figure I should photograph my place (not for sale by the way) but perhaps in an “over the top” way like the agents descriptions. A long exposure night shot seemed to hit the spot after a tweak or two in perfect effects not sure I’m so good on the real estate speak headline itself.
 

On the road to Makkah

The pilgrim coaches are still working after dusk on the road to Makkah, ferrying the flow of pilgrims to and from their holy place.

Under the Southern Cross

The dark skies allowed a great views of the milky way. the southern cross is high on the right hand image. This joiner style collage was created with Picasa.

Sanity Returns

The main street of Cowes, returns to quieter times. A balmy evening and even the air smells fresher.