Wayne at Niches reminds us that we may have a good opportunity to see the Leonid meteor showers this weekend. Check out his post to find information on when and where to look, along with other interesting facts on comets and meteor showers.
I appreciate the heads up from both of you. I’m keeping an eye on the weather and ‘best viewing times.’
I’m curious if you have ever tried to photograph during a meteor shower? Is it possible with a long exposure to get some interesting shots or do they pass by too quickly in the low light to be noticable in the photo?
Peter – Wayne might be the one to ask as he’s probably tried more photography experiments. A friend has done time lapse shots of comets, but I don’t know if he’s ever done anything with meteor showers. I’ll ask and see what he has to say.
Peter – it’s a hit or miss affair. You have to hold the camera open for a reasonable period of time and then advance and reopen. Reasonable means long enough but not too long so as to accumulate enough ambient skylight as to white out the sky (or to whatever level you don’t like).
With the digital Nikon D70 (on a tripod, of course) and a workhorse 28-150 mm lens, I use the widest field of view (28 mm) and point it the camera to a likely portion of the sky. I set the ISO to a very high level to increase sensitivity. Time exposure is 30 seconds (after that I have to use “B”, and I don’t have a cable release, nor do I know if it’s safe for the internal CCD detector to be operating longer than 30 seconds). I open up the aperture to its lowest f/stop, 4.5. I set the noise reduction to “on” through the menu, which takes an additional 30 seconds after the 30 second exposure. And then I do it again and again, until the batteries run out. For the Li-ion batteries that the D70 uses, somewhere around a hundred repetitions are possible, which is pretty remarkable given that holding the shutter open requires power.
At 30 seconds the stars will be small curved streaks. But at the settings that maximize sensitivity (ISO, f/stop) a reasonably bright meteor that enters the field should be visible.
Wayne – Thanks for posting that info. I’ve just emailed it to Peter. I should really give night photography a more serious attempt in winter when I don’t have to contend with hordes of mosquitoes! (-:
Thanks Wayne (and Bev for pointing this out), I will have to adapt a little to my camera. I have a Canon S3 IS (and a wide angle lens) which only allows for 15 second exposures, so I’m not sure how that will work out. When I was in Ontario I found an amateur astronomers website, a fellow who uses the same camera I have and has posted some of his techniques too. Now if only I could find it again…
Peter – As soon as we start getting a few clear nights, I’ll probably do a couple of experiments with this Nikon too. We finally seem to be getting clear skies after weeks of heavy cloud cover.
November 17th, 2006 at 10:08 pm
I appreciate the heads up from both of you. I’m keeping an eye on the weather and ‘best viewing times.’
I’m curious if you have ever tried to photograph during a meteor shower? Is it possible with a long exposure to get some interesting shots or do they pass by too quickly in the low light to be noticable in the photo?
November 17th, 2006 at 10:13 pm
Peter – Wayne might be the one to ask as he’s probably tried more photography experiments. A friend has done time lapse shots of comets, but I don’t know if he’s ever done anything with meteor showers. I’ll ask and see what he has to say.
December 20th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
I missed this, what, 3 weeks ago – my bad.
Peter – it’s a hit or miss affair. You have to hold the camera open for a reasonable period of time and then advance and reopen. Reasonable means long enough but not too long so as to accumulate enough ambient skylight as to white out the sky (or to whatever level you don’t like).
With the digital Nikon D70 (on a tripod, of course) and a workhorse 28-150 mm lens, I use the widest field of view (28 mm) and point it the camera to a likely portion of the sky. I set the ISO to a very high level to increase sensitivity. Time exposure is 30 seconds (after that I have to use “B”, and I don’t have a cable release, nor do I know if it’s safe for the internal CCD detector to be operating longer than 30 seconds). I open up the aperture to its lowest f/stop, 4.5. I set the noise reduction to “on” through the menu, which takes an additional 30 seconds after the 30 second exposure. And then I do it again and again, until the batteries run out. For the Li-ion batteries that the D70 uses, somewhere around a hundred repetitions are possible, which is pretty remarkable given that holding the shutter open requires power.
At 30 seconds the stars will be small curved streaks. But at the settings that maximize sensitivity (ISO, f/stop) a reasonably bright meteor that enters the field should be visible.
December 22nd, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Wayne – Thanks for posting that info. I’ve just emailed it to Peter. I should really give night photography a more serious attempt in winter when I don’t have to contend with hordes of mosquitoes! (-:
December 30th, 2006 at 8:27 pm
Thanks Wayne (and Bev for pointing this out), I will have to adapt a little to my camera. I have a Canon S3 IS (and a wide angle lens) which only allows for 15 second exposures, so I’m not sure how that will work out. When I was in Ontario I found an amateur astronomers website, a fellow who uses the same camera I have and has posted some of his techniques too. Now if only I could find it again…
January 1st, 2007 at 1:35 pm
Peter – As soon as we start getting a few clear nights, I’ll probably do a couple of experiments with this Nikon too. We finally seem to be getting clear skies after weeks of heavy cloud cover.