Category: Super-wide Angle Photography

Moon, Clouds, Ring

Timothy Price10 Comments

Moon ƒ/5.6 at 15seconds

With an almost full moon and light cloud cover, there was a nice ring around the moon with the brighter stars visible through the clouds. Jupiter is shining bright at 1 o’clock, and Orion’s belt is barely visible between 3 and 4 o’clock. This series has three exposures take 3 minutes apart with a 17mm lens at ISO 400.

The first photo was taken at 7:27 pm MST (Mountain Standard Time) at ƒ/5.6 for 15 seconds. The clouds are slightly soft from their moving during the 15 second exposure.

The second photo was taken at 7:30 pm MST at ƒ/11 for 30 seconds. The clouds are softer, the moon appears smaller with a slight starburst.

The third photo was taken at 7:33 pm MST at ƒ/16 for 30 seconds. The moon appears to be even smaller, with a better defined starburst. More of the night sky comes through the clouds and if you look carefully, you will see the ghost of a contrail from a jet that flew below Jupiter and over the top of the moon during the exposure.

Moon ƒ/11 at 30seconds

Moon ƒ/16 at 30 seconds

Quadrantids Meteor Shower Fail

Timothy Price9 Comments

HeadingOutInCold

I got out my big tripod, got all bundled up, put on my 17-40mm super-wide angle lens, snapped a self portrait, and headed out into the sub-freezing temperatures to attempt to photograph the Quadrantids Meteor Shower last night starting at 9:30 pm, thinking I could get photos in the darkness before the moon came up at 11:00 pm. But when I got outside, I discovered there was a light cloud cover reflecting a lot of light off the city from the south, southeast. I followed the suggestions about how to photograph meteor showers on Spacedex.com’s Meteor Shower Guides, but it looks like I failed to capture anything but stars, planets and clouds. After an hour making exposures from different angles, I got pretty cold and went back inside. I woke up at 2:15 am, bundled up in the dark and went out the front door and tried some exposures from the front porch. The moon, at 65% full, was up to about 10 o’clock in the southeastern sky, so I made my exposures looking west and north. I got a nice shot of the Dig Dipper in the northern skies at 2:30 am, but again failed to get anything that looked like a meteors.

LookingStraightUp945pm
Looking straight up 9:45 pm
LookingStraightUp10pm
Looking straight up at 10:00 pm.
LookingEast1015pm
Looking East at 10:15 pm
LookingSouth1030pm
Looking South at 10:30 pm.
LookingWest225am
Looking West at 2:25 am.
LookingNorth230am
Looking North 2:30 am. The big dipper is in the center.

Leo Sez…

Timothy Price5 Comments

LeoSez

 

Leo is one of Tristan’s and David’s cats. Like Guildenstern, he’s a big cat with a tiny meow, has excess personality and always has a lot to say. He was also a good sport about me sticking my wide angel lens in his face, and making him look like a sad kitten, a mad cat, a seal and, his namesake, a lion.

 

LeoFace

 

LeoAnnoyed

 

LeoSeal

 

Leo

 

Two Flags Tuesday

Timothy PriceLeave a comment

 

Here are a few more photos from our trip to and from T or C last Friday. The flags were at a rest stop on I-25, and I took the sunset and view through the windshield of our Mazda Speed 3 from the back seat. We decided it was safer for Laurie to drive until dark, otherwise, I would have probably taken some of these photos while I was driving.

 

 

 

 

Ultra-Wide

Timothy Price11 Comments

My new 17-40mm ƒ/4 ultra-wide angle zoom lens was delivered this afternoon, so I tried it out downtown (and on the rib roast I picked up on the way home tonight — we are having standing rib roast instead of turkey for Thanksgiving). The lens is sharp and has good edge to edge detail, even wide open at slow shutter speeds. The photo of Liz in Patrician Designs was shot at 17mm, ƒ/4 at 1/20 sec at ISO 100. Liz is a little soft because she was laughing, but the sharpness and depth-of-field is impressive. I bumped up the ISO to 400 when I photographed Megumi in Cafe Giuseppe (1/30 at ƒ/4). I photographed the mutual life building at ƒ/11 and One Up at ƒ/7.1.  The rib roast was a little more work. I used two flashes, one on the camera, the other in my hand. At 17mm, I was about 3 inches from the roast, so I had to use manual focus, hold the camera with one hand, while aiming the flash with the other (I was too lazy to get out a tripod, which would have made doing the photo much easier). The exposure was 1/160 at ƒ/5.6 ISO 400.