A Speck in Space
A Speck in Space
Speck in Space
WideField Astro
All I need is My DSLR Camera, smart phone, Tripod and a Flask of coffee. I personally like to take full wide Angle of the sky with a feature in the foreground, such as an old building, trees etc. I have found this a challenge, especially when you have an idea for a picture, but you need to gain permission to go on private land at night to take the picture. There is also the challenge of cloud and moon light pollution to tackle. This limits your opportunities.
I have several national trust places that I have asked for permission and have had either no reply or a direct no. I also had one place that I e-mailed with some examples of my pictures asking to take some nightscapes with there building in the forground. Instead of replying they now have a picture on there website showing the historic building silhouetted
against the star lit background. Unfortunately you just have to accept it and come up with another idea.
Sometimes you can just get lucky and be in the right place at the right time with you Camera. There are also times when i have a good idea, that some times turns out to be a not so good idea.
Me and my family went to Fuerteventura this year for a holiday. Stayed in a hotel in Correlejo. Lovely and hot. So day 3 of the holday I decide to look at the Dark Sky Map (App on my phone) of the island and I could see that The National Park was rather dark. I worked out the distance to the dark area via google maps and it worked out to be a half hour walk. Mmm not to bad, I thought I will take my camera, tripod and wonder out to that location and take some pictures of the Milkyway.
Sound easy enough. My 13 year old lad "Bobby" decided to join me. we grabbed a couple of bottles of drink and some snacks and started to walk out of town to wards the national park. the time was about 9:00 and it was dusk, easy we could see where we were going even though we were walking through sand dunes and rocks in one state line.
We came to a point that was miles from anywhere. The sun had gone down and the moon was on the horizon ready to set as well and stars began to become more apparent.
Bobby and me lay back on the sand and watch as the Milkyway becomes more and more obvious. Once the moon had set completely there were so many stars I could only just make out the usual constellations. I sat for a while in ore of its beauty and pointed out Mars and Saturn to Bobby.
Now my eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness I set the camera up on the tripod. Pointed at the milky way, and started to take pictures.
This is the result of 10, 30 second exposures. All at ISO 1600 10 dark frames and 10 light frames all stacked. I was well pleased with the result
I down loaded one exposure to my phone and sent it to a group chat on facebook that I have with 3 of my pals. Just so they could laugh at my madness of walking out in the desert just to get a picture of the Milkyway.
Decided to head back to the hotel, but had not really taken into account that it was now very dark and the terrain is not flat and has several rocks. So what took a little over half an hour to walk to, took over an hour to get back. But on the positive side it was good father and son bonding time and a great result with my image.
The Great thing about the Canon EOS 1300D is that I can connect to my Phone through WIFI. This then gives me control of the camera with out vibration. Ideal for Wifefield Astrophotography.
I am able to adjust the exposure time, ISO settings and the Aperture. I can also use live view and look at the exposures.
I can also down load the exposures to my phone.
The hardest part of Widefield is getting a good focus. you can use small Bahtinov Masks for this or take an exposure and make small adjustment take an exposure until your happy.
Once I had found focus I marked my lens so I can get it right every time.