I have been wanting for some time to work on my slow-shutter skills (mad they are not) and so tonight I grabbed a few minutes, hauled the tripod and camera on to the porch, and gave some shots a try.
I’m definitely going to have to try this again, as it’s a lot of fun what appears when you slow the shutter WAY down, but I definitely suck it so far. Below is about the best I got, and given the moisture in the air, I’m surprised it’s that sharp at all.
Nikon D40 with a 18-55mm AF-S lens, 400 ISO, and the shutter held open for 30 seconds.
Big Dipper
Aperture setting? You’re going to need a nice deep field of focus for this shot. Max it out. Beyond f/11 fo sho. That lens is a limitation here, but you should be able to improve on this shot with additional effort. That said, I actually kinda like it as is.
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Also, is 30 seconds the max the D40 will do? If you’re on a tripod, you might try going hog wild with the time limit and dropping the ISO, too. I know my XTi has a “bulb” setting that will essentially take as long an exposure as you like….
That’s a great picture! Do you have a tripod? Shutter remote? Both are handy tools to have and when you have a longer shutter speed, good for getting a more clear picture. Huh, I guess I do remember a tiny tiny bit about the photograph course I took several years ago…
Shelleys blog: Meganisms
Niche: Aperture isn’t something that I’m very savvy with yet, so I don’t have a clue; I’d have to go look at the EXIF data to see what it set it as. I know it was small. I should probably toss on the bigger lens, as that’d give me a deeper field. I’ll have to try it…that and when the weather’s a bit clearer. I could kick myself for not taking some a week ago when the stars were brighter than the streetlights. C’est la vie…I think I’ll get plenty of opps this summer. Oh, and the shutter has a max of 30″ as far as I can see, but I’ll poke around with the options to see if I can hold it longer. I’d rather drop it to 200 and keep it open for a couple minutes. Well, hell…I’d really like to do a 10-15 minute exposure to get the “rotational” markings of the stars, but…we’ll see.
Shelley: Tripod, yes, picked one up the other day. Shutter remote, no, and the D40 accepts only a wired one, I think, and we don’t have one — yet. But it’s a good idea. To get clearer pictures when I was shooting like the houses and so forth, I was using the timer feature. That gives me 10 seconds to get away and let the camera stabilize before it opens the shutter. Poor man’s remote, I guess, but it worked.
I have a D40 and I use the infrared remote. The Nikon one works perfectly (including bulb mode) but is expensive. You can use a programmable cheap TV remote to get a similar result with some effort.
If you have a laptop and a USB cable you can use that as a remote to avoid camera shake.
When I did some star shots last weekend I found that a 5 minute exposure left too many trails. Didn’t really get anything that I liked, all too fuzzy and hard to focus.
Raymonds blog: DIYPhotobits.Com Camera Control 4.0 – Basic Bracketing
Very nice! We have way too much light pollution to to try anything cool like that.
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