We headed home early due to the threat of a hail storm looming over the eastern edge of Calgary. Luckily the threat abated and the garden will be safe. The sun passed through some extremely dense clouds, however, and I just HAD to snap a panoramic together. I stitched them together with PTGui then processed the image further afterwards.
The final image is 13890×2574 pixels. If it were printed at 240dpi it would be about 58×11 inches. This is fine and dandy but I just wish I could display images like these like they’re supposed to be: in person. I’m getting closer and closer to pulling the trigger on purchasing a traditional 4×5 view camera and setting up a dark room. I really need to create some images that can make an impact in person to complement the images I share on the web.
I’ve been shooting with a Zeiss manual focus lens for almost a month now and I can safely say my manual focusing ability is getting better. I’ve previously had frustrations with auto-focus on wide angle lenses because I usually want to focus on a single point and doing that is tough. I either have to pick the point with the camera’s controls, or focus the center point and re-frame. Picking a focus point wastes valuable time and re-framing often leads to out of focus shots.
It takes me about a second, sometimes two, to get a shot in focus with the Zeiss. When I try to manually focus my Canon lenses it’s horrible. The focus rings have “slip-play” where I can move them slightly and the focus mechanism inside isn’t moving. There’s a gross grinding feeling of plastic-on-plastic, even on many of the higher end L lenses when I handle them in a store.
So overall I am VERY satisfied with my Zeiss 35mm F2 Distagon. I am no longer nervous to bring it for an event and I’m sure I will consistently get many good shots from this lens. After using it for a month I have to say again, it’s highly recommended.
Out of curiosity I daytripped to Kananaskis Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada. I was disappointed when I arrived to discover I forgot my 35mm at home and was left only with my 85mm. I decided to stick it out and see what I would come up with. I turned off at the first “tourist area” which turned out to be a popular kayaking/white-water-rafting spot. I walked along the creek and found some guys using body boards on the white water. I was thankful I had the 85mm with me and shot a few pictures of the guys trying to stay in a powerful eddy.
My manual focusing Zeiss 35mm Distagon F2 is turning out to be a serious winner in astrophotography compared against my Canon 85mm F1.8. The reason why is because the Zeiss has a true infinity focus stop. Most auto-focus cameras allow focusing past infinity so that when the camera’s searching for focus it doesn’t harshly slam against the infinity point. This makes focusing subjects at true infinity, such as the night sky, difficult.
This time around I didn’t bring the Scotch Mount out either because I’m sorting out some issues with it. It seems as though cranking it from it’s fully lowered position gives a sort of “double exposure” instead of a smooth continuous movement. It appears to require a 1/4 turn or so before it starts moving.
Without the mount, the 35mm’s field of view was much more forgiving for a moving sky than the 85mm’s. I had to shoot at 15 second exposures with the 85mm while I shot at 30 seconds with the 35mm. Even though I took twice as many exposures with the 85mm, thus theoretically having the same exposure, the 85mm couldn’t record all the detail. I think it didn’t help that it was virtually impossible for me to properly focus the 85mm because my 5D classic doesn’t have live-view and the screen is messed up.
So in the end, in my case, the Zeiss 35mm proved the winner for astrophotography, giving even more versatility to this awesome lens.
The weather has been rainy and stormy and I’ve been getting home late almost every evening. However, today I saw something I probably haven’t seen for 3 years: a rainbow. I took a snapshot of it.
I drove all the way to the Highway 21 and 564, about 40km east of Calgary in order to get away from the light pollution. I’m glad I did the results were worth it.
I first tried shooting with my Scotch mount. Unfortunately I didn’t put much effort into where it was aimed and took pictures of an uninteresting section of the sky.
Afterwards I re-aimed my camera at a section of the Milky Way and fired off as many 30 second frames as I could until my battery died. I only got 3 frames fired off but fortunately I got some half-decent results.
Clear skies are predicted for Calgary tonight according to the Calgary clear sky chart from cleardarksky.com. The humidity is supposed to be at 100% but the weather network doesn’t report rain overnight. Hopefully it will be rain free.
One problem with photographing the night sky is light pollution and Calgary has its share of it. This is a chart created using data from a Calgary light polution map from cleardarksky.com. You have to go pretty far from Calgary to get away from the light pollution.
Our acreage sits right on the border where it goes from red to orange so I’ll be driving East along the 564 until I reach the 21 and go about 10 minutes north from there. It’s a 30 minute drive each way for the promise of much better night time photography. I’ll give it a shot.
Alleyways in an urban setting always have interesting things to photograph and the damp surfaces in the alleyway between 7th and 8th Ave downtown Calgary made things very photogenic. It’s that dank, dirty atmosphere that I find in an alley that’s such a fascinating subject.
I’m really beginning to like this Zeiss 35mm lens. It hasn’t come off my camera since the second day after purchasing it. It’s the perfect walk-around lens.
When shooting for DeepSkyStacker you’re supposed to get the best results when you calibrate your camera. Unfortunately I didn’t calibrate my camera at all when I shot the night for the first time so out of curiosity I shot about 8 dark frames at ISO 1000, F2 and 2 minutes each. By the time I got to the 8th exposure my camera’s CCD was quite warm and you could see it in the images.
If you look at the right-hand side of the image, you’ll see a large red splotch developing and innumerable bright dots scattered about the image. Shooting these dark frames gives the software a reference point to subtract the hot pixels from the stacked image. I suspect that DeepSkyStacker may consider these hot points “stars” and it could mess up the registration of the stacked exposures, thus giving a good reason to shoot these dark frames.
I also shot about 35 flat frames. Here you can see a “Flat” frame taken, where I stretched two layers of a white t-shirt and shot on ISO 1000, F2 on Exposure mode. The camera metered for 10 second exposures. The purpose of shooting flat frames is to provide the software with a reference point to eliminate the vignetting around the edges.
This is a stack of about 35 flat frames. If you look carefully you’ll notice that the center of the vignette is not in the center of the frame. I don’t know if the lens’s vignette is off center or my method of shooting the flat frame was incorrect. Either way it looks like something I’ll have to figure out down the road.
So if you look at this image, you can see the CCD heating up on the right-hand side as well as the strong vignetting on the edges. Next time I shoot the night sky, I’ll be taking about 20 reference frames for flats and 20 reference frames for the darks so that the software can virtually eliminate both problems. The FAQ for DeepSkyStacker recommends that you stack not only your light frames, but your calibration frames as well for improved image quality. If you only include a few calibration frames it won’t be able to average out the noise and you’ll introduce even more sensor noise.
It’s been quite difficult finding documentation on exactly what Light, Flat, Dark and Dark Flat frames are. Light frames are the shots of the stars, the ones with an actual subject. Flat frames are shots of a smooth, evenly lit surface in order to accentuate the lens’s vignetting. This can be done with a soft-box (an aparatus placed over the lens) or with white cloth stretched over the lens hood. I haven’t figured out the exact difference between dark and dark flat frames, however, and will experiment with these the next time I shoot the night sky.
It’s been raining for a couple days now so my photos haven’t been plentiful, really. Here’s a shot of rain drops falling in to one of our rain barrels. At least the rain’s good for our vegetable garden. The lettuce is growing like mad under it.
