N is for Night
Night sky over Lake Huron | Nikon D800, 14-24 f/2.8 lens @ f/2.8, ISO 1600
Night photography is something I have been wanting to do more of. I got my first taste of it last year with my first photographs of the Milky Way. This year I plan to try again with the new moon’s in May and June. Last year I went when the Milky Way was rather vertical in the sky. This year it will be more of a horizontal expanse in May & June. It may require quite a bit of Red Bull and 5 Hour Energy to basically stay up all night, but I hope it will be worth the effort.
Truly stunning. I’m so impressed and grateful that you share your gift.
Awakening Dreams and Conquering Nightmares with a Pen
Blessings to you and yours, my dear.
Thank you Darla for the kind words.
Beautiful shot. Love the foreground green. Wish skies were darker around here to give it a try!
Thanks Howard. An area light created that green color. At first I was miffed the light was on, but it lent a little help to this scene.
I think the green light adds to it in some ways. Very surreal
I also need to spend a bit more time working on night scenes. First, I think they are cool to see and it will challenge me in my skills in this craft I so love. I’m an early to rise and early to bed sort of guy, which will be my biggest challenge. 🙂
You may have to invert your schedule to make it work Monte! 🙂
If I’ve got my numbers right, Mark, you shouldn’t have to stay up all night. Looks like the galactic core will rise sometime around 11:00 PM and remain visible until maybe 3:30 (mid-June)? And of course as the “season” progresses it will get even earlier. I’m hoping to catch some good opportunities again in late September in Utah. Lots of good dark sky there! Not so much here in the east…..
Well if I count travel time, it will be pretty close, night even stick around for sunrise since I am already there. 🙂
I bet Utah has plenty of dark sky opportunity, combined with rock forms, it’s a great combo.
I’d love to do some night time-lapse work.
I know a full frame camera works the best but I ordered a D500 to shoot some 4k UHD video so I’m hoping the better ISO sensitivity will help the images not be as noisy.
I hear Nikon may be going out with an upgrade to the D810 this year so maybe if the D500 doesn’t do as well as I hoped, I can keep that for wildlife and maybe invest in the D850 or whatever they will be calling it if it also shoots 4k video. If not, maybe I’ll pick up a used D810 just to do night time-lapse work.
The D500 is supposed to be released this month so hopefully I’m fairly high on the pre-order list that I get it before a trip to South Dakota the beginning of May!
I have seen some amazing time lapse of the Milky Way moving across the sky. Pretty cool stuff, but not sure I see myself going in that deep. If I didn’t have to travel nearly 2 hours to get to a good dark sky spot maybe that would change.
Sounds like you are going to be helping along the camera economy this year Kevin! 🙂
There’s not a lot of dark sky here in Iowa either.
There’s one spot over na hour away that is low for light pollution but not dark.
I love to go to Montana since I have some property about 38 miles from Yellowstone as the crow flies. So I know I can get some dark skies there.
Only reason I ordered a D500 was because a friends of mines daughter is getting married in July and wants me to do the wedding video.
I have several good video cameras but none are that great in low light.
The bride to be has stage four pancreatic cancer and the survival rate to five years is 1%. This is her third year. So how can I say no because she wants to see her wedding through my eyes.
The D500 will shoot 4k video plus work in very low light. So I’m hoping I can do something that bring tears to her eyes.
Otherwise I would have just picked up a D810 to do star time-lapse work.
So I picked up a D500, a Rhino Evo slider with MoCo and a bunch of other stuff to try and make her the best wedding video I can.
That’s why I’m hoping the D500 will do ok with star photography. I know the DX format is prone to more sensor noise since it’s cropped but I’m hoping they’ve really improved it in the D500.