Technical info | PK PERSPECTIVE

After rushing about like a plank on Friday trying to sort out a problem that had presented itself I was in less than a good mood. Going out to the middle of nowhere to freeze my butt off seemed like the best solution! It did the trick…

Star trails were always gonna happen

Sarah and I headed to Little Glenshee (not that far from my house) armed with tripods, cameras and as it turns out, not enough layers of clothing.

I was determined to shoot the stars as they appear in the sky instead of the usual long exposure star trails and there had been much Googling for advice as I could stomach beforehand.

Basic advice was to shoot at iso 1600 or more and for no more than 100 seconds as any longer starts to make trails in your stars.

Even on this exposure, the stars started to make a trail

After being a bit unwell I had cabin fever, so called Ian to request a photo shoot as it was a lovely bright day, but no, as his day went from bad to worse we didn’t get to enjoy the beautiful November Sun, instead we get the rather cold November night. Really should of put on at least 3 more layers and remembered the other one of my gloves. After listening to Ian for a change and taking in the info about star shots, I tried the offical way, thought it didn’t work well as it looked like daylight, so turned my ISO (well the cameras ISO, personally i don’t come with an ISO control!) down to 400 and shortened the shutter speed to about 2 mins. Found this worked a lot better and captured many stars and colours which you really don’t notice with the naked eye. And with the help of an app on Ian’s phone (1st app I’ve actually been impressed by) we managed to identify the constellations we could see, not that I remember any now. To finsih off before we froze over I turned down the ISO to 100, turned off the noise reduction and expanded the shutter speed to about 20 mins to take a star trail shot and got a great circle of stars in the moon bathed countryside.

Stars over the hills of Little Glen Shee

Star Trial over the Bridge

Perth firework show back in 2005

The 5th of November is approaching fast, and even though we still have hallowe’en to get past, it’s a date that I always look forward to. That hasn’t always been the case – it was only when I discovered my love of photography that the date became important to me.

Fireworks are a fantastic subject to shoot thanks to the their array of colours, effects and sizes but most importantly a spectular result is not a difficult thing to achieve. As long as you are in posession of a sturdy tripod and a camera that allows manual exposures (or even up to 30 seconds exposures) then you are in business. I would recommend that you use a shutter release cable to trigger your shots in order to stop camera shake when you press the button,however using the self timer on the camera will also work, but will limit your timing for the big explosions.

I tend to shoot in manual mode and arrive at my chosen location early in order to set up shop and take a few test images to check exposure times and aperture setting – always bearing in mind that the sky is about to get a whole lot brighter!

This year it looks like there will be four or five of us heading down to shoot together so keep an eye out for us on the bridge or somewhere close by.

Category Archives: Technical info

Little Glenshee in the Moonlight

Remember, remember…