A night down at the Cape

[Mickoid]

I took this on Wednesday night down at Cape Schanck with an 18-55mm Canon kit lens. My intention was to use a Samyang 14mm to obtain a nice wide field of this rugged coastline under moonlight but I forgot to put it in the car! The only solution was to do a mosaic to roughly construct a field of view with the 18mm similar to what the 14mm would have made. The stitching of frames is rather tricky with a wide lens because of the distortions the lens produces to achieve a wide FOV. Each overlap was different top and bottom so there was some stretching involved in Photoshop Layers to scale and align the stars as best I could. Adding to the difficulty, the lens produced varying colour casts which were hard to match at the overlapping frames.

This photo is a blend of a 2 min exposure of the foreground and four frames tracked for 1 min with a Nano Tracker, both at 1600 iso, f 3.5, with a modded Canon 550d under a first quarter moon.

[John W]

Good shot Michael - you can clearly see the pointers and southern cross. Cheers, John W.

[Mickoid]

Thanks John, there was a strong onshore wind blowing which carried with it a fair bit of sea spray, reducing transparency. Along with the quarter moon, most of the fainter stars were difficult to see.

[Sunfish]

Well done. Great set up shot with lots of great colour and detail. Particularly when you made do with a kit lense.

I too accidentally left my Samyang 14mm at home on a trip down the coast on the clearest night ever. I tried the kit lense but wrong f ratio and focus was a nightmare .

You have done exceptionally. I don’t think I could salvage my night like that. Looks just like a fast 14 mm.

[Mickoid]

Thanks for your comments Ray. Quite a coincidence that your trip to the coast was associated with the same issue of forgetting the 14mm and having to use the 18-55mm Kit lens, a bit spooky even :scared2:. I had to remove some CA from some of the stars but it wasn't too bad considering it being a cheap lens. It's all about improvisation to overcome problems and make the most of what's available at the time. :thumbsup: