We had a day trip planned for Bribie Island with my wife’s family, so I managed to throw the Tak mount, camera and a few lenses in the boot whilst no one was looking!
At the appointed hour, I suggested we drive to Banksia Beach where I was hoping for a wide view over the Glass House Mountains. The team agreed but to my consternation, the Sun was setting some 23 degrees S of the Glass House Mountains (we were last there in March at the Equinox!) and I had forgotten a ball and socket head to attach the camera to the mount for wide field shots. Just fitting the camera on the mount gave me badly tilted horizons, far, far worse than H0ughy’s! LOL!
Oh well, Plan B was executed which was a series of 400mm shots to be later combined in a mosaic. After fighting off the ferocious mosquitoes, I managed to salvage a few shots having polar aligned the Tak mount using a compass and home made altitude protractor. This was sufficient to allow me to shoot for 10 seconds at 400mm without any trailing.
There are 3 panes to the mosaic and I used Layers in Photoshop to enhance the back ground star field without blowing out the Moon, Venus & Jupiter.
Thanks for the nice comments everyone, they helped restore my confidence after a series of quite comical errors from hasty planning!
Here’s a list of what I forgot:
Ball & Socket head for camera wide fields so that I could orient the camera correctly.
Bubble level for levelling the tripod so I could index it with my polar aligned position at home. Fortunately, Mitre 10 at Bribie Island had a small unit in stock – phew!
Wooden pads for the tripod feet to prevent it sinking into the sand.
Other lessons learned:
Don’t spring last minute surprises when on a family outing. It might work the 1st time around, but it is far better to negotiate any modifications to the itinerary up front!
Remove the UV block filter from the lens to minimise ghosting (thanks Paul!).
Use your planetarium program to predict the horizon position of future events. Allow for the movement of Sun/Moon rise/set positions along the horizon between the Solstices and Equinoxes.
Wear an all over body net to thwart the blood thirsty ravages of Bribie mosquitoes and sand flies.
Update the polar alignment xls spreadsheet on my PDA to assist with indexing the polar alignment reticule once darkness has set in.
Have a running sheet which lists the type of shots you want and the equipment used for each configuration. It is much easier thinking of this in the peace and quiet of one’s study rather than on a strange beach, in the dark whilst being sucked dry by the local savages.
So, as you can see, a bit of luck was required to get the shot, not to mention the blood transfusion needed the next morning to replace what the thirsty critters drank.
Oh, and one final lesson – when all your planning and efforts fail, just enjoy the beautiful, visual spectacle!
Thanks Geoff and Alex – despite the various trials and tribulations, I was very pleased to get this result! I only wish that Ponders had mentioned the ghosting from front fit filters the day before the event! LOL!
Super work Dennis, bringing up the star field has worked very well.
Mike
Thanks Mike.
Yes – I was very surprised to pull up so many stars (10 secs, F5.6, ISO100) given the Moon’s propensity to wash things out! I guess it also illustrates how much “dimmer” even the over-exposed crescent Moon is compared to a 1st Qtr or Full Moon.
I used Levels and Curves to pull up the stars followed by Noel Carboni’s “Less Crunchy, More Fuzzy” action to soften them.
I then copied this modified image as a Layer into the original and simply used the Eraser Tool in CS3 to erase the over exposed Moon, Venus & Jupiter to let the original unprocessed Layer “peek” through the holes of the Layer with the more prominent star field.
Pretty amazing stuff, this Photoshop magic! It also helps to have the image quality of the Canon 400mm F5.6 contributing to the final result.
they are fabulous, so clear and a multitude of detail!!
