Perseid Meteor Shower

jsqueri

Anyone know about this? Last night was THE night, but tonight's supposed to be decent too.

I'm going to drive out of town to avoid some light pollution. I've got a d4o with an 18-70, 35 1.8, and a 105 2.8 macro. I've also got a tripod, nd filters, and a polarizer. Any suggetions for successfully capturing some flying space debris?

pathfinder

I have watched them several times, but never shot them so....

I would use a wide, fast lens on a tripod with a bulb setting of maybe 20-30 sec, and shoot frame after frame on a good heavy tripod.. I would use an ISO 800+ if possible, you may have to adjust higher or lower depending on how bright the meteors are. Avoiding light pollution will be very important as well.

If you just try to leave the shutter open for >30 seconds you will begin to get star trails, but you will also accumulate a lot of digital noise. Most star Trails are shot as multiple frames and then blended in the computer later.


I look forward to seeing some of these shots.

jsqueri

Thanks pathfinder. I'm just outside Philadelphia. I wonder if I'll be able to get far away enough to avoid the city lights.

Nikolai

pathfinder wrote:

I have watched them several times, but never shot them so....

I would use a wide, fast lens on a tripod with a bulb setting of maybe 20-30 sec, and shoot frame after frame on a good heavy tripod.. I would use an ISO 800+ if possible, you may have to adjust higher or lower depending on how bright the meteors are. Avoiding light pollution will be very important as well.

If you just try to leave the shutter open for >30 seconds you will begin to get star trails, but you will also accumulate a lot of digital noise. Most star Trails are shot as multiple frames and then blended in the computer later.


I look forward to seeing some of these shots.

Star trails become visible (i.e. streaks rather than dots) after 15 sec.

Take a few test frames with aperture around f/8 and 15sec to figure out what ISO level you need. Use the histogram to judge, not your eyes.

Set your camera on neutral jpeg (shooting raw doesn't pay in this case), nice tripod, wide angle, try to ensure the Polaris is in the frame, 15 sec exposure, Live View if you have it, no autopreview (you really wanna save as much juice as you can), set your camera to a continuous drive (frame rate doesn't matter) and use some "lockable" cable release (like ADIDT - $15 from ebay) to enter an endless shooting loop. Leave it like that for 2..4 hours.

jsqueri

Thanks for the pointers, but there was heavy cloud cover. Now if I can make a note of your suggestions and actually find that note a year from now I'll be in business.

Tim Kamppinen

I wish I would have shot this... I ended up watching it from a lawn chair in my friend's back yard, but I totally forgot to bring my camera with me. There were a couple really good ones that would have been awesome to capture.

Did anyone actually get any shots?

whiteagle

Last time my friend drug me out to shoot one of these at 2am and temps in the 30's we ended up not seeing anything. I haven't been too keen on heading back out, but wow are the pictures cool when you do get good stuff.

rainbow

So..... I am up in the High Sierras on August 11 with a group of sixty campers telling them about the Perseid meteor showers and every three minutes the heavens cooperate by sending a nice shooting star for them to ooo and ahhh at and making me look brilliant. So after sending them to bed, I take about twenty 30-second exposures (40D with at 10 mm, f/3.5) to capture a nice shooting star photo... And not a one appears during this time!

But not all was lost: an airplane crossed the sky and I got a capture of the Perseid Meteor Airplane...

BTW, 30 seconds was the duration because I did not bring my remote to keep the bulb open. The milky way is clearly visible. I was also pleased at the realistic sense of the billions of stars visible that overwhelm a first time camper who has only viewed the night sky from the city.