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GordonH

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    https://www.inthestillofthenight.space

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    Harrogate, North Yorkshire

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  1. Last Wednesday I went out with our local cycling club "Wheel Easy" and part of the ride took us up Norwood Lane which was a long gradual climb but was well worth it for the open space and panoramic views at the top. So, on Friday afternoon I headed out with all my camera gear, thermal clothing, camp bed, food and drink loaded on my trailer and cycled up there and spent the whole night shooting time lapse of the night sky. The moon was up which created some nice lighting effects and I was also rewarded with a nice sunset and sunrise the following morning. I had e-assist fitted on my ICE Adventure HD recumbent trike a few weeks ago and it certainly made the long uphill drags a lot easier when towing my trailer. The link below is to the full time lapse video including some sunset and sunrise pictures. It is best viewed in 4K on a big screen, hope you enjoy it Norwood lane time lapse
  2. On Friday March 25th I cycled up to Knabs Ridge wind farm on my ICE Adventure HD recumbent trike and Benpacker trailer (now my mode of transport for l my overnight time lase shoots) to shoot a night sky time lapse using the wind turbines as a foreground focal point. It is a long uphill drag all the way which was more noticeable towing a fully loaded trailer. I shot several time lapse sequences with my Sony A7iii and A7Sii cameras with Samyang 12mm f2.8 fisheye and 24mm f1.4 lenses and also a 360 degree time lapse with my Insta360 One X2 before heading back home the following morning. I had to set up in a lay by outside the farm as the only means of access was via a "quadruple padlocked" gate. Although there was frequent traffic on the road directly behind me it didn't cause any problems with lights. The clip at the link below is in full 4k, the actual night sky time lapse starts at 43seconds. I have also enclosed a single frame still from one of the sequences and a 360 degree star trail image taken with the Insta360 One3 X2 Knabs Ridge wind farm time lapse
  3. I heard that comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) was starting to fade so as the skies were forecast for clear last night I decided to have another crack at it while I can. I went to the same field as last week and shot a few time lapse clips of which I have selected a few stills as well. I was hoping for some Noctilucent Clouds (NLCs) like I had last week but last night was even better, this is only the second time I've seen them (last week was the first) and early this morning (about 2am) they put on a really good display (all included in the video clip). I have joined last nights data with that of last week. I was particularly pleased that I got the blue ion trail last night, I was using a higher ISO as the comet was quite a bit higher up so light pollution was less of a problem than last week. I used a Sony A7iii with a Samyang 85mm f1.4 using exposures of 6 seconds at f2.8 and ISO between 800 and 6400 and a Sony A7Sii with a Samyang 24mm f1.4 using exposures of 20 seconds at f2.8 and ISO between 800 and 1600. The video can be seen at the link below in 4K https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqBvk3s9klw
  4. Hi all I've managed to process the time lapse data that I shot of Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) last night in the field above Nidd Gorge close by where I live. I managed to get some Noctilucent Clouds (NLCs) as well which was nice. The only downside is that a small insect decided to land on my lens during the evening so there is a dark out of focus shape on some of the clips. This comet is visible to the naked eye but does show up better on camera. I have also enclosed a link to the full 4K version. The clips were shot with a Sony A7iii with a Samyang 85mm f1.4 with exposures of 5 seconds at f2.8 and ISO800 and a Sony A7Sii with a Samyang 24mm f1.4 with exposures of 10 seconds at f2.8 and ISO400 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vjWbaFWnUA
  5. Hi For those that have been interested in my astroimages and time lapse videos, I had a website called "Imaging the heavens" Unfortunately the hosting site has announced that they are "pulling the plug" on June 30th and will no longer be hosting any websites so I've been having a go over the last 4 days at building a new website using Wordpress and Elementor and have managed to get something up and running, it will have a new name but the theme is largely the same ie night and astrophotography. It is called "In the still of the night". It is largely finished now apart from a few tweaks or possibility of extra pages in the future. If you'd like to have a look at how far I've got so far it can be found at the link below. There was no ".com" available but I did get a ".space" which I thought was very apt https://www.inthestillofthenight.space Best wishes Gordon
  6. I have been working on a project for a while to try and link all my astrophotography together. I have now been taking pictures of the night sky in one way or another for the last 14 years. I started off taking pictures of deep sky objects (galaxies, nebulae and star clusters) with specialist cooled cameras, filters and telescopes on computerised tracking mounts. Since moving to Harrogate in North Yorkshire I have been doing time lapse, star trails and single shot nightscape images with off the shelf Sony mirrorless cameras. I have selected a variety of my deep sky images and incorporated them into a video along with time lapse clips and star trail pictures. To try and tie it all in together I have used single shot nightscape images and processed the deep sky images to zoom out from the nightscape image from the position that they are actually in the sky for the time that the image was taken, this took a fair bit of time to get just about right. The video is just over 26 minutes long and doesn't include every image or time lapse that I have done as it would double the length of the video. I chose clips and images that I have taken over the last decade. The music is all by a musician called Caleb Etheridge which was obtained from a website called "Artlist" where I'm a subscriber. The music was chosen for this video as all the titles of the tracks are in some way space or sky related. The deep sky images were all taken from my back yard in Hereford and the time lapse and star trail work was taken in the Brecon Beacons, Heargest Ridge and mainly in North Yorkshire and the Yorkshire Dales. The video can be seen at the link below in HD and 4K, please be patient as it may take a while for the HD and 4K versions to appear, it is a 14GB file https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVsby_6Mxnk
  7. I got mine from the States through a company called Dynamic Perceptions when I bought my motorised camera slider. You're right in that there are no UK suppliers but you can buy direct from the company that makes them Best wishes Gordon
  8. There are a few people who do single nightscape shots up here but I haven't seen anybody else doing all night time lapse sessions. Probably the reasons for this is 1. You need extra thermal gear to keep you warm for 12 hours or more, not just half an hour or so 2. Dew heaters are essential, there was a bloke at the same site for about 2 hours shooting nightscapes and the milky way and he didn't have dew heaters and he was wiping his lens every 5 minutes or so (not a good idea) 3. You need to make yourself as comfortable as possible, I use an inflatable bed roll on top of a ground sheet and I wear a down suit that is rated to -50c. 4. You need food and drink and finally 5. You need to be slightly unhinged to want to stay out all night in freezing temperatures More kit is needed for an overnight session such as this than say a two hour shoot, as I don't drive and I have very bad joints in my legs (arthritis, artificial knee) from years of high impact sports I can't carry all my kit any more so I invested in a hiking trailer which will carry up to 40kg of gear which is a real bonus as it will fit on a train and then I hike the rest of the way to where I do my shoot. It does take a bit of planning and a serious amount of dedication especially in the winter but the results are worth it Best wishes Gordon
  9. Hi Dave There were two people earlier in the evening till about 11pm taking single shots of the night sky but thankfully they left, while I encourage people to come out and do the same as me I wish people would learn about dark sky etiquette, both of them were turning on flashlights and camera phone lights every five minutes or so to see what they were doing which was annoying and thankfully it didn't spoil my clips. If they were at a star party such as Kelling they'd get thrown off the site;-) Apart from that and the noisy owls I was on my own for the whole night Best wishes Gordon
  10. Last night I went back to one of favourite haunts to shoot some time lapse, star trails, animated star rails and some nightscapes. It sounds like a lot but all of these are done from the same data. I got to Ribblehead station at about 2:30pm which left me plenty of time to have a cup of coffee at the Station Inn before setting off for the viaduct where I was based for the night. In all I shot 6 time lapse clips from which I also made a couple of animated star trails, star trail images and some single image nightscape shots. I was using a Sony A7Sii with a Samyang 12mm f2.8 fisheye lens and all the exposures were 40 seconds at f2.8 with ISO varying between 1000, 6400 and 8000. For the other clips I used my Sony A7iii with Samyang 24mm f1.4 and all exposures were 20 seconds at f1.4 and ISO 1000 and 6400. Even though the cameras aren't astro modified I found that on the one clip showing the milky way moving across the viaduct I could easily make out the North America Nebula as well as Andromeda galaxy which I thought was pretty good for a 20 second exposure. In all I took a total of about 2,600 images between 5:30pm and 5:30am. It was very clear with no wind during the night but very cold and frosty, during one of the clips you can actually see a puddle in the foreground icing over. From downloading all the data from my cameras to uploading to youtube took me about 6 hours. The video can be seen at the link below and it is available in HD and 4K (4K is much better) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OmT577aEwk
  11. This is my second entry to the competition, I hope I got it in time Last night I went back to one of favourite haunts to shoot some time lapse, star trails, animated star rails and some nightscapes. It sounds like a lot but all of these are done from the same data. I got to Ribblehead station at about 2:30pm which left me plenty of time to have a cup of coffee at the Station Inn before setting off for the viaduct where I was based for the night. In all I shot 6 time lapse clips from which I also made a couple of animated star trails, star trail images and some single image nightscape shots. I was using a Sony A7Sii with a Samyang 12mm f2.8 fisheye lens and all the exposures were 40 seconds at f2.8 with ISO varying between 1000, 6400 and 8000. For the other clips I used my Sony A7iii with Samyang 24mm f1.4 and all exposures were 20 seconds at f1.4 and ISO 1000 and 6400. Even though the cameras aren't astro modified I found that on the one clip showing the milky way moving across the viaduct I could easily make out the North America Nebula as well as Andromeda galaxy which I thought was pretty good for a 20 second exposure. In all I took a total of about 2,600 images between 5:30pm and 5:30am. It was very clear with no wind during the night but very cold and frosty, during one of the clips you can actually see a puddle in the foreground icing over. From downloading all the data from my cameras to uploading to youtube took me about 6 hours. The processing consisted of taking one RAW image from each clip, processing that in Lightroom and using the copy/paste function to transfer the processing workflow to all the images in each clip. The star trails/animated star trails were done with Starstax. Each clip was rendered to video using Premier Pro. The nighscape shots were from the clips and had a final tweak in Photoshop. When I had all the video clips, still frames, star trails and animated star trail clips I then rendered the whole lot to one video clip after adding music and title screens The video can be seen at the link below and it is available in HD and 4K (4K is much better) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OmT577aEwk Best wishes Gordon
  12. Hi Here is my entry which I shot last Sunday night/Monday morning, October 27th/28th. This was taken at Swinsty Reservoir in North Yorkshire about 10 miles from I live. It isn't the darkest of sites but I mainly wanted to get some reflections in the reservoir and some star trails. I started shooting at 8pm and finished about 6am. I had two cameras running throughout the night, a Sony A7iii with a Samyang 24mm f1.4 and a Sony A7Sii with a Samyang 12mm f2.8 fisheye. Both cameras were operated via wireless remote intervalometer. Altogether during the night I shot 4 time lapse clips with a total of over 2,500 images being taken. Exposures were all set to 20 seconds and both lenses set to f2.8. The ISO varied between ISO 1000 and 6400. During one of the clips a couple of cars pulled up on the road that bisects the reservoir and some people got out and started letting off fireworks which appear in one of the clips. All the images were taken in RAW format which were then batch processed per clip in Adobe Lightroom before exporting to jpeg. To create the animated star trails and star trail images some of the jpegs were then processed using Starstax. To create the final video all the jpegs were put together with some title screens and music and then rendered to video using Adobe Premier Pro. The link below is to the clip on my YouTube channel which is in HD and 4K (looks much better in 4K) Gordon Haynes
  13. I use Lightroom to batch process all the images (which are in RAW format to begin with), these are then exported to jpeg, I then use Starstax to create the files for an animated star trail video and also star trail images, I use Premier Pro for the video rendering and adding music, etc
  14. He had no right to, the car park and areas around the reservoir are open to the public 24 hours a day, I would have challenged him and asked him what law you were breaking
  15. You get occasional walkers with their dogs but they are usually gone by 10pm, the lights are from occasional cars that go to and from a house near by, any other faint flashes of light are from cars going across a road that bisects the reservoir about half a mile away
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