fire in the sky

[Ags]

Just playing with my 18-55 kit lens and a tripod in m back yard. Everything was shot at 23mm and F4.5. All single shots, slightly doctored in DPP to bring out the pretty orange glow in the trees (if you can't beat it, join it... :-)

[Ags]

I was just doing some sums. FL 23mm and F4.5 means an aperture of 5mm. If I had shot at 55mm at F5.6 I would have had an aperture of 10mm, exposing stars 4 times as fast with a darker sky background. With double the focal length, stars trail twice as fast so I would only have half the exposure, but the stars would be twice as bright. With a narrower view I can also frame better, excluding the urban buildings from the images when I want to.

I've also discovered color temperature in DPP, so now I can set the temperature to 3600 degrees and get non-orange trees. I'm not sure that is a good thing as it must bias my stars to blue...

[Ags]

If I had the 50mm F1.8 and shot at F2.5 I would have an aperture of 20mm, exposing stars 16 times as fast, or 8 times brighter after you account for reduced exposure time. I've got to get one of those...

[Parus major]

Excellent!

I like picture of these sort, they really capture the atmosphere of looking up into a cold night sky. I like the first one the best since you can see the roof.

[Ags]

I wish I could look up and see the sky like this. To me, these are pictures of the way things should be, or of how I remember the skies of my childhood.