Opinions on exposure length for meteor showers

[ericxbenedetti]

I'm hoping to get out and shoot the orionids tomorrow night/Thursday morning and was hoping to get some opinions on shooting meteors. I'm going to be using my Nikon D600 with rokinon 24mm f1.4 lens on my iOptron Skytracker so total exposure length up to 3 minutes won't be a problem. What is better for meteors, shorter exposure lengths of 30 seconds or so or longer 1+ minute exposures?

I shot the perseids this year and didn't capture nearly as many meteors as I'd hoped to, but this rokinon is an amazing lens and should do a lot better. I know these meteors are very fast so is it better to just use shorter exposures so they don't get washed out with light accumulated in longer exposures?

[abodee2]

if you're tracking and it's on point i'm guessing you could easily go for a couple minutes exposure time. It shouldn't really wash out any meteors if that's your exposure time and that should be long enough to catch 'em. I THINK It would certainly still work fine if you took multiple 30s - 1 min exposures, but you might miss out on catching a few in one frame. If you've got an intervalometer then that would come in really handy here as you can just set it up to take X number of shots right after one another and you're bound to get something! Personally I'd go for maybe 1.5 - 2 minute exposure times if possible, more chance of catching a couple in one shot. 

Hopefully someone with a bit more experience with this will come along to help! Good luck

[ericxbenedetti]

Ya, I've got no problem going up to 3 minutes with the Skytracker and this wide angle lens. I'll probably just give both a try and see what happens. Previously I had tried long exposures of more than a minute and found I didn't capture meteors that streaked early in the exposure. I'm just not sure if that was a result of the lens or the exposure, that was with a 16mm f2.8, this 24mm f1.4 collects so much more light it's jncredible.

[skybadger]

My experience of using the wide angle lenses for this is that after 30s or so, the frame is beginning to turn red due to sky background. If you have a real dark sky then 3mins will be fine. If not, lie me you will need to o for shorter to prevent washout. Mine aren't even that bad.

Mike

[jambouk]

With a wide angled lens it is hard to pick any but the brightest up; exposure length isn't the issue as most eill only last a second or two, it is simply most aren't very bright and don't stay in one place for very long so the number of photons hitting the sensor is very few.

James