Some shots from down under

[Ludd]

I recently came back from a trip to NZ and Australia which gave me a chance to set up my Canon 1000D on a phto tripod and see how much light I could grab from the Milky Way before the trailing became a problem.

Here are some rather compressed versions of my favourite shots, some taken with the 18-55mm kit lens and the coalsack with a 50mm f1.4 lens.

[adamh]

Excellent, what sort of exposure time are we looking at? And how far out of the cities were you?

[Ludd]

These were, as I recall, all in the 15 to 30 second range (I can check, but they're all taken with a static tripod so trailing would have shown up over 30 seconds and I don't think I was using the bulb setting for these).

I was well away from any serious light pollution. The "Glenorchy" shot was taken at an almost deserted campground at the head of Lake Wakatipu and the light on the trees comes from the campsite reception. The other shots were taken from a dune near Uluru (Ayers Rock) and, although there were street lights in the nearby resort the air was so clear and clean that the sky was as dark as anything I've ever seen.

[Ludd]

I've just checked the EXIF data and the one with the trees was a 13s exposure while the chunky sagitarrius one was a full 30s. Coalsack was 15s. The other MW one was (wait for it!) 6s at ISO 1600 but with levels tweaked somewhat.

[Ludd]

I've just dug out some more of the many many shots I took of Australian skies in August and found this 8s shot at ISO 1600 through a 50mm f.18 lens stopped down to f2 on a Canon 1000D, levels tweaked to bring out the lovely thick lentil soup.

[Astrokev]

Nice pics! Wish we could get dark skies like that back ere in England.

[Ludd]

Indeedy. I guess even where we can escape from the worst light pollution we've still got a lot of moisture and haze and general airborne crud to contend with. If I didn't have to work another 25 years to get a paltry pension I'd think quite seriously about moving to NZ!

[smulx]

Wow, those are great shots

[neelam]

awesome pics