Took a little stroll tonight with the D7000 and Nikkor 28mm f/3.5 H Auto (Ai converted). Shot in RAW, a little shadow recovery in NX2 and cropped to 5:4. I can't see much ghosting here, just the sun stars (not unexpected at f/8, could have gone for a wider aperture, but might have struggled for depth of field). I had a UV filter on the lens as well.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Not Bad For a 40-year Old ;-)
Took a little stroll tonight with the D7000 and Nikkor 28mm f/3.5 H Auto (Ai converted). Shot in RAW, a little shadow recovery in NX2 and cropped to 5:4. I can't see much ghosting here, just the sun stars (not unexpected at f/8, could have gone for a wider aperture, but might have struggled for depth of field). I had a UV filter on the lens as well.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Just Out of Curiousity...
...I timed the 30s shutter speed on my D3, and the mirror flips back down after 31.6 or 31.7 seconds, which explains the strange behaviour of the intervalometer.
Doesn't explain why 30 seconds isn't 30 seconds though.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Nikon Interval Timer
I find Nikon's intervalometer in their D3 and D7000 cameras to be a bit peculiar. It's pretty obvious that if you set an interval shorter than your intended shutter speed, the intervalometer will fail at the second exposure, since the shutter will still be open when the second frame should be fired. So, you can't for example, set a 1s interval and a 2s exposure. Nothing wrong with that.
But if you wanted to take a 30s exposure, you would think that setting a 31s interval would be fine, yes? No! In fact, even 32s doesn't work. For some bizarre reason, you have to set the interval at 33s, and then it will happily click away. I can't see the reason for this: I don't imagine that the shutter speed is inaccurate (although I haven't timed it), and I can't seeing if being a buffer/card writing issue on a camera like the D3 that shoots 9 frames per second (besides, there isn't a 3s delay between exposures anyway, more like less than 1s), but it works and does the job.
As I see exactly the same behaviour with the D7000 and D3, my assumption is that this is how it was designed to work.
Having finally figured this out, I now know that a D3 used like this with a fully charged EN-EL4a battery will take around 370 30 second exposures before the battery dies completely. Obviously this will vary a bit with temperature, but I guess you are looking at 2 to 3 hours of star trails under most UK conditions, which equates to around 30 to 45 degrees of rotation. It will be interesting to see what the D7000 can do, as I have an idea for a project that using this technique that the lighter D7000 will be better suited to and where external power won't be an option.
For now though I am going to concentrate on the D3, as I have an EH-6 mains power supply (a legacy from D2x days when you had to power that camera from the mains in order to clean the sensor), so there's the prospect of capturing some pretty spectacular star rotation.
But if you wanted to take a 30s exposure, you would think that setting a 31s interval would be fine, yes? No! In fact, even 32s doesn't work. For some bizarre reason, you have to set the interval at 33s, and then it will happily click away. I can't see the reason for this: I don't imagine that the shutter speed is inaccurate (although I haven't timed it), and I can't seeing if being a buffer/card writing issue on a camera like the D3 that shoots 9 frames per second (besides, there isn't a 3s delay between exposures anyway, more like less than 1s), but it works and does the job.
As I see exactly the same behaviour with the D7000 and D3, my assumption is that this is how it was designed to work.
Having finally figured this out, I now know that a D3 used like this with a fully charged EN-EL4a battery will take around 370 30 second exposures before the battery dies completely. Obviously this will vary a bit with temperature, but I guess you are looking at 2 to 3 hours of star trails under most UK conditions, which equates to around 30 to 45 degrees of rotation. It will be interesting to see what the D7000 can do, as I have an idea for a project that using this technique that the lighter D7000 will be better suited to and where external power won't be an option.
For now though I am going to concentrate on the D3, as I have an EH-6 mains power supply (a legacy from D2x days when you had to power that camera from the mains in order to clean the sensor), so there's the prospect of capturing some pretty spectacular star rotation.
Saturday, April 09, 2011
Slight Correction
First up, there was an error in the post below, of course the orange glow has nothing to do with moonset, it's just the result of light pollution from the surrounding towns and villages.
Also, as I've tried to go for longer sequences, I've hit the limit of the continuous shooting mode on the D3 i.e. 130 shots (100 on D7000). Given that the maximum shutter speed is 30s, we're limited to 50-65 minutes. It doesn't look like either cameras intervalometer helps either, as whilst at first glance it looks like you can set up to 999 exposures, that's not actually how it works... more on this and a possible solution shortly.
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