Second attempts and lessons learned

Before leaving Bali for Singapore, I wanted to have another go and take some more shots from the beach. It's a couple of days since the full Moon and so the moonrise time was later in the evening, providing a nice window after sunset and before moonrise when the skies would hopefully be darkest.

I'm sure that ideally, you'd want a moonless night and have a good few hours after sunset and before sunrise, but I'm not worrying too much about that now. It's nice to see that astrophotography isn't difficult even in less-than-perfect conditions.

So, off we went to find a nice dark bit of beach to shoot from. The tide was out and we'd just sat and watched the last of the pastel sunset colours drain from the evening sky to the west, over the Indian ocean. Together with the warmth of a Balinese summer and a refreshing sea breeze you so often have in Bali, it was a beautiful evening.

I picked a spot away from the resorts, although it's impossible not to have some bright lights around in this location. We were just north of Denpasar airport, the runway of which juts out over the ocean, providing a great view of airliners coming in to land on the island.

It was at this point I learned a valuable lesson when preparing for shooting the skies - check your equipment before you leave your house! (or in my case, hotel room). I'd gone and left the tripod mount in my room which would make taking 30 second exposures pretty challenging.... back off to the hotel room I went to collect the offending square of plastic.

As it turned out, it was probably a good thing I was another 30 minutes before taking shots. The sky was noticeably darker and the Moon still wasn't up in the east, both of which are good things when it comes to astrophotography!

I tried a few shots in portrait and landscape, the best of which is shown below. The light pollution adds a ncie colouring effect to the lower part of the picture, and there are some light trails from a town off in the distance - I assume this is a spotlight of some sort. You can also see the fire-like trail of an airliner coming in to land during the exposure.

Second night at Kuta - getting out before moonrise helped.

As you can see, you can just about make out the Milky Way. I'd planned it a little better this time and figured out exactly where it would be setting. I set up my camera to point in the right direction using both a compass and using the star constellations that my sky map showed fell within the Milky Way. A great skymap is available at http://www.skymaps.com/skymaps/ - you need to choose the one suitable for your region.

Example Skymap from skymaps.com

I was on a west facing beach, with the airport to the south of me, so I knew from the skymap (shown above) the Milky Way (the blue area on the skymap) should be just a few degrees west of south. Being from the UK, I'm not familiar with these star constellations, but I could see the Crux would be a perfect marker and it's easy to identify in the sky. I was easily able to find that in the sky to the south, and I used it to aim my shot.

I think the better preparation and planning paid off, and is evident in the better quality photo compared to my first attempts.

Next, I plan to wait for some moonless nights in Singapore in a couple of weeks time, and try taking some shots over famous Singaporean landmarks.

Hello!

I've been interested in photography for a while, but never really spent the time to learn the difference between an f-stop and a banana. I suppose what I have learned over time, is what I'm interested in taking pictures of, which is a good start.

I've always enjoyed taking in natural scenes - landscapes. I love being out in nature, away from it all and so naturally I'd take lots of photos of landscapes. Unfortunately, just taking pictures of landscapes is a bit boring. There's no subject and all you have is background. I quickly learned you need something in the shot to draw the eye.

Another passion of mine is astronomy. The magnitude, beauty and unknowns of space and the universe fascinates me, and so I saw an opportunity to combine these two interests in photography.

So, the most obvious thing to try and take pictures of in the night sky (except maybe for the Moon) is the Milky Way (that's our own Galaxy for those who don't know. Now you do!). The other thing people often take photos of are star trails - that is done by doing a very long exposure so the movement of the stars is captured as a line - hence you see their 'trail' across the sky. Star trails don't much interest me though, I'm more for trying to get the Milky Way against some cool scenes.

Having never tried this before, I wanted to just give it a shot with some basic 'default' camera settings which I'd found via Google. My camera is a Canon 70D with a stock 18-135mm lens and tripod. The settings I used were 6400 ISO, 30s exposure and the lowest possible f number (3.5 for my lens). I was in Bali on holiday from Singapore, and gave it a shot. Unfortunately I was there during a full moon, but the photos turned out OK considering. A full Moon is bad because it adds a lot more light, so you want to avoid them if possible, especially when taking photos of places which already have a lot of light pollution.

My first astro-photo at Kuta beach, Bali.

The first photo which you can see above is aimed at Mars and Saturn which were visible. I took a couple of shots with the horizon in view, but missed where the Milky Way was setting against the horizon.

I had checked a star map beforehand (http://www.skymaps.com/skymaps/tesme1408.pdf), and next time will print and bring it along with me. I knew the Milky way went across the zenith (straight up) and so I tried a few shots pointing the camera straight up to capture it.

Pointing the camera straight up, the Milky Way.

As you can see, I managed to capture it, which I was happy with. Considering the full moon, and light pollution around Kuta, I could still capture the Milky Way with a pretty standard camera and lens. 

I was very happy with these as first time shots, and it gives me confidence to try and get some better ones (with better planning) in future.

One thing I haven't mentioned and will do a separate post on, is that these shots required a lot of post processing in Adobe Lightroom to bring out the stars. The shot 'on camera' looks completely over exposed and you can see nothing without processing. I'm also using RAW format so this data doesn't get lost from the camera saving as JPG.

This is what the picture looked like before processing.
The one pointing straight up was pure white with no detail visible.