Some recent astrophotos

[CauseISaidSo]

Sorry, when I said “IR remotes” I meant the pre-programmed or generic TV/audio/visual equipment remotes. From your and orionid’s descriptions, it sounds like the Nikon remote is just a pure IR pulse, in which case if the magnesium shavings happened to generate that frequency of IR, it likely would’ve triggered.

[Yugoboy]

Well… night doesn’t come fast enough where I am. When I left college tonight it was still sunsetting… it’s an hour drive, so I knew I’d get a chance, I just didn’t realize that chance was going to be too close to too much traffic.

Of the three astro-shots I got, this one’s the best. The blurry things in the upper right are clouds. The shot was at 30 seconds. At lower left you can see vignetting as I forgot to take my Cokin ring off when I went full 28 mm.

While I was there, I figured I’d get a few shots of the Thruway. I’ve never tried night photography before. I was too chicken to spend the money when I was using film. I didn’t have enough cash to experiment. Digital’s awesome that way. Here’s one of the interesting ones I took from an overpass (probably should have focused on the speed sign):

I’m gonna keep trying. We’re past the summer solstice, so soon enough I’ll get the chance to got some neat night sky shots. For now, I’m enjoying the night photography.

Doing this shot caused a guy to stop and ask me to shoot his house and he’d buy the pictures. I did about 30 or so shots, some with and some without my star filter. I’ll share those later, but what should I charge?

[chupathingie]

Whatever you can! 😉

Was it a nice house? (I’m curious what those here with more experience selling images have to say…I was gonna start at double whatever the cost of printing was…)

[chupathingie]

Nice pics, BTW… I recognize that first shot… my first ever sky pic was the big dipper. Point some fast glass south towards Scorpio/Sagittarius and you can fairly easily catch some dust lanes between us and the center of the galaxy.

[Yugoboy]

Whatever you can! 😉

Was it a nice house? (I’m curious what those here with more experience selling images have to say…I was gonna start at double whatever the cost of printing was…)

It’s a very nice house. Directly to the right of the image above. They’ve got riverfront property and the Cadillac SUV in the driveway… and an automated sprinkler system I had to work around (but that actually made some of the stars more vibrant as the water passed in front of a light source during the shot.)

The last time I sold an image I was in high school. I shot a salon owner’s car at a car show. Double printing’s what I charged. That was like 25 years ago or so, so I’m not sure about now.

[Kestrana]

I think that depends on what exactly he wants. If he wants prints or framed prints obviously it will be more. Maybe a quick google search will turn up rates of comparable services to give you a baseline for photography services in the area. We charged $100 for a friend’s justice of the peace wedding that took about 20 minutes of time.

[caradoc]

OK… here’s a project for the builders here… can you build a remote with a dollar-store universal remote?

Probably. But why bother? IR remotes are dirt cheap.

Nikon: http://www.dealextreme.com/p/ml-l3-wireless-ir-remote-control-for-nikon-d90-d80-d70-more-45428

Canon: http://www.dealextreme.com/p/jianisi-digital-slr-remote-for-canon-5577

Universal: http://www.dealextreme.com/p/wireless-ir-remote-control-for-sony-canon-nikon-olympus-pentax-1-cr2025-50684

Dunno about you, but my time’s worth more than it would take to build an IR remote for the camera.

Building a lightning trigger cost me about $40 in parts and an hour or two of soldering and debugging – retail for one is $150-$300, depending.

Building a remote IR trigger would cost me about $10 in parts and more than a few hours decoding and replicating the PCM signaling.

[ravnostic]

caradoc, I think at some point you provided a link for a home made lightning trigger? Or some of us were going to commission you to make some for us (though now with the baby that may no longer be possible.) I’m still interested in either.

Re Yugoboy‘s night shots; I like. I’ve had a most glorious 4 days off, and got several night scenes myself, but nothing astro (I suppose I could have gotten a few last night had I been willing to drive to dark skies.) I did, however, get a nice set from which I’d like to share a couple. I think I’ve posted several shots at various times incorporating the cell tower located in my complex. Over the past few weeks, ‘linemen’ have been there at all hours of the day and night, doing I don’t know what. Last night at (checks exif data) at 12:30am and again at 3:00am, they were up there again.

My difficulty is my fastest zoom lens is only f/4.5, so I needed long exposures, making the linemen hard to show up clearly. The first is 1.6 seconds, the next 1 second, both ISO 800. Cropped images, but elsewise as-is from the camera settings I normally use.

[Farktographer]

I’ll throw one of mine in here, too. I grabbed this shot in Yosemite while hiking this 4th of July weekend. I forgot my remote at home, so I couldn’t do my 30-minute exposures…I was pretty pissed about that.

[chupathingie]

I think I’ve posted several shots at various times incorporating the cell tower located in my complex.

That right there is part of the reason I wind up awake at odd hours… I’m the other end of whatever they happen to be trying to install. Pays the bills, but doesn’t leave much spare time. I wish they could do that during the day, but deep nights is the only time we can shut things down without the public seeing their service drop.

Farktographer, man, thatsalottastars! I can’t even tell which way you were pointed. I’ve never tried exposures beyond 5 minutes with a DSLR, things just get far too noisy. How long was that exposure and at what ISO? Looks to be pretty high, judging by the thermal noise in the full-size image…

[Farktographer]

Yugo – No idea what I’d charge, but if you’re printing large versions for him, I’m guessing you could get $50 at least. Don’t know if that’s lowballing or anything though.

Rav – that first photo is amazing!

Chupa – ISO is at 1600…I was playing with my f/1.4 lens, but it’s fixed at 50mm so I couldn’t go for longer exposures than about 10 seconds without getting noticeable trailing. The noise looks worse because I had to boost brightness and exposure in post-processing to get the stars to actually shine through. But yeah, the stars out there were phenomenal – we were laying in our bags and trying to find the north star, but it was an issue to even find the big dipper hiding in the middle of all those millions of other stars. Saw some satellites out there, too.

[caradoc]

caradoc, I think at some point you provided a link for a home made lightning trigger? Or some of us were going to commission you to make some for us (though now with the baby that may no longer be possible.) I’m still interested in either.

Linky for trigger schematics, etc.

You can find an “inexpensive” trigger pre-built here:

http://www.aeophoto.com/

…and the more expensive “original” version here:

http://lightningtrigger.com/

[ravnostic]

Rav – that first photo is amazing!

TYVM. I like the series as a whole (I have some 25 good ones from different times and dates).

YugoI think it depends on whether he wants prints, or just the files. But as to how much for your time, I’d suggest $75 per hour, $25 minimum, and then add in printing if he’s looking for you to take care of that aspect (and factor in your time, there, too.) YMMV–but skillz should be paid for.

[chupathingie]

skillz should be paid for.

So much THIS. Anyone who makes a living doing things that most don’t know how to understands this.

And yeah, Farktographer, stretching levels will really enhance the noise floor. It’s a no-brainer over why digital astrophotographers stack images as a default method. Gotta say, tho, even with all the noise, reduction still leaves an impressive image. Gawd, thatsalottastars…

[Plamadude30k]

Nicely done, Farktographer. I like how the trees ground the photo–I find you really need something interesting in the foreground in wide field astrophotography to really make a good image. Even just a few trees can improve it greatly.

[Author]

Posts