Ducks. Nuts. <---See what I did there?

Nothing overly neat about this pic except that I thought the pano stitch job came out pretty well, and lent itself to being cropped down to a standard appearance. The entrance to the Kansas City Renaissance Festival site in Bonner Springs, Kansas. Selene and I went today, and I shot this as we were leaving.

Last night was my first attempt at some celestial (other than moon) photography. I shot them at 800 ISO with a 15 second exposure (max for the camera). I believe the aperture was 2.8 on all.


The Big Dipper (Ursa Major)


http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x...9/IMG_2336.jpg


The rest are not any particular constellations...just look for interesting areas or shots.


http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x...9/IMG_2360.jpg


http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x...9/IMG_2350.jpg


http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x...9/IMG_2353.jpg


http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x...9/IMG_2365.jpg

that"s pretty good. Your sensor has good noise reduction at that high ISO.

Do you have a dslr?

Glatt, no...it is not a DSLR...but I think it takes really nice photos. It's a Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. It's my first real camera as I am just starting out in this hobby.

I would like to have a more advanced camera to get more of the Milky Way. I have some of it in the background (photo 2...what appears to be smoke rising from the trees). I could try shooting at 1600 ISO (max for the camera), but it increases the noise. I might have to play around with the noise filtering on it when I try next time.

There is also something called stacking that I may experiment with. I have to do some research on it, but I gather that it is about taking multiple photos of the same area in succession (tripod a must) and combining them using software. I have a LOT to learn.

HLJ mentioned SF. - I've just been scanning in a few old (1987) transparencies

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l1...an_232_web.jpg

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l1...an_227_web.jpg

It looks just the same, except there might be a few more homeless people these days.

I did some more playing around with astrophotography last night. The skies didn't clear until around 10:30, but I was able to get a good number of images.

This first image is just a single image in a series of 14 I took in succession.



http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x...9/IMG_2394.jpg



This one is one I generated using DSS (Deep Sky Stacker) software by stacking all 14 images together.



http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x...secBiasjpg.jpg

That's a nice shot. I wish I can see that many stars where I am.

Tony and I walked the 5 mile loop around Valley Forge Park today. The deer have no fear in this park. I took this with my cell phone.

Have you ever noticed when your out and happen to see deer everything seems right with the world?

Maybe that isn't quite what I want to convey,because I am sure deer hunters would say the same thing.

Everything seems right except that you're at mile 4.5 out of 5, having beaten two major hills, and your feet are killing you and etc.

That's a feature of the park, the deer overwhelm it now and you can't fail to see them. At dusk they are especially active. At least you get a sense of what Washington's army ate in the winter.

Thanks Tulip. It helps being in a more suburban/rural setting with no light poles on our street to cast ambient light. Light pollution kills night photography.

I sometimes have a different feeling when they're running out in front of my motorcycle.