Chairs Blog September 2024
Hi all, welcome to the Chairs Blog, I hope you enjoy this read and possibly gives you some encouragement to have a go at something out of the norm.
So August brought some clear skies at last, keeping an eye on the moon phases and how clear the sky was, resulted in myself popping to Reculver one evening, well it was actually at midnight, to have a try at getting the Milky Way. So armed with my tripod and a wide angle lens (14mm), I set up with my camera pointing in what I hoped was the correct direction (I used an app on my phone called Ephemeris) and including a small bit of the derelict building included in my image, I then sorted the settings for my image and took a test shot.
We’ll I could see the faint signs of what I came for, so adjusting a couple of the settings I started taking my images, I managed to get a set of about 30. I then turned around and had a go at star trails, this can be done on most clear nights, and it’s a matter of finding the North Star for your center point. By 2am I was on my way home to catch up on my sleep.
Loading the set of images into a stacking program on my computer and following advice from a YouTube clip I got a couple of reasonable results, as you can see.
I had another go a couple of weeks later, taking my photo mate (Janis) this time, and knowing the moon was going to drop out of view at about midnight. I had another go but didn’t get my settings as good as previously done; this time was not as good. Still practice makes perfect, I just need more practice. I think there is still one more chance to have another go, before the milky way drops to low for the UK to take decent images of it, I will be keeping an eye out for clear skies and a new moon.
Regards Gary.
