Clear skies for the first time in what seems like weeks here in the Mid-Atlantic so I'm going to try my luck tonight. Michelle, you're fortunate to have an interesting foreground subject, so give it a shot! Only thing to my east is an ocean...
The ocean will be beautiful! Are you shooting your 24-70?? I thought about heading to an alpine lake to shoot, with a nice view of Sharkstooth Peak in the background. Decisions!
I am going to head out in a bit and try shooting a stack at a windmill a couple of miles east, just to re-remember how to do them.
Maybe I'll get lucky and catch a shooting star on my test run. And can therefore sleep in!
Let me know how your test run goes. I have my camera setup & programmed (I think, 5D3 is kinda new to me), shutter remote programmed, lens has been checked for infinity focus this afternoon (OM21/3.5)... Spotlight to try light painting foreground for a frame or so. Tripod. I'm sure I'm missing something. Guess I'll find out in a few.
If it weren't pouring here, I'd set my automatic-photo-taking-gizmo to take 15 second exposures (longer than that and you're going to get star trails, which you may not want). And have it take continuously until the battery ran out, or it got light, whichever came first. I'd start an hour or so before peak (or three hours before dawn, whichever came first).
I'd try ISO 3200; might need 6400 at that short exposure. A test exposure or two will tell.
I'd use my widest lens (16-35 f/2.8 II) at f/3.2. You'll be surprised how little of the sky even 24mm will get, and you want as much sky as possible.
The Milky Way makes a good background, if your FOV is wide enough.
Hope you guys had better luck than I did... just a couple of very faint captures. Never realized just how hard it is to escape all the light pollution!
Totally not worth it for the photos!! Someone was actually parked at the windmill, so I went for a solitary tree in a field. Glad I didn't drive further. I put one set of the photos into startrails to see if I missed seeing some asteroids on initial inspection... Nope.
On the equipment side, 5D3 and the new Satechi remote worked flawlessly together. OM21 seems adequate, though a 14 Samyang would have been better.
It was really cool staying out and watching the shooting stars, though. Definitely saw more shooting across the sky than the camera did, and it was truly lovely.
And now I'm finally getting warm again (mental note for next time: BRANDY). Wish I had some now, all I have is tequila and it's FAR too early for that!!
Nice work! I'd say that was well worth it. Agreed on the Samyang 14, I've been trying to pick one up on the B/S Board for a while without any luck. I only saw one really bright shooting star, and of course it was out of the FOV of my camera
I'm looking at the Geminids as an opportunity to photo a meteor shower. The conditions seem awfully good for it. Peak starts around 6:30PM, New Moon, and 5x the rate of the Leonids.
Totally not worth it for the photos!! Someone was actually parked at the windmill, so I went for a solitary tree in a field. Glad I didn't drive further. I put one set of the photos into startrails to see if I missed seeing some asteroids on initial inspection... Nope. 