I don't see that I shared this before. We were guests at one of SpaceX's launches last year. The Falcon 9 first stage was from an earlier launch that had been recovered and this was the first time they attempted (successfully) to reuse a recovered first stage.
The photo was taken from about 3.4 miles (5.4 km) away using the Sigma 150-600 Sport and the Sony A7Rii. I spent a lot of time fine-tuning the manual focus before the launch. If you were to look at the full size mage and zoomed in, the detail is pretty amazing, although there is definitely some atmospheric distortion from that distance.
I also took another photo, included below, using a wide angle, before the launch. This was to give some perspective of how far away the Falcon 9 was. Of course it is exaggerated a bit because of the wide angle, but I think you will agree that the Sigma and Sony combo did an amazing job.
The Falcon 9 is located at the far right in the wide-angle image, behind the lake, at the horizon. The little horizontal building to the right of it is the SpaceX vehicle assembly building, shown in the third photo below, a little closer at about 3.1 miles (5 km) away, using the Sigma and Sony combo. That is the Atlantic Ocean behind it.
Fourth image is 33 seconds after the first image. The fifth image is a crop of the fourth to show the detail at probably about 6 miles distant (based on a SWAG using the height of the rocket at launch time versus height of rocket in the sky, at same focal length)..
The light rays are real. It was an amazing morning. I was driving back from a different location that I shot blue hour at. Then I came across this field with fog and quickly parked and raced to this tree. I waited for the light to burst through and man it didn't disappoint.
The light rays are real. It was an amazing morning. I was driving back from a different location that I shot blue hour at. Then I came across this field with fog and quickly parked and raced to this tree. I waited for the light to burst through and man it didn't disappoint.
, well done!
