I woke up yesterday, Friday morning, at 6AM to go to work. I was excited all day, because this would be my first Joshua Tree all nighter with my oldest daughter, (12 years).
I got home from work at 5PM, and my daughter and I started to pack up the car. We planned to leave Orange County at 9PM, to avoid Coachella traffic and also arrive at Joshua Tree at 11:30pm. We did just that. Traffic was smooth and light.
The night would be the first time I would get to really put my Fuji X-T2 and iOptron sky tracker to work. I had my iOptron all of last year, buy even my Canon 6D and Rokinon 24mm F/1.4 were too heavy for it. I could only get 30ish second exposures and then star trailing because the weight would pull the motor faster on the iOptron. Last year was frustrating in that sense.
What a giganticly huge different the X-T2 and lens weight reduction has yielded. I can now easily get 4 min exposures with pin point stars...as seen in this image. I imagine I could go longer if I wanted, but 4 mins was the longest I tried.
We ended up leaving the park at 6AM this morning. We went straight to my other daughter's soccer game at 9AM. After the game, I crashed for 3 hours, woke up and worked on this edit.
FujiFilm X-T2
Sky = Single exposure and tracked, Rokinon 21mm F/1.4 @ F/2, ISO 800, 4 mins
Earth = Single exposure, Rokinon 12mm F/2 @ F/8, ISO 400, 60 secs.
