Starry Night

The last photo from another busy day. This one isn’t as spectacular as the thunderstorm photo from last night, but I’m still pretty pleased with it. Dorothy suggested that I go out and take some pictures, because the southern sky was so clear and the Milky Way was clearly visible. Well, clear is relative and this was clear if you are used to the east cost of North America, anyway. This was taken with settings similar to last night’s, with the ISO set to 640, f/3.5 and 30 seconds. The lens was a 10–20mm zoom, at 10mm, so a fairly wide angle (that’s equivalent to 16mm on an old 35mm camera, for anyone who actually remembers those). This picture was harder to deal with in terms of “noise.” If I reduced it enough to matter, I lost a lot of the detail in the Milky Way. So, here’s an even better reason to want a full frame SLR. And a trip to the dry, much clearer and darker parts of the country, preferably on the top of a mountain. Still, it’s the best Milky Way picture I’ve ever taken (though that’s not saying much).

A Very Different Sunrise

After the dark, deeply colored sunrise I took on July 28, today’s was very different. There wasn’t a lot of pink, orange, or red in the sky, just a little around the sun. But the clouds were quite pretty and nicely reflected in the water washing up on the beach. Also, after two days of 90°F plus heat, I woke up to about 70°F this morning. It warmed up later in the day but never really got above about 82°F. It was much less humid, as well. Beautiful.

Thunderstorm and Stars

After seeing the beautiful rainbow and then going out to take pictures of the receding storm over the ocean, I figured that was all the pictures I’d take for the day. I did go next door to snap a few pictures of my aunt and uncle and their family, a group of 18. As I came out from that, I was greeted with a beautiful sight. Even this photograph, which I think it pretty amazing, doesn’t capture the real beauty. The sky would be dark. Then, lightning in the clouds out to sea would light them up, sometimes just providing light to the clouds, other times accompanied by streaks of lightning between the clouds and the sea or horizontally between clouds. I set up my camera on a tripod and took a bunch of exposures at various settings. This one was ISO 800, f/3.5, 30 seconds. On the beach, you can see a family with flashlights walking from right to left. Then, the clouds, lit by multiple flashes of lightning. Above the clouds, stars.

Long exposures on a digital camera produces a lot of “noise.” The black areas of the picture were not black, but a mottled collection of colored blobs, small but of varying size. This is a time when a full-frame sensor makes a big difference, because they produce significantly less noise. Still, with the aid of a noise filter on my processing software, I’ve turned this into something usable. I’m pretty chuffed about this picture, to be honest.

Rainbow

Two more pictures for today. A little before 6:00 PM we all went outside to see a very full and then a full double rainbow across the eastern sky. As you can see, I was able to capture the entire length of it with my wide angle lens. Although you cannot quite make it out in this picture, in addition to the secondary rainbow, outside the first, we saw a supernumerary, extra arcs just inside the main rainbow. It was quite a show.

Thunderstorm Over The Atlantic

As the storm moved out to sea, the lightning didn’t abate. If anything, it got more frequent. I set up my camera on the railing of our deck and took some pictures of the clouds. By closing the aperture down and setting the ISO to 100, I was able to get long exposures times. This one was 25 seconds at f/22. That let me capture a few bolts of lightning in a single frame, which is pretty exciting. I like thunderstorms at most times but at the beach they really do tend to be spectacular.

Sunrise, Ocean Isle Beach

As is fairly common at the beach, there was a pretty sunrise this morning. Most of our house was still in bed, but my body rarely lets me sleep much past 6:00 (and sometimes not even that late). It’s one of the “benefits” of getting old, I guess. Anyway, I came down stairs and soon noticed a bit of color in the sky so I grabbed my camera and went out for a few photographs. The house we’re staying in has a room without air conditioning, which for those of use with cameras, is a nice thing. Going from a cold house to a warm, very humid beach is a good way to have your camera fog up. This is especially true first thing in the morning, and by the time you’re ready to take pictures, the light is gone. This sunrise color didn’t last very long but was particularly intense when I went out.