Rodney Campbell's Blog

Lighting the Way

Unfortunately some pesky clouds were forming in the south during the night. This was and would cause havoc with my star trails images. You can see this with some broken trails in the bottom right of the star trails image in my previous post

So I returned to my camera early to retrieve it

Before leaving however – as the milky way was essentially almost completely vertical overhead…. I decided to try some vertical panoramas with my selected tree and the milky way

This is a five (5) frame vertical panorama. It starts with me on the southern (South Australia) side of the tree facing north (into Norther Territory :)). The moving progressively upward shooting the milky way as it streaks overhead. The top of the frame is actually facing south behind

So what you’re seeing here is the full 180˚ arc of the milky way from north to south overhead in a single flat vertical frame

Using my Novoflex multi row panorama rails makes this much much easier than my previous trip up north

In this instance I was using horizontal frames with the Samyang 14mm and 45˚ increments (8 click stops) with the pano rig

I have however noticed some artefacts of the joins between the frames in the sky. So next time I plan to use 10 click stops (36˚ increments) for more overlap between the frames (and more frames overall for stitching)

Switching to star trails exposures I set the camera running and left it to go and headed back to our nearby cosy campfire to wait

Swatting Circles

Note: These photographs (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger. To see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer click any of the images.

This image was taken whilst standing in the Northern Territory but facing across the border into South Australia

There was lots of scrubby bushes around which I didn’t want to include in my composition. So I had to get closer to this lone tree and point upwards from below to exclude everything else I didn’t want

As we’re heading so far north the southern celestial pole is moving lower in the sky. This makes it trickier to include the centre of the swirl in compositions as we go further and further north 🙂

 

It was another night in perfect dark skies territory so why waste the opportunity

After dinner I headed a short distance away from the vans and setup for some milky way action

First a few single static milky way test shots and then switched to star trails exposures

Star Crossed

Note: These photographs (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger. To see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer click any of the images.

We’ve finally made it to the Northern Territory. We stayed the night at the rest stop here right at the border. Slept on the NT side of the line of course 🙂

Northern Territory

Note: These photographs (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger. To see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer click any of the images.

Heading North

 

 

More of the fabulous Breakaways at sunset

Light and Shadow

Divining

Note: These photographs (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger. To see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer click any of the images.

and a view from way above with the Mavic 2 Pro – this part of a 21 frame panorama

Breaking Away