Rodney Campbell's Blog

Cosmic Launch

NIKON Z 7 + 14.0 mm f/2.4 @ 14 mm, 92 sec at f/5.6, ISO 500

Some light painting craziness with Gerry at Hornby Lighthouse on South Head here in Sydney last night

This is actually a blend of multiple exposures from this spot:

• For the Stars and Sky: eight images stacked (or image averaged) in Starry Landscape Stacker for point stars and to reduce background noise for the stars and sky. Because the damn lighthouse light was actually on! exposures for the stars were not ideal. The lighthouse cycled approx 2.5 seconds on and 2.5 off. Thus we could only take exposures for the stars at 2 or 2.5 seconds long (during the off state :)), f/2.4 and ISO 4000-5000 and focus near infinity for the stars
• Two long exposures for the greenish EL wire work kindly provided by Gerry
• One long exposure with Gerry in red silhouette in the doorway
• One long exposure with the red light leaking up and lighting the side of the lighthouse
• And finally one good exposure of just the light at the top of the lighthouse. Where it was only on for the briefest of time during the 2.5 second exposure so that it did not go nuclear and overexpose. This did, as Gerry would put it, require “ninja timing” (and about fifty attempts :))

This was actually the last shot of the evening. I’d ostensibly fully planned (thanks to trusty PhotoPills) to come here to shoot the milky way core reaching up and over the lighthouse shooting out towards the ocean. Alas for whatever reason the light pollution was too high and the milky way barely visible…

Don't forget to Share...

Google

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin

Pinterest

Email

Print