Loo View

by Rodney Campbell on Aug.09, 2024, under Photography

Loo View

NIKON Z6_3 + Viltrox AF 16/1.8 Z @ 16 mm, 20 sec at f/1.8, ISO 100 x 700 Frames

The view from our bathroom window

During the past month or so I’d acquired a number of new photographic items to upgrade my kit bag

I’d bought myself the new Nikon Z6 III camera, which has a number of feature enhancements and improvements over my Nikon Z7

I’d also tired of waiting for Nikon to release a Nikkor Z 14mm f/1.8 lens – which I would expect to be a truly epic astro lens to replace my large and heavy F mount Samyang 14/2.4 lens. I was hoping for a smaller native Z mount ultra wide angle astro lens to go with my Nikkor Z 20/1.8

So when the new Viltrox AF 16mm F1.8 Z lens came up on special recently I caved and ordered

This is my first shot (or rather shots) with that lens. It was an unusually clear night and only a few days after the new moon (with moonset around 7PM) so pretty ideal for some astro

I was pretty lazy and just did the 700 frame (just over four hours) sequence from our bathroom looking out the window (which conveniently looks east)

When trying lots of different new things you probably should just change one thing at a time to avoid things going completely wrong ;); and worse not knowing exactly which of many possible things caused any issues 🙂

So with that in mind I basically tried a handful of new things I’d ever used or done before 🙂

a new camera body with all sorts of completely new features compared to my Z7 – partially stacked sensor, fully electronic shutter, starlight view mode, warm display colours
a new lens – which I hadn’t tried at all before these shots – which also had new features I didn’t have in other lenses (like a neat built in OLED display with focus distance and other info, two function buttons)
I also decided to try powering the camera via an external power source via USB-C. The battery was 2/3rd full and I wanted to shoot for many hours and wasn’t sure it would last
I also tried for the first time using a new remote control I ordered for this camera (an ML-L7B which connects directly to the camera via bluetooth low energy) – I only used this to take the twilight frames – it has no intervalometer functions
lastly I tried using the camera’s built in intervalometer function (the first time I’ve tried using the built in Nikon function) – I normally use an external dedicated intervalometer plugged into the camera because it has much more control. The Nikon built in intervalometer is “strange” – one setting is to set the “Interval” which Nikon describes as “Specify the interval between shots”. Sensible reading of this would indicate this would be the gap or interval between shots – however you’d be wrong – it’s actually trying to be the time between the start of one shot and the start of the next – and if you don’t set the interval value carefully to work with the shutter speed you’re planning to use, things can and will get completely out of whack. Another vagary is that if you manually set a shutter speed of say 20 seconds – the time taken for the frame is actually around 21 seconds

Anyway long story short – as you can see – it all worked out in the end. I don’t think the built in intervalometer worked as well as my specific external one does (where I can set and control very small sub-second gaps between frames) but it wasn’t horrendous. The external power worked fine – and in fact the battery ended up being charged by the end

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.