[J.] As recently mentioned in another post, I joined an online photo course to get my photography skills kick-started a little bit. Part of the homework I am currently working on are photographies taken during the night, in particular long exposure pictures of stars. I started taking some of these pictures when we were still in New Zealand in the more rural areas of the Southern Island. I knew we were going to leave for Buenos Aires shortly and because the city light in urban areas can compete with the starlight in the night sky, I was not sure if I would be able to see such a clear sky during a night in Buenos Aires.
One night, the sky above Wanaka, New Zealand, was beautifully clear and I grabbed my camera, a warm jacket and a glass of red wine to take my first star photographs outside. I adjusted the camera, a Canon EOS 60D, to a tripod and attached a remote control via an USB cable to it. I wanted to capture as much of the sky as I could, so mounted a wide-angle lens onto the camera body, the Tokina AT-X 11-16mm lens and set it to 11mm (or 17mm on a 35mm equivalent). The exposure time for these photos were set to 30 seconds with an aperture of 2.8, ISO of 1600 and manual focus.
With this set-up, I would have expected a photo showing no or almost no star movement caused by the earth rotation. And when I looked onto the screen at the back of my camera, I saw this:
My first thought was that I made a mistake with the settings or that maybe the camera has not been properly mounted onto the tripod. This photo does not only show the moving stars, it also shows movement of the tree leaves in the lower left corner. Such star trails would normally be expected when using an exposure time of around 15 minutes, but not with an exposure time of 30 seconds. However, the tree leaves should not show any movement at all because the distance between the camera and the tree is fixed and hence, no earth rotation could cause such an effect as this picture is showing!
I took more photos with the same camera settings to make sure that it is not the camera itself causing this effect due to being too loosely adjusted to the tripod and starting to move by itself during the exposure time. But all other pictures were showing a somewhat similar effect. And even if the camera would have moved on the tripod during the exposure time, the star trails in that picture seem to be really smooth and steady, something that I would not expect if the camera gets loose on the tripod and starts rotating.
I just cannot make any sense out of this! Haha... maybe my camera is developing some artificial intelligence and trying to mess with my mind! Anyone out there who can make sense out of this? Maybe some other camera settings I am not aware of could have caused this?
However, when I moved the camera facing the opposite cardinal direction, I got a picture that I more expected in terms of no star trails and even more important, no house or tree of fence movement:
In the meantime:
1) Our first day at the Spanish school is over and our heads are spinning with all sorts of Spanish vocabulary and new impressions, but it is a lot of fun. We went home from school in the early afternoon, had a quick light lunch and fell asleep almost immediately thereafter and slept like a log.
2) Walking along the streets of Buenos Aires this morning for the first time during daylight left me with the feeling of excitement for being in this city. It just feels so good and I cannot wait to further explore the streets and shops and cultural places and everything else around here. It just feels so, so good to be here...
One night, the sky above Wanaka, New Zealand, was beautifully clear and I grabbed my camera, a warm jacket and a glass of red wine to take my first star photographs outside. I adjusted the camera, a Canon EOS 60D, to a tripod and attached a remote control via an USB cable to it. I wanted to capture as much of the sky as I could, so mounted a wide-angle lens onto the camera body, the Tokina AT-X 11-16mm lens and set it to 11mm (or 17mm on a 35mm equivalent). The exposure time for these photos were set to 30 seconds with an aperture of 2.8, ISO of 1600 and manual focus.
With this set-up, I would have expected a photo showing no or almost no star movement caused by the earth rotation. And when I looked onto the screen at the back of my camera, I saw this:
 |
| Star trails above Wanaka, New Zealand |
I took more photos with the same camera settings to make sure that it is not the camera itself causing this effect due to being too loosely adjusted to the tripod and starting to move by itself during the exposure time. But all other pictures were showing a somewhat similar effect. And even if the camera would have moved on the tripod during the exposure time, the star trails in that picture seem to be really smooth and steady, something that I would not expect if the camera gets loose on the tripod and starts rotating.
I just cannot make any sense out of this! Haha... maybe my camera is developing some artificial intelligence and trying to mess with my mind! Anyone out there who can make sense out of this? Maybe some other camera settings I am not aware of could have caused this?
However, when I moved the camera facing the opposite cardinal direction, I got a picture that I more expected in terms of no star trails and even more important, no house or tree of fence movement:
 |
| Milky Way over Wanaka, New Zealand |
1) Our first day at the Spanish school is over and our heads are spinning with all sorts of Spanish vocabulary and new impressions, but it is a lot of fun. We went home from school in the early afternoon, had a quick light lunch and fell asleep almost immediately thereafter and slept like a log.
2) Walking along the streets of Buenos Aires this morning for the first time during daylight left me with the feeling of excitement for being in this city. It just feels so good and I cannot wait to further explore the streets and shops and cultural places and everything else around here. It just feels so, so good to be here...
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