Night photography: What fresh new hell is this?
When first getting into this hobby, all I wanted was to have a look at the stars at night. I've had a lifelong fascination with the night sky and, upon turning forty, actually bought a telescope (thanks to my wife). Little did she know that this would mean her being alone inside virtually every clear night and me standing outside in the cold (or amongst the mosquitos, depending on the seasons).
It didn't take long for me to buy a little camera (ZWO 120 mm mono) and before I knew it I got into taking pictures of the night sky.
this turned out to be difficult at times (there is a lot to learn technically), too expensive for me (so I use cheaper and second-hand stuff) and frustrating (in Belgium there is more light pollution than I care for and the cloudless nights are few).
I continued to investigate this and got better. I can't say I am good yet, but I aim higher than I used to.
Because setting up the telescope is sometimes too timeconsuming, I expanded my horizons to any night photography.
The picture for my first blogpost was taken last month (november 2019) in the Zwin Nature Park (in the north of Belgium at the coast).
This nature park is where I work now: the plains behind the dunes flood twice a day and is a haven for trekking birds.
Once a night we work late, so when the skies were clear I set up my camera (Canon 70D) on a tripod with a self-timer and my 11 mm Tokina lens. I set out to make this a startrail picture, but the clouds rolled in halfway through the night.
The 11 mm is important to get the widest possible view, allthough it does give distortions at the edges of pictures. With 2.8 aperture, this is quite a fast lens, which helps to take in the maximum amount of light possible. ISO was 1600, giving excellent light, but also more noise.
I set the exposure time to 25 seconds. This is just too long to have pinpoint stars, but that wasn't the original goal. Then the camera just had to do what I told it.
The next day too many of the pictures taken turned out to have clouds, so the startrail plan went to shits. There were some really good ones and I started working on those in Lightroom.
This can help to bring out lights in rather dark images, as can be seen in the image. Downside is that it does add noise and grain to the picture.
Still I like it. It shows the beauty of the nature park durin high tide, combined with a great night sky and the effects of light pollution add something magic to the picture.
Hope you like it.
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