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Night Moves


I mentioned earlier that the sky was mostly overcast my entire trip back to Northlandia.  There was, however, one evening that was pretty clear and warm; thus a trip not to the lagoon like the last trip,  but right next door to a field that stretches clear to Rt. 17.  These pictures are looking east and were taken with the Tokina 11-16 mm lens I rented for the trip.  






This was the best of the bunch.  I really like the look of this one, and with this particular lens you get a whole lot more sky than is possible with my other lens.  For you exif hounds, this was taken at 13 mm focal length,  f/2.8 for seconds and ISO 200.  What all that means is pure luck on my part.  I just kind of tweak and snap, a variation of the poke and hope.   




This sky shot caught some of the light pollution from the Quad Cities so it is a failed effort but is included here for no other reason except to look at the stars.




This shot shows the Pleides or Seven Sisters you see in the sky throughout the year.  Scroll up to the top picture again and look in the center.  That little fuzzy ball is the Pleides.  In this picture I took with the 300 mm lens are the six stars that make up the Pleides.  The Romans called it Seven Sisters, but there are really only 6 stars.  There has been astronomical speculation as to what happened to the Seventh sister.  





This is a kind of a nice picture but all that grain you see is called "noise".  Noise happens when you crank up the ISO in order to allow more light in for night shots.  It is a tightwire-walking routine to get the camera to allow enough light in and to make it so noise doesn't spoil the shot.  Ultimately this is a failed shot with the rented Tokina lens, but good enough to make it just marginally interesting.  

 This was a pretty nice night to try this lens out and was the last warm one before the cold swept in the next day, along with more clouds, limiting any further shooting.   As it was, however, the nice dark clean sky and the new lens made for a fun time until a couple hounds spotted me from the nearest house.   Looking back I should have packed up my camera and gone to other places but at that time I thought I'd have many more opportunities.  Nope, just didn't work out.

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