Turning off computers to make extra work / lurking silently in the dark with a camera

[hirez]

A thing that I have wanted to muck about with for, oh, all of three weeks, is arbitrarily long exposures. Mostly because of someone else's startling views of the Milky Way, but also because some of the more interesting images I've hauled from the LC-A/XA2 have been the ones where I've held my finger on the button and my breath for thick ends of

Comments

[reddragdiva]

Wait for my dad to get sick of his and Mum to send it over? :-D

[athenais]

Really like that second one. Not using a tripod? That would make for even more atmospheric long exposures.

[hirez]

IIRC I just propped the camera on the top of the steps leading down into the garden. I've just rescued a small tripod from the bottom of a box. It's just too big to fir comfortably into a pocket and then there's that whole business of finding the hole in the bottom of the camera in the dark and being able to operate a screw thread after several pints.

I like the fact that I can stuff one or other camera in a pocket.

[hirez]

Hm. I wonder if a bag of lead shot with a tripod mount would work?

[kathbad]

I have played a bit with longer exposure-using the breath holding method, really like the effects. Would be interested in finding out more about remote options!

[hirez]

I read a thing that alleged that a universal telly remote would trigger a particularly forgiving camera.

The cheap-and-nasty podule I bought seems to be able to drive all modern Nikons, or were I into spending $$ on more Nikon kit, I could have their PC/Mac s/w for driving the camera via the USB.

[hirez]

YES.

[mimmimmim]

What sort of camera do you have? Want some magazines?

[hirez]

That is a splendid offer but we already have a house filled with magazines.

It are a Nikon. D40x.

[mimmimmim]

Oh, and for star trails, with a D-SLR you're better off taking a series of shorter (say, 30-sec) expposures and stacking them, not taking one long exposure, as the D-SLR generates heat so your shots would get all noisy.

[hirez]

Aha. That might be a thing. Although according to the doc, for stupid-long exposures the camera's got enough brains to take a second shot with w/o opening the shutter and then sum the images so (in theory) the sensor noise is removed.

I think I accidentally managed to demonstrate this working by turning off the camera mid noise-reduce. I'll see if I can find the before/after images.