Sunday, October 2, 2011

Stars Gazing Alongside Manawatu River

Assalamualaikum wbt,

After a week at Nikon Service Centre in Auckland for annual maintenance, finally I got my D700 back in action last Friday afternoon. The weather was fine that day which sunny and cloudless sky. So I decided to go to the riverside, Manawatu River that night, planning to shoot Milky Way and if possible, a star trails picture.

At first, suddenly there were many clouds and moonlit that shrouded the sky, but didn't give up so I waited around an hour there. It was so dark on the other side of the river, but in my side it's quite bright from the houses and cars.

When the clouds disappeared and moon setting down, I started to take pictures. I put my tripod close to the water and made some try and error shots just to get the right setting for the pictures.

To shoot Milky Way, since I didn't have the rail system to shoot the still stars (as they and earth are moving) I shoot using the faster shutter speed possible. This meant that I had to boost the ISO up and use the widest aperture available. In a simple words, Shooting star trails need you to use the Milky Way settings in the opposite (I did shooting star trails as well, and to shoot it I need to use the lowest aperture available, low ISO and longer exposure).

It was worth standing there for hours when I managed to get several nice shots like these below:



DSC_6111_stitch
Vertorama from two pictures, stitched in a single image.


Startrails_2
Before packing up to go back, I made this shot which was incomplete due to the battery flat.


Stars gazing at Manawatu River.
A dangerous attempt from me to take this shot. I put my camera on tripod at the bottom close to the water and set it on timer. So I only got 10 second to run up there. Luckily I didn't injured and worth it to take this wonderful picture. This picture was listed as one of Flickr's daily best pictures for yesterday (currently ranked #36 out of 500).


Alright guys, thanks for visiting. Cheers.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

subhanallah.. cantiknya bintang2 tu.. nice shots! :)

Nadly said...

thanks fiena :)