Thanks for that great report, Rob! Nate and I spent the night at my mother's place near the tip of the North Fork of Long Island. We woke up at around 4AM and left the house a half hour later. I could tell it was going to be a good shoot because while Nate was scraping the frost off the car, I saw four meteors. I think it was a storm. The sky was crystal clear. We drove to a nearby beach. Unfortunately, there were floodlights there for security reasons, but we got as far out of the way of them as possible.
As Rob mentioned, there didn't seem to be a pattern to the way they were falling. I never did find the constellation Leo, but I didn't really need to. They were falling in all directions. Nate used a Spotmatic mounted on a tripod and I used my K1000 with a Pentax 28mm on it. We both used cable releases. I did exposures of 30 seconds to maybe 5 minutes, first with a roll of 800 ISO, then with 400. I was going to record my settings, but I didn't, because I couldn't wear my gloves while operating the camera, and my fingers got numb. :) It seemed that I kept missing the really brilliant streaks, but I'm pretty sure I got a few good ones. I shot mostly facing southwest. Then there's the one that got away...as the sun started rising, we moved down the road to get a better view of the ocean to the east. I was shooting the mist moving over a marsh, and as I was setting up a shot, (and with my finger nowhere near the shutter), a meteor streaked into my field of view. Ugh. Anyway, it was a fun shoot. It wasn't all that hard getting up that early and being out in the cold with the proper motivation. ;) This weekend we'll be up at my future in-laws' in the country, and I told Nate I want to get up early to take advantage of the morning light... - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
