As soon as Walt left, the skies cleared and the weather warmed up. I went out last night, looked for the darkest patch of clear sky I could find and stayed up way too late experimenting with the K-5 bracketing ISO, exposure and even lenses to try to find out what combination works best for night time landscape photography. What I learned was that the hills of Bonny Doon (Empire Grade between Jamieson Creek and Lockheed) have too much light pollution, dust and vapor in the air to get good star photos.
If your interest is the foreground, it seems that ISO 1600-6400 may be the sweet spot. I processed this one to leave the foreground dark, to show that it is at night (as if the stars aren't enough of a clue) http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/5579819441/lightbox/ ISO 3200 FA31 at f/1.8 10 seconds http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/5579819441/meta/ Pointing at a slightly darker patch of sky, if the goal is the stars, leaving the foreground dark (or illuminating it in other ways) it seems that ISO 250-500 is the best: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/5579893071/in/set-72157626282601669/ This is 4 seconds at ISO 500 http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/5579893071/meta/ I'm putting my experiments in a flickr collection: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/collections/72157626282696191/ I've got a set of everything straight out of the camera, and one of all of the shots running lightroom autotone, they're at 400 pixels. I also have sets with other versions of the two pictures I showed. If anyone else is trying nighttime photography with the K-5, I would love to hear what you've learned about sweet spots in various conditions. If you want to try nighttime work, I hope that you find these useful. -- Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
