After all my talk of having stars fall out of the sky for me on my birthday – we thought that we should prepare properly. So we packed beer, gin and a kettle!
Although we are camped in the mountains there is still a little ambient light coming from the nearby village, so Geoff and I went on a reccie the day before for the best viewing spot…..
Finding the right spot for viewing
What about the view from here?
Not much more than a cow track
helped by some locals who knew the hillside tracks better than us.
No, this way is better!
We camped out late into the night and although we didn’t see as many meteors as we had hoped, we still had fun. I managed to take my first (not very good) photo of star trails.
Star trails
The remote didn’t work so I taped it open with a bolt and some gaffer tape and let it run for forty minutes. Any suggestions of how to do it more professionally are welcome!
During the day Geoff found a donkey farm for me to go and pet baby donkeys – too cute for words – and their troll-dog buddy who lived in a wall!
Cute birthday donkeys
Why the long face?
Donkey’s noses are the best
Troll-dog
Medieval troll-dog
Then in the wee small hours we got up again and watched some more meteors – what a great birthday in an extraordinary place!
Thanks for all my birthday wishes – today we are off to France… more coming soon!
Also for star trails you can download a free programme called starstax….what you then do is take multiple images, of say three minute exposures, over the course of say an hour and then starstax puts them all together in a single image. The advantage of this is it minimises the impact of ambient light from nearby settlements. Increase your ISO to maybe 400 to try and get as much star light into the camera and if you point at the north star your star trail will be lovely and round.
Thanks Esmond – I’ll give it a try on the next dark night xxx
Hello…put it on to timer, once you’re all set up you don’t need to touch it after pressing the shutter button
What kind of camera were you using for the star trails?
Canon EOS 700D, 10-22mm with wide angle lens on infinity, IOS of 100, f4.5, switched to manual setting and on b-shooting do-dah! What else should I have done?
Ok well the B (Bulb) setting is right! Get a new remote. 🙂 Or Canon has a free Remote Capture software, so you can connect your camera to your laptop and control it that way. http://software.canon-europe.com/software/0022669.asp
Thanks babe! The remote was new and worked on the old camera that got stolen, but now the shoe attachment won’t talk to the hand held part…. will keep working on it!