Pretty, here most of the exciting color has died off and it's back to near olive drab on the ubiquitous creosote bushes.

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Savoir-Faire is everywhere!
The T1 Trust, T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, America's First HST

Thanks Grant! Been wanting to capture more, but its so hard to get out there and shoot for fun sometimes!
This image is quite a few years old, my very first attempt at shooting the night sky. Drove to Ft. Davis, TX paid the $5 to drive up the mtn at night. Definitely worth it! Hoping to head back to West Texas before August...but the only downside it will be over 100f.

Oh my. Not even in our Nordic countries you get a view of the Milky Way (Vintergatan) like that.

This image is quite a few years old, my very first attempt at shooting the night sky. Drove to Ft. Davis, TX paid the $5 to drive up the mtn at night. Definitely worth it! Hoping to head back to West Texas before August...but the only downside it will be over 100f.

Excellent shot.
If you enjoy night sky photography, you need to make your way here to Australia. A lot more stars, and a lot less light.
The photos you can take in the desert areas around Alice Springs and of Western Australia during the new moon are pretty much light pollution free.

Here is a teaser...

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Grant
Darwin NT

Excellent shot.
If you enjoy night sky photography, you need to make your way here to Australia. A lot more stars, and a lot less light.
The photos you can take in the desert areas around Alice Springs and of Western Australia during the new moon are pretty much light pollution free.

Here is a teaser...

Yes I got lucky with my property in west Texas, checking the light pollution map, it's as good as it can get! I cant wait to head back, been far too many years since I've seen the Milky Way! Australia looks amazing, would love to visit!

I cannot remember 100% and I unfortunately lost the raw file. Most likely iso1600-3200 and between 15-30s.

I picked up an equatorial mount, need to figure it out. With that I should be able to take longer than 30s images without star trails.

The other day I was minding my own business next to a clump of thistles which was buzzing with hover flies, bees and other like insects. So I snapped a few frames.

If you look carefully at the centre shot you can see the loaded pollen sacks on the bee's legs - shame with the lens I was using (300mm) and the distance (about 18 inches) there is no real depth of field.

Wonderful!

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~Sue~

depth of field is because you were using a very wide aperture, not necessarily due to the focal length. focal length and subject distance combos really just affect the background compression.

you probably had it in Auto, or Shutter Priority mode, and it shot on the widest aperture to have enough exposure for the lighting conditions.

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Seti@Home classic workunits: 29,492 CPU time: 134,419 hours

depth of field is because you were using a very wide aperture, not necessarily due to the focal length. focal length and subject distance combos really just affect the background compression.

you probably had it in Auto, or Shutter Priority mode, and it shot on the widest aperture to have enough exposure for the lighting conditions.

Haha no, I haven't used Auto or Shutter Priority on my camera actually ever. I use manual 100% of the time (photography is my full time job), except for when I shoot for a client who does fun-runs, he makes me shoot in a mode. If I am on a tripod, theres no reason not to use manual, its pointless IMO, with the fun-runs it makes sense...everything happens so quickly when theres 1000s of people. But corporate events and arch work, manual through and through!

Thats why I said the ISO was between 1600 and 3200, and the shutter was 15-30s. I was trying many different variations when I was there, I do not have the raw file so I cannot find out 100% I can 100% say it was shot on my Canon Mark 3, with my 17-40f4L.

I tend to run shutter priority rather than aperture priority when shooting insects otherwise the wings just disappear into a blur so large apertures are the order of the day.
At the distance I was working (about 500mm) with a 300mm lens, even stopped down there is very little depth of field - at f16 the depth of field is somewhere around 3mm and those thistle heads were between 15 and 20mm across. And an incoming bee is in acceptable focus and in frame for a fraction of a second before they dart off in some other direction, which means high shutter speeds, near wide open, somewhere around f6.3. It's a compromise one has to live with, loads of shots are of very fuzzy insects vanishing out of frame. The ones actually sitting on a head are easier (unless there is a breeze) as one can move to smaller apertures, but only if there's enough light - you still need fast shutters to stand any chance of freezing the ever trembling wing of a hover fly (it's not until you try to photograph then do you realise just how much movement there is, both from the insect, but also the plant they are sitting on - funniest one I've ever had was watching a dragon fly at the top of a reed stalk when a "small furry animal" came along and cut the reed down....

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Looking at that picture of yours I would say you were using a fairly wide lens, in the range 25-35mm, and a shutter speed of about 10-15 seconds - the star trails are just starting to show.
EQ mounts are great, provided you have a good drive and have them set up properly, however for wide-filed like your Milky Way shot they do fall down in so far as any foreground detail then tends to suffer motion blurring. Obviously for longer lenses, and no horizon to worry, about they do come into their own - even the best image stacking software doesn't cope with long equivalent exposures as well as a good EQ mount. Over the years I've had some luck using a short tele (around the 100-150mm range) and stacking photos, but the amount of light pollution where I live is diabolical :-( But on the odd "fair" night I've had a couple of reasonable results on Saturn & Jupiter when they've been in the region of a few fixed-point stars to allow stacking to work (its not only getting the subject in the right place, but also coping with any "tilt" that an EQ mount takes care of automatically.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

I picked up a sky-watcher star adventurer mount a yr ago. Never been able to take it out and use it. The one part I really have to figure out, is getting it calibrated onsite. Downloaded a phone app that should help, but havent taken it out yet :( Tried it once, but I honestly set it up wrong on the counter weight, haha.

if you check which post i was replying to, you'll see that I was commenting on rob's pics. not yours. click the "in response to" link above my post.

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Seti@Home classic workunits: 29,492 CPU time: 134,419 hours

if you check which post i was replying to, you'll see that I was commenting on rob's pics. not yours. click the "in response to" link above my post.

Haha, never noticed that link before. Thanks

Got a new client who does rentals, they havent updated the spreadsheet to show whats truly ready to photograph or not...and I visited this property earlier today! I believe this is the definition of "Not Photo Ready"

Those little black dots on the floor, mouse poop!

Got a new client who does rentals, they havent updated the spreadsheet to show whats truly ready to photograph or not...and I visited this property earlier today! I believe this is the definition of "Not Photo Ready"

Those little black dots on the floor, mouse poop!

Not to mention the (huge) hole in the ceiling at the top right hand corner of the image.

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Grant
Darwin NT

I won't post any of the images here as they're not by any Set crunchers, but for those with an interest in photography, particularly Astrophotography, you might want to check out this story.
Astrophotography competition sees joint winners.

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Grant
Darwin NT

That last image is truly awesome.

That last image is truly awesome.

Yeah, the original would make a great desktop image on a huge 4k monitor.
I also really liked the one with the moon, old man & young girl (not that any of the others weren't impressive as well- particularly the animation).

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Grant
Darwin NT

I won't post any of the images here as they're not by any Set crunchers, but for those with an interest in photography, particularly Astrophotography, you might want to check out this story Astrophotography competition sees joint winners.

Great piece which led me to the 2019 CWAS "David Malin Awards" Shortlist and its previous years' winners.

Thanks to all who shared their great shots in this thread. In return I'll spare you from my thumbs' collection.

I'm ripping out my old deck to install a new deck. Should be finished by the end of next week. Exciting pix, I know!



Yes, there's a huge tree growing right in the middle! We'll build around it.





The girls are really enjoying being able to look for bugs and take dirt baths in the newly exposed dirt.

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~Sue~

Should be finished by the end of next week.

I hope there aren't any surprises to delay things (such as at my work where a seriously optimistic completion date was moved forward by 4 weeks, and even now the odds of it being done by 4 weeks after the original fantasy completion date appear to be rather slim).

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Grant
Darwin NT