Milky Way and Fireflies

This coming week will be the last time this month to photograph the Milky Way without the moon interfering with the picture.  The best time of night is probably starting around 930-10:00 PM.  Try to pick a location that has minimal light pollution.  Right now the Milky Way is rising from the south.  I utilize PhotoPills and The Photographer's Ephemeris to help me decide on locations.  The other night, our plan was to go out to Gooseberry to photograph the Milky Way, however, the gate was locked.  We change location to Allens Pond Stone Barn, where you can shoot directly south with only a minimal amount of light pollution.  About the only thing that interferes other trails that occur when airplanes fly by.  For this shoot my set up was Nikon D810, Ronikon 14 mm lens set at f/2.8, ISO 1000 and shutter speed of 25 seconds.  To cut down on mirror vibration.  I set a two second delay on the shutter firing after the cable release was pressed.  The night was completely clear what everything in the sky brightly shining.  I created an eight image panorama making sure I overlapped at least 30% on each shot.  This was very easy to do because of the angle of view of the 14 mm lens.  Back on the computer, I used the new panorama setting in Light Room to create the image.  Light Room creates a DNG image, which allows post processing non--destructively.

Panorama of the Milky Way at the Stone Barn, Looking South

Milky Way over the Stone Barn, Looking North, There Is More Light Pollution North

I also created a two image HDR, the only setting I changed was ISO and then utilized Light Room to create another DNG image, and then post processed in Photoshop

Milky Way HDR

Also, it is a great time to photograph fireflies.  While we were photographing the Milky Way and the sky fireflies were flying all around us flashing their fluorescent colored lights.  I decided which location I wanted to photograph, took the time delay off the shutter and set the interval timer to take a picture every 26 seconds.  Back in the computer, I went through and checked the pictures that had fireflies lights present.  Because I utilized the 14 mm lens the night sky and stars were also included.  I opened the images that I selected in Light Room into Photoshop as layers.  I selected all the layers above the bottommost one and changed the mode from Normal to Screen.  The only problem that I had was because the selected pictures were not contiguous and that there were not a great number of pictures, the stars in the sky did not make great trails and looked ugly.  On the merged image, using the Quick Selection Tool, I selected the sky and created a separate layer.  I then opened in Photoshop, one of the images without any fireflies in it, and selected the sky of that image and created a separate layer.  I then floated all the images in Photoshop and took the new sky image and moved it to the image with the fireflies and replace the sky.  This gave me a composite picture with multiple fireflies in it, and the sky with star points.  I then post processed the image in Photoshop.

Firefly Light Trails

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More Firefly Photos

I decided to go back to the stone barn farm and do some more firefly photography.  The first evening I decided to use my 24 mm Ronikon manual focus lens on my Nikon D3s to give me a wider field of vision.  I set it up and did a a few test shots and then started an interval timer.  I left the camera for a half-hour and came back and found again that I had an FEE error message on the camera.  For some reason this keeps occurring with this lens and camera combination.  Although if I use the lens with other Nikon cameras, I did not get that same problem.  However, when I got back home and downloaded the pictures that I did have, I did have on my test shots firefly flashes.  This image was only created with three photos.  Because of the spotlight that was on behind me.  You also get a silhouette of my camera and me in the picture.

Firefly flashes in the meadow

I returned the next night, utilizing this time my 70-200 mm lens with my Nikon D3s.  Out of 360 pictures, 20 pictures had firefly flashes of lights.

Firefly flashes in the meadow and bushes

Well, I wait for next summer to return, when there are many more firefly's around so I can take  more photos, plus capture some of fireflies and get some macro pictures of them.

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How to Create a Firefly Light Image

In my last blog, I showed you a picture of fireflies lights at the stone barn and gave a brief written description on how I did it.  Today I will list all steps as screenshots to help you try to create the same effect.

Select the location you want to use. First do a image, utilizing Light-painting or adjust the camera settings so you have an image that you can visualize on the LCD screen, by setting your camera up on a tripod using a wide angle or a short telephoto lens at an f-stop or below, ISO 2500 to 3200 and take a test shot at a shutter speed comparable to mm/500.  All settings should be on manual.

Set your intervolometer or interval timer in the camera (if available) to take a photo at the shutter speed, +3 seconds, start taking pictures and then just relax.

When you download the pictures into the computer, select all the pictures that have firefly lights in it.  Then follow the sequence below.  If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask them.  Good luck and have some fun.

Select all of photos in Lightroom

Step one adjust the base image

Step two make sure all the other images have the same white balance and develop settings

Highlight all the images and under photo, edit in > open as layers in Photoshop

After of images are loaded in Photoshop make sure that the base layer is on the bottom

Change the layer sequence, and highlight the rest of the layers

For the highlighted layers change the mode from normal to lighten

Flatten the image and do what ever further adjustments you may want

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A Fun Evening

Sunset over Westport Harbor

Last evening, my grandson and I first went to Westport to photograph the sunset over the harbor.  After checking where the sun was going to set, I chose the location at the boat ramp, next to the Back Eddy.  We set up our cameras and focused on the sunset.  Suddenly we noticed in front of us on the rocks, a Green Heron.  Since the green heron did not seem afraid of us, we went back to the car and got long lenses.  We photographed the green Heron, and various poses in between photographing the sunset.

Green Heron

Green Heron

I experimented with a long exposure, utilizing a 10 X the neutral density filter.  First, I set up my scene and checked my camera settings without the neutral density filter on the lens.  I consulted a chart did see what time I should use and reading the chart and told me four seconds.  I held the neutral density filter in front of the lens, since I did not have the right step-up ring for the lens to accommodate the filter.  I was able to smooth out the water almost completely, will have to experiment some more.

Sunset

Once we finished with sunset, we traveled down to the Stone Barn Farm, hoping to photograph the Milky Way and fireflies.  As it got darker, the fireflies came out and I set up the camera to photograph the fireflies utilizing the same type settings as I would for star photography.  I then set the camera to take interval time pictures.  On the computer, I checked the pictures and selected those that had lights from the fireflies.  The one thing that I should have done first was either to take one picture and lightpaint the area or take a picture of that the area I was photographing so it would show more detail.  Since I did neither one of these I had adjust one of the sequence photos to lighten up the background.  The only problem was there was more noise that I liked and though I cleaned the noise up, it was not as good as I'd like it to be.  I then selected all the pictures that I wanted and open them in Photoshop as layers.  Then selected all layers that had the firefly lights in them, and chose lighten mode.  So here is the result.

Fireflies

As regards to the Milky Way, the first problem was there were numerous clouds in the sky, which tended to obscure the very white areas of the Milky Way.  Thankfully, the clouds cleared and I was able to get a decent picture of the Milky Way, which also included a small meteor in the left upper corner.

The Milky Way

I then took some pictures of the stars and clouds over the Fernandez house and also did a 20 minute star trail by the stone barn.

Stars and clouds over Fernandez house

Startrails by the stone barn

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