Lunar Imaging

I write these articles for two simple reasons. Firstly, the subject interests me. Secondly, it’s a diary of learning which I can refer back to as required and it’s published on this site in the event anyone else may benefit from that. This article is no different and here I’m going to look at how make a lunar image to be proud of.

According to NASA, the Moon is 238,855 miles (384,400 kilometres) away from Earth. That’s an average figure. The Moon’s orbit around the Earth is not a perfect circle so when it’s at its furthest point, called the apogee, it’s 252,088 miles away and when it’s at its closest point, the perigee, it’s 225,623 miles away. By all reasonable thinking, that’s a long way, and yet we can see it clearly, sometimes even in daylight, given favourable conditions. That’s because, with a diameter of 2159 miles, it’s a fairly substantial object. No matter where we are on Earth, it appears roughly the same size to our eyes. Deceptively, though, the Moon takes up very little space in the sky. It may come as a surprise but if you were to draw an imaginary circle in the sky right around the earth and divide that into 360 equal degrees, the angle of the Moon would only fill half a degree (there are 60 arcminutes in a degree and the Moon is 31 arcminutes wide). It’s not actually as big as our eyes make it seem, and if we try to discern much detail with unaided sight, especially from our light polluted towns and cities, we really are going to struggle to see much more than the largest craters, the dark patches (called mare or the plural maria – latin for “sea” or “seas”) and the lighter patches (highlands).

With reasonably economic camera gear, it’s very possible to see a lot more than this, and it’s a perfect winter project when the skies are clear and not subject to quite the same amount of atmospheric turbulence.

Before I start, I need to talk about focal length. If you want to discern any greater detail in the Moon, then you are going to need some fairly high focal lengths. Let’s first examine what you can see of the Moon with an APS-C camera from 10mm, all the way to 600mm.

I think we can agree then, if my purpose is simply to take a detailed picture of the Moon with standard camera gear, then I first need to have the largest focal length I can get. At 10mm the Moon is just a barely visible speck. And, unfortunately, a standard kit lens is just not going to cut the mustard. 18-55mm is going to be no clearer than the 50mm picture above which renders an image too small to see much detail – it’s really no better than what you can see by eye when viewed at 100%. Even at 600mm I’m still going to have to crop the final picture to really improve on things! This is why those who are serious about astro-photography spend a great deal of extra cash on telescopes and specialised equipment to really push that magnification (a financial black hole I have, for the most part, avoided)

Let’s see what can be done, however, with a modestly priced 600mm zoom lens, a sturdy tripod, a cheap shutter release cable, a clear night, and some free software.

Now, some will say that what I’m about to do requires a tracking mount, sometimes referred to as a star tracker. This is completely untrue, as I hope to demonstrate. A tracking mount, in case you want to know, is a specialised electric motor that counteracts the movement of the Earth; as the Earth turns on its axis, the stars and Moon appear to move across the sky. This is called the sidereal rate. A tracking mount counteracts the sidereal rate and ensures the camera will be pointing at the same objects in the sky for an extended period of time. The more expensive the tracking mount, the better it will track and the longer you can make an exposure. No such luxury here. And some very clever software means that this really isn’t necessary for what I want to do.

The second thing to know is that I’m not just going to be taking one picture of the Moon and working with that. I can greatly improve on clarity and reduce image noise by taking lots of pictures, and “stacking” them, much as I did in this earlier article. By doing this, the software can analyse all the different pictures and by averaging out the data between them all can enhance real detail, and remove camera artefacts such as noise.

So, with a clear night and my camera and 600mm lens secured to a sturdy tripod, I began the process. First things first, obviously, was to locate the Moon. This is where the flip screen on my camera comes into its own and I can very comfortably point the camera pretty much straight up and comfortably position the screen so that I can see what’s going on. Without a flip screen I would be somewhat hunched uncomfortably for this part of the process – of course it’s not a problem if you don’t have a flip screen on your camera, it just means you’ll have to contort yourself a bit.

I didn’t want to centre the Moon in the field of view  – as I take pictures over two minutes the Moon will appear to move across the screen.

Movement across the field of view over two minutes

I wanted to give the Moon room to move but still stay within the frame so I kept the Moon slightly to the left of the frame knowing it would appear to move to the right as the minutes pass. I was in manual everything – both focus and exposure. As you can see, I had plenty of space to play with and even though the Moon has drifted right and down, because I'll be cropping later this doesn't matter.

Now, the Moon reflects sunlight and because the regolith (a fancy word for dirt) of the Moon is a pale grey it reflects a lot of sunlight so consequently the Moon is reasonably bright. I was able to have a reasonably high shutter speed, low ISO and smaller aperture so I sat around 1/125th of a second, ISO 100, f/8. Different lenses and cameras will give different results but on this occasion those setting gave me a perfect histogram  – a nice number of highlight pixels (but none straying into white) and a good amount of black because at those settings there was no hope of discerning any other objects in the sky. If you are interested, I provide an explanation of the histogram here. The low ISO would minimise noise for a cleaner end result and the fast shutter speed negated any need to worry about tiny camera movements. Oh, and for optimum results, I always shoot in RAW.

Then to refine the focus. This is perhaps the most important part to get right and unfortunately it isn’t always as easy as it sounds – in Live View I always zoom in to focus but even on a reasonably sturdy tripod the very act of turning the focus ring causes the image to dance around the screen pretty wildly so it’s a case of making small adjustments to focus, then waiting for the image to settle, then adjusting some more and so on until I’m happy. Also bear in mind I’m looking through approximately 300 miles of Earth’s atmosphere as well which causes the image to appear to shimmer (this turbulence is generally worse in summer than winter but is almost always present to some degree) and this can affect whether I know if I’ve achieved focus or not. Persistence and patience are key here. If you do not get sharp images, the rest of this process is an utter waste of time so if it takes 10 minutes or more to nail it, then so be it. Of course by now the Moon has moved from its position on the left of my image and so I need to recompose before beginning.

As I said above, I was using a shutter release cable to control the picture taking, and by setting the camera to take “continuous” pictures, as long as the button on the release is locked down it will keep taking images until the battery runs out or the memory card fills up. As I was only taking pictures for a few minutes though, that was not going to happen. Really, the more pictures you take, the better the final output will be. There may be a point where it doesn’t really matter because there is no detail left to extract, but I’ve not experimented enough to know where that point is so I just take as many pictures as I can whilst I know the Moon is still in the frame. That worked out at around 250. These are my “light frames”. If I was using a 400mm lens, I would have a bit more room to play with and could take more but the 250 I get are more than enough to work with and get a very pleasing result. If I wanted to reframe and get more pictures, so long as I didn’t change the focal length, that would work out too. For the very best of results I should have taken a number of “dark frames” – these are pictures with exactly the same settings but simply with the lens cap on. This improves the ability of the software I was going to use to reduce camera artefacts. 20+ dark frames is recommended for best results. The more the better really. I didn’t do that on this occasion as it was already 1.30am, on a school night. Tsk.

Once I was done, I got back inside and warmed up with a hot coffee before downloading the images to the computer. I probably should have gone to bed at this point and done the rest of this the following evening but no… and I was hurting the next day.

If you want to follow my methodology precisely you will require two free programs (as far as I am aware, there is no single, all in one solution to this):

1) PIPP – Planetary Imaging PreProcessor
2) Registax6

What follows is not a guide to using either of these programs – the internet is filled with articles written by people much more informed than I and a very quick search will prove fruitful. Neither of these programs is particularly intuitive and so further research will be required on your part, but the gist of these is as follows:

PIPP is used to analyse all the images and sort them by quality and can also crop some of the extraneous black sky so that there is less useless stuff to process in the next step. Crucially, it also centres the Moon perfectly in each cropped image. It takes a few minutes to run through all the images so this is where you can enjoy that coffee you made earlier.

Registax6 then takes those cropped and centred images, and with a bit of configuration, will align and stack them. The stacked image will require sharpening and this can also be done in program.

Finally, and this is where personal taste and artistic interpretation comes in, you may want to edit the image in your favourite image editing software to enhance as you see fit. I always add some contrast to increase the difference between the marie and the highlands and because the Moon is basically a very boring grey, I push the colour balance a little bit towards the yellow and increase overall saturation a bit. The trick here is to keep all edits under control – I don’t want it to look edited – I just want it to look punchy and sharp.

Full stacked image

Let’s now compare a portion of this stacked image I’ve spent a great deal of time and effort creating, with a single snap of the Moon, both at 100% magnification. Was it worth it? Only you can decide if it’s something you wish to explore further.

Single image on the left. Stacked image on the right

Before I bring this article to a close, I briefly want to mention how difficult it is to get satisfactory sharpness in lunar pictures, even with all the effort described here.

From sea level, which was roughly my altitude when these pictures were taken, I was looking at the moon through 300 miles of atmosphere and that's if it's directly overhead. The atmosphere is not a uniform temperature and it is not completely still and both of these factors directly affect how well we can see through it. Light from space is bent by our constantly shifting atmosphere. This is why stars appear to twinkle and this is why despite my very best efforts, lunar pictures are never as sharp as I'd like them to be. Sometimes this turbulence is worse than at other times too, so it's definitely worth doing this multiple times through the year to maximise your chances of getting a night with good conditions and minimum turbulence.

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Powering your Camera with a Power Bank

The user guide that came with my ILC Camera is nearly 400 pages long. And it's all in English. So that's 400 full pages of useful information to absorb. However, 400 is a pretty large number when it comes to pages and if you think I was ever going to read all of them then you don't know me very well at all. Consequently, when I first noticed a strange rubber flap near the battery compartment of my camera, it was something of a puzzle. But rather than investigate the manual and find out what this curious flap was, I just remained ignorant, and lazy. It didn't didn't get in the way or impede anything, it was just there, enigmatically.

Time passes. Three years to be precise. I am once again in the back garden taking pictures of the night sky and I quietly wonder to myself how long the little battery in the camera would last in the sub zero temperatures I was then enduring. If I was out for 3 or 4 hours repeatedly taking photos would it cope? And if it didn't and I had to replace it, that would mean disturbing my setup and potentially ruining what I was doing (messing around with a new wide angle lens if you really must know). This wondering led to some investigating and very suddenly everything fell into place.

The DC Cord Hole Cover

Yes that little flap has a name. It's the DC Cord Hole Cover. And it is specifically designed to allow you to plug in an adaptor in place of your battery which will allow you to power the camera either from a household source, or, as in this instance, a USB power bank. You will need to buy an adaptor kit, and that 400 page manual I never bothered finishing even told me the name of the adaptor I'd need to make my internet searches fruitful. It is very likely your camera manual contains the same information should this be an avenue you want to explore.

DC Adaptor USB Cable

The adaptor set consists of a cable with a USB A connector at one end, and a small power jack at the other, and this jack plugs into a Dummy Battery which makes the whole set fit into, and power your camera. Obviously camera battery designs vary from brand to brand and model to model so you need to be sure and get an adaptor specifically designed for your camera.

Plug in the Dummy Battery

Once the jack is connected to the dummy battery, you simply insert it into your camera's battery compartment and gently pull the cord through the DC Cord Hole Cover then close the battery compartment door as follows:

As you can see from the above pictures, the result is a very neat cord solution that won't get in the way of L-Brackets or tripod mounts. Finally, attach the USB connector to a power bank, and as sure as eggs is eggs we now have a camera that will run for hours no problem. If I keep the power bank in a pocket next to my body it will stay warm and I shouldn't have to worry about battery drain during long cold nights of shooting.

The camera plugged in to a power bank

And there we are, another great mystery solved and a solution to a problem found. If you knew this already then fine, you're smarter than I am and you have a great deal of company I assure you. But, if you've never quite made it through your own camera manual then hopefully this wee tip will be of some use.

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Salt Print Photography

And so my dabbling in alternative photography takes a turn for the truly historic, going back to one of the first methods of permanently fixing light onto paper. Called Salt Print Photography, there is somewhat more to this than simply salt and paper, but once the materials have been obtained the principal is extremely easy, though the execution takes a bit more trial and error. This process was invented by William Henry Fox Talbot in the 1830's so it goes back to the very beginnings of photography.

Photogenic drawing of a Fern leaf

The leaf print (called a photogenic drawing) above is my first success with salt paper printing. I wanted to try 3 methods. Firstly, a leaf print to ensure my chemistry was working; secondly a contact print with a negative to see if any fine detail can be obtained with my materials, and finally, using the salt paper in a camera (my Eastman Kodak Folding Brownie) to see if it's possible to create a negative.

Requirements

• Good quality white writing or watercolour paper
• Salt (pure sea salt)
• Silver Nitrate
• Sodium Thiosulphate
• Citric Acid
• Syringe (that you will not use for anything else)
• 2 x glass beakers (that you will not use for anything else)
• Glass rod or a brush (that you will not use for anything else)

Process

One litre of water

Twenty grams of salt

Mix a 2% salt solution (20g of salt to 1 litre of water). Soak the paper in the solution for two minutes then leave to dry.

Paper soaking in 2% salt solution

Under safe-light conditions, and wearing gloves, mix a 25% sensitising solution (5 grams of silver nitrate to 20 millilitres of water). Do NOT get this onto your skin or into your eyes - I cannot stress this enough. This should be mixed in a glass beaker that you should only ever use for mixing silver nitrate.

In a separate beaker mix a 10% citric acid solution (2 grams citric acid to 20 millilitres of water). When the acid has completely dissolved, pour into the silver nitrate solution. This helps to preserve the sensitising solution and stops it from forming unwanted precipitates (i.e. going cloudy). We now have 40 millilitres of sensitising solution and because we have diluted our silver nitrate, this gives us the 12% (approx) silver nitrate solution we need to continue.

We then coat one side of the pre-salted paper evenly with this sensitising solution. One method is to use a syringe to dispense a line of liquid across the top of the paper and then a glass rod to disperse, repeating in different directions. A sponge or brush can also be used but this is likely to result in a less even coat. I use a brush and, as you will see, there are imperfections aplenty.

So, what's happening here is that the silver nitrate solution reacts with the salt in the paper to form silver chloride. Silver chloride, in turn, reacts with sunlight and turns to metallic silver which appears black. This process is called photolysis. This is a decomposition reaction where exposure to light forces an electron from the chlorine ions in the silver chloride which is then captured by the silver ions, meaning the silver chloride turns to both silver metal and chlorine and it's the silver we see turning dark and that's how we get a black and white photograph. Silver nitrate and silver chloride are messy and poisonous chemicals so it is absolutely imperative you do not use these tools for other chemistry. And I will say it again, do NOT get this stuff on your skin. It will turn black in sunlight, and it will not wash off for days. You have been warned.

After a few false starts (problems with the paper I was using) I eventually obtained the image of the fern leaf you can see above. I simply placed the leaf onto the treated paper and set that in a clip frame. I took this into the garden. Surprise, surprise, it was a very cloudy day so I just left it there for an hour. In that time the exposed paper turned a very dark brown. Where the leaf prevented light from reaching the silver chloride, the paper remained white. And as simply as that, the image was created. Had it been a bright day, 10 minutes exposure would probably have been enough.

The next step is to fix the image so that it doesn't continue to react to light.

Firstly, rinse the image for 5 minutes to remove excess silver, you will see a cloudy substance running off. To fix the image, mix a 5% Sodium Thiosulphate solution (25 grams Sodium Thiosulphate to 500 millilitres of water). Soak the image in this solution for 5 minutes, then rinse again in water for 5 minutes. The negative will lighten significantly during this process.

Final wash of the exposed print

Once it has been through this cycle (rinse, fix, rinse), the image should be stable and can be left to dry. Once dry I placed this in the middle of a book which was weighed down with a toolbox and I left this overnight to completely flatten it. The result is as you see at the top of this page (scanned and cropped).

The next step was to repeat this process but instead of using a leaf, using one of the paper negatives from my Folding Brownie.

Now obviously, a paper negative does not easily let light pass through, and so the success of this is wholly dependent on brightness of the sun and length of exposure. On the day I tried this it was bright, sunny and no clouds. I gave the exposure process two hours and this was the result:

Salt print of a paper negative

Whilst I'm delighted that I have a picture at all, there are some obvious flaws, in this case where I've brushed the silver nitrate onto the picture there is uneven colouration, but this is very much the nature of the beast and for a first attempt, this is very pleasing. Better quality paper would improve the fine detail but overall, that is recognisably a picture of yours truly.

My final test, however, was an unmitigated failure. I loaded a sensitised sheet into my Folding Brownie and, in bright sunshine, left it in the garden for four hours with the aperture as wide as it would go. Very sadly, there was virtually no exposure after all that time. There was the faintest of hints that a portion of the sky had just started to darken the paper ever so slightly, but other than that, nothing at all. It is perfectly clear then that, unless I wanted to leave the camera in place for days, literally, then using salt paper to actually take a photograph is just a non starter, and this will explain why those early photographic pioneers moved very quickly onto other processes.

That aside, there is a lot to like about this process, and much room for me to practise and improve. One final triumph however, is that I managed to undertake all of this without getting a single stain on my skin, or ruining any furnishings, and this is not something to be sniffed at.

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Kodak No. 2C Folding Autographic Brownie

If you've read my article on my Pinhole Camera you'll know I have more than a passing interest in alternative photography (I prefer calling it "traditional" photography but let's not go down that rabbit hole). Being a glutton for punishment (and with a penchant for making life more difficult than it needs to be) a casual browse on a certain auction site back in May 2019 produced a lot of results for old Kodak cameras at a very reasonable price. One style in particular caught my eye as it was almost identical to an old camera that used to sit, unused, in a drawer in my grandparent's house and which I remember scrutinising as a child with confused wonder. I have no idea what happened to that camera after they died but a mix of curiosity and nostalgia forced my hand. At a little over £18 this wasn't going to break the bank and so, a few clicks later, I became the owner of an Eastman Kodak No. 2C Folding Autographic Brownie, first built somewhere between 1917 and 1926.

Eastman Kodak No. 2C Folding Autographic Brownie

On receipt it was apparent that the camera was in dire need of some TLC. The faux leather covering the body was bubbled and peeling and the whole thing was covered in dust and grime but importantly, the bellows were intact and for the most part, the shutter mechanism worked just fine.

Now, these things aren't rare and I don't care about keeping this in its original condition - it's not going to be a museum piece - and to be honest, if I left it alone the condition was only going to deteriorate further: it was pretty obvious that the aluminium body was oxidising, which had ruined the faux leather covering causing it to bubble and lift. So job one was to fix this up as best I could before using it for it's intended purpose. It wasn't possible to completely dismantle the camera for a proper restoration as many parts are riveted in place and without the proper tools would be impossible to reconstruct, but I did the best I could.

Over the next few weeks I peeled off all the faux leather (it was too easy, most of it just lifted right off) and chemically stripped the flaking paint from the interior. I used a paste made from equal parts flour, vinegar and salt to remove small areas of verdigris that had built up on some of the brass and copper parts. 

The removed sheets of original faux leather. The white powder is aluminium oxide.

Stripping the camera back to the bare metal

This left a pristine shell to repaint and cover. I bought a length of thin leather look vinyl (0.7mm thick) and some car paint (grey primer, flat black and semi-gloss black) to complete the "restoration".

The freshly painted interior of the camera

The new vinyl being applied to the camera body.

The painting was extremely easy. Applying the new vinyl to the bodywork however, was much more difficult and required very careful cutting around the film winding handle (not removable), tripod sockets, carry handle knobs and the autographic "window". To cut a very long story extremely short, a lot of frustrating trial and error finally resulted in an acceptable finish. Not perfect, not by a long shot, but acceptable. Most of the problems I encountered stemmed from the fact that the replacement vinyl was somewhat thicker than the original faux leather and this resulted my exceeding some of the tight tolerances in the original build. If I was to cover it again (and I still might) I would use Tolex, which is the stuff used to cover guitar amplifiers.

I wasn't able to dismantle the lens (I didn't have a lens spanner wrench at the time) and so I could only give this a surface clean. I made short work of the remaining dust and grime with cotton buds, hot soapy water and a liberal application of isopropyl alcohol. As the bellows appear to be very delicate, I left them alone and only gave them a very light dusting with a soft brush. The final result is a much cleaner camera that is ready for use.

So. Now that we have a camera in much improved condition, how does one go about using a camera like this? Well, first let's look at a little video I prepared going over all the main features:

Now, what about taking some pictures? Well, by my reckoning there are 3 options:

1. Buy a 120 film conversion kit.
2. Buy sheet film.
3. Use paper negatives.

To be absolutely honest, I didn't want to go through the hassle of preparing and developing sheets of panchromatic film to try this camera out. It has to be handled in complete darkness which would be a pain as cutting it to size without being able to see what I was doing would be ugly. Orthochromatic film on the other hand can be handled under a safe light and I'm very tempted by this for a future project but for the purposes of this test, and because I have some experience of using photographic paper as a negative, this was by far the easiest option. To that end I bought 25 sheets of 5×7" Multigrade glossy and in my make-shift darkroom cut these to fit inside the camera. This Folding Brownie will comfortably accept a sheet cut to 162mm × 88mm (6.38 × 3.46 inches) and will project an image that is 125mm × 74mm (4.92 × 2.91 inches) within that, leaving a nice border.

With paper loaded into the Brownie it was time to get an exposure. There was nothing on the interwebs to give me any ideas as to what the exposure time should be so this was going to be wholly trial and error. Obviously this method makes it a one shot camera so I would need to take a test exposure, develop it and see the results and adjust exposure for the next shot until I established a good exposure time (for the current lighting conditions). I took three initial test shots, all with the aperture set at 1 on the camera, under completely overcast skies and with wildly different exposures which gave the following results:

• 1/25th of a second - badly underexposed
• 15 seconds - completely overexposed
• 1 second - just about perfect

I did this just to get to grips with the camera and paper combination. Photographic paper is sensitive to the blue and UV end of the light spectrum, and not sensitive at all to the red end (which is why you can handle it under safe light conditions). I can't look at the environment and see how much UV light is in the scene so it's impossible to accurately meter so my test exposures went from reasonably fast to very slow (1/25th of a sec and 15 seconds) which told me roughly where to go to next. 1/25th was badly underexposed (with only extreme highlights showing) but 15 seconds was badly overexposed  (completely blown out) so one second was the next logical step and as it happened, this was perfect. The vigilant amongst you will know that the Folding Brownie does not have any sort of timer so when I say one second, this really means that I counted "one elephant" whilst manually opening and closing the shutter in bulb mode. I specifically chose an overcast day to drastically cut down on brightness, to diffuse the light, reduce harsh contrast, and finally, because I live in Scotland and more often than not it's overcast, to make it easily repeatable.

One Second exposure (approx) at Stop No. 1

The first decent exposure, taken with a wide aperture (Stop No. 1) was very soft and swirling, not without a certain charm, and a consequence of old lens design. The user manual (and yes, I was able to track down a user manual for this antique) advised using a smaller stop for a sharper picture. This makes sense - the smaller the aperture the sharper the image should be and so the next experiment was to try this setting. This would double the exposure time, giving me "two elephants". The model this time was me. My son (under instruction) was the photographer.

2 second exposure (approx) at Stop No. 2

This picture is definitely sharper than before but it's still blurry. Notice how it's obviously sharper at the centre and increasingly distorted towards the outside. I suspected better results could be had with Stop No. 3. So, that was the next step. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't playing ball and it happened to be cloudless, hot sunny day when I decided to try this so I was back to experimenting with shutter speeds to get an accurate exposure in these new (and rare) conditions.

Left to Right: 1/25th, 1/4, 1/2 and 1 Second at Stop No. 3

As it happens the correct exposure is probably somewhere between the ½ second and 1 second exposure, but it was very bright and the 1 second exposure looks about right, though it seems flat compared with the ½ second version. However (though it may not be noticeable in these small copies), Stop No. 3 is markedly sharper than any of the lower aperture settings. The distortion so readily apparent at Stop No. 2 is gone, so that is point proved. However, sharpness isn't everything and the "character" of this lens has a certain appeal at the wider stops.

Now, how you may ask, does one obtain accurate ½ and ¼ second exposures? Well one makes sure the camera is on a rock solid tripod, one sets the shutter speed to 1/25th of a second, and one takes multiple exposures (i.e. you keep pressing the shutter). 6 times for the equivalent of ¼ of a second and 12 times for ½ second equivalent. Easy. Anything longer than that and we're back to counting elephants.

I'm very satisfied that I've got this thing (for the first time in a very long time I suspect) taking photos with a reasonable degree of success, so now we move on to how I'm developing the pictures.

Basic darkroom equipment and chemicals

I'm doing this at the most basic level it's possible to do, and it's really very easy. However, there are a number of things you will absolutely need:

• A room which can be made completely dark with enough free work surface for the 3 developing dishes. I'm using a storage cupboard with a bit of shelf space.
• Paper developing solution, stop bath and fixer. You will need these 3 chemicals to develop the pictures but they are easy to obtain and reasonably inexpensive. Small half litre bottles will suffice to start - you dilute these so they will go quite a long way.
• 3 developing dishes. These are to hold the developer, stop bath and fixer. You'll struggle to get by without them and make sure you obtain dishes which are larger than the largest print you intend to develop. Mark your dishes so that you know which ones you are using for which chemicals - you don't want to ever be contaminating future development so always use the same dish for the same chemical.
• 2 tongs. These are for moving the pictures between trays as you develop. 1 pair is for moving the photo from the developer to the stop bath. The other pair is for moving from the stop bath to the fixer.
• 1 red safe-light. Unless you want to be working in complete darkness, one of these is highly recommended.
• 3 small measuring cylinders. 50 or 100 millilitres will suffice. You need these so you can accurately measure your chemicals. Mark your cylinders so that you know which ones you are using for which chemicals - you don't want to ever be contaminating future development so always use the same cylinder for the same chemical.
• A thermometer. The developing solution I use must be used at 20 Celsius (68 Fahrenheit) so the thermometer is needed for accuracy. My house and makeshift darkroom are generally much warmer than 20 Celsius so I have to periodically pop the developing dish into a refrigerator to cool it off before exposing the next print.
• Water. This is for rinsing off the developed print but if you have running water you're covered.

Once you have this equipment, the chemicals need to be mixed. The instructions for mixing will be provided on the bottles. For the stop bath and fixer simply follow the instructions and mix enough to fully immerse your pictures comfortably. For the developer however, I received some advice to ignore the instructions (which state to dilute 1 part solution to 9 parts water) and instead dilute 1 part solution to 19 parts water. This makes it much weaker than standard and should reduce the tendency to make the final print too contrasty and I have been very pleased with the results.

OK, so, your trays are now comfortably filled with dilute chemicals , you are in your makeshift darkroom with your safe-light on and the developing solution is at 20 Celsius. The exposed print can now be removed from the camera.

The print goes in the developing solution first. Try to push it into the solution in one swift stroke so as to cover it in quickly and start counting seconds. Push it down with a pair of tongs to ensure it's submerged then start gently rocking the dish to keep the solution in motion. Keep counting all the time. After about 10 seconds the picture should start to develop before your eyes. It's really quite magical. Don't get distracted and don't worry too much about whether it looks good or not (good detail isn't visible under the safe-light anyway) just keep counting and gently rocking the solution. It won't hurt to occasionally use your tongs to push the picture to the bottom of the dish. Once again, some advice I received advised I ignore the developing instructions and remove the print after only 45 seconds which again, has been working out very well.

Use the tongs to remove the print from the developer, give it a quick shake to knock off a few drips and then fully submerge the print in the stop bath. This solution immediately stops the developing reaction. Again, you should rock the dish gently to keep the solution in motion and occasionally use the second pair of tongs to submerge it. I leave it in the stop bath for about a minute. Note - the stop bath instructions state this should be at 20 Celsius too, but I have ignored this and haven't suffered ill effects.

Use the second set of tongs to move from the stop bath to the fixer. The fixer removes any unexposed silver halide left in the paper and prevents any future fogging of the image - it stabilises the print for safe keeping. Again, one minute in the fixer will suffice. Note - like the stop bath, the fixer instructions state this should be at 20 Celsius too, but I have ignored this and haven't suffered ill effects. You should use your own judgement and not blindly follow what I do.

Now you can safely take the developed print out of the darkroom for a thorough rinse in cold water. Don't skimp this part. By rinsing in cold water you are removing all exhausted chemicals and preventing future image deterioration. A good five minutes for a small print should suffice.

You are then left with a wet, but hopefully (!) perfectly exposed negative image. It really is a wonderful feeling when you eventually get it right. I usually just let the print air dry but this can take a while so a hair dryer (not too hot!) will speed up the drying process. The final process (for me) is to scan the negative image with my very old (17 years and counting!) scanner at 2000 dpi and use my photo editing software to invert the image to finally give me a positive. I then set about the tremendously tedious task of removing dust and any little scratches that have found their way onto the print. Finally, and if it warrants it, I will print the final picture (via a lab; I don't own a printer).

I hope this conveys how simple this process can be, with the bare minimum of equipment and space. It really isn't beyond most and well, frankly there are worse things you could be doing with your time, alone, in a dark cupboard.

So there we are. A 100 year old camera given a new lease of life and not just a display piece on a shelf; returned to working life and taking pictures (from time to time). I will not be replacing my digital camera with this wee gem, but I will be digging it out from time to time when the bug bites. I hope you've enjoyed reading about this experiment and hopefully it'll give you some hints and tips if you ever wish to do something similar.

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L-Brackets

Is an L-Bracket necessary? Absolutely not. Does it make your life easier? Yes. Yes it does. So what is an L-Bracket and how is it beneficial? Let's discuss.

An example of an L-Bracket

As you can see from the picture above, an L-Bracket is simply a plate which screws to the tripod mount in the bottom of your camera, and which replaces the standard plate which came with your tripod. The benefits of this are quite obvious: with one of these you will no longer have to tilt your tripod head 90˚ to take a portrait photo. Instead you can simply place your camera into the tripod clamp in landscape or portrait orientation as you see fit.

An L-Bracket mounted in Portrait orientation.

Now, that's the simple bit. The problem with L-Brackets is that they need to attached to both a camera and a tripod to be of any use at all, and no two cameras are the same shape. And tripod clamps are a bloody minefield as well.

What this means is that you may struggle to find an L-Bracket which fits both your camera, and your tripod clamp.

As far as getting an L-Bracket to fit your camera, there are L-Brackets available which some clever sods have created which are designed specifically to fit certain models of cameras and are shaped so as to fit precisely around the curves and give access to the battery compartment and the side ports without getting in the way. However, these tend to be extremely expensive and are not available for every model of camera.

To get round this, you can get Universal L-Brackets, which are much less expensive and will fit most (not all) cameras, but you will very likely have to accept some compromises. Like losing easy access to your battery compartment or your side ports. Or both.

Now, when it comes to tripod clamps, there is no simple solution here either. Some tripod manufacturers create tripod clamps which are only designed to accept the plate which comes with that specific model of tripod and if you have one of these tripods you may well be screwed. However, all is not lost. Believe it or not there is something approaching a "standard" tripod clamp/plate system, and this is called the  "Arca-Swiss Quick Release System". This was developed by a company called Arca-Swiss back in the 1990s and has been adopted by photographers all over the world. Because it is now so ubiquitous, it is reasonably easy to buy both a tripod head/clamp and an L-Bracket which are "Arca-Swiss compatible". With both of these, you should be reasonably assured that you will have a system which should work together however, be well warned, some manufacturers of Arca-Swiss compatible equipment play pretty fast and loose with the standard so you would be very, very wise to do your research and make absolutely sure that the tripod head and clamp you choose, will work with the L-Bracket you're interested in.

All of that said, if you do choose to wade through this particular quagmire of unnecessary complication, the rewards are a much simpler and convenient way to mount your camera to your tripod.

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Why You Shouldn't Give In To Gear Envy

Gear envy. Yup, there's many a time I've been sitting in a photography hide (or blind if you prefer) with my, well let's be polite and call it "economy photography gear" and there's somebody else there who has been camping out in the prime spot since sunrise with a lens the size of a bazooka and a camera which is firing off about a billion frames a second, with a second camera, with an equally enormous lens sitting in a branded backpack beside them. Sure, there's a moment of loathing, I'm big enough to admit it, but that stuff didn't just land in their lap - they probably worked their ass off for years and years to buy that stuff, so that temporary moment of loathing says way more about me being an asshole than anything it says about them. And when/if a conversation strikes up then 9 times out of 10 these folk have been very nice indeed, generous both with their time and the information they can impart.

So sure, I wish I could afford £20,000 worth of equipment. It would be lovely. But it's never going to happen so there's a lot of sucking it up to be done. But this does not mean that I can't take outstanding pictures with what I have.

Like all material things, there is a law of diminishing returns: as the price goes up, the improvements get less. A 600mm prime lens costing £13,000, in the right hands, is going to take a picture which is unsurpassed. Nobody is going to argue that fact. However, if I can take a sharp, well exposed and aberration free picture with my £1,200 lens then do I really have any cause to complain? Yes, I might have to tinker a bit more in post processing, I might have to sharpen things up and I might have to get rid of some purple fringing and noise but at the end of the day I'm not producing massive prints of my pictures, I'm not looking for magazine work or anything in the pro arena. I'm taking pictures primarily for me because I like it, and they're only ever seeing the light of day on social media and in some cases in these articles. In the future I may look at submitting some of my stuff to a stock photography site but that's not something I've done yet so this is a wholly amateur endeavour. My point is, the equipment I have, budget though it may be, takes excellent photographs and any failings I've encountered thus far are not down to the gear, they are down to me and my skills, or lack thereof.

As I've said before, you are quite welcome to spend whatever money on whatever equipment you like, but over and over and over again I hear professional photographers telling learners that expensive gear does not make you a better photographer. Why do you suppose this is?

Is it different light hitting that £13,000 lens? Is it a different composition? Of course not. And because it's light and composition that make great photographs, it clearly isn't the gear that matters - I partially covered this back in my Megapixels Don't Matter? article.

Now of course with that said, you really can't be expected to take a great picture of a bird from a photography hide/blind with a mobile phone, they just don't have the reach, so in that respect, and in that respect only does the gear come into the equation: obviously you need the correct tool for the job, but let's be realistic, I could put money aside every month, I could save for a £13,000, 600mm prime lens, but why would I do that? In my position it's far more sensible to buy the budget lens (which does the job) and spend the £12,000 I've saved on a few other budget lenses to do their jobs (for portraits, landscapes and macros for example) and then spend the rest on some plane tickets to see the world, to get new experiences, and all the while take perfectly serviceable pictures which, unless we were to blow them up to immense proportions, would look as good as anything I could take with that £13,000 lens (maybe with less tasty bokeh admittedly).

Too many people think better gear will help them take better pictures, and I just don't believe that. A wise man once said "Every famous photograph ever made was done with equipment that wasn't as good as what you have right now." And that's certainly worth thinking about. I consider the video I've linked to there compulsory viewing.

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Something From Nothing

Ok. So. You have all the gear. You have a camera, you’ve messed about with manual mode and you’re vaguely familiar with the exposure triangle. You’ve got yourself a competent tripod. Maybe you’ve upgraded from the stock lens and maybe you’ve got a couple of filters coz you’ve heard they can help. What’s next?

Here in Scotland, winter is definitely upon us. The days are biting cold of late and the weather is changeable – we can expect everything from gales, lashing rain or drizzle to bright clear skies. Sunrise is around 08:45 and Sunset around 15:45. The potential for great light is pretty high but the potential to get very cold and very wet is pretty high too and the temptation to stay inside all cosy and warm is almost overwhelming. On my days off, there are still things to do – houses don’t clean themselves and meals, sadly, don’t magically appear on demand. All the mundane things need to be taken care off and making time, forcing yourself out of the house with the camera, is often a herculean effort – with no guarantee of any payback at all.

Obviously I can’t speak for anyone else, but the above paragraphs are a pretty accurate description of where I’m at right now. And last week, still in the lethargic throes of Hogmanay excess, it was a pretty lazy, tired and downright unfit me that dragged his carcass out of the house for a much needed walk by the coast with the primary aim of walking off a few of the many thousands of unnecessary calories imbibed and clearing the head to face whatever horrors 2019 has to throw at me. The sky was not particularly promising with very little in the way of clouds and the temperature was hovering about 0 Celsius (32 Fahrenheit) but I strapped my camera gear (all 20lbs of it) to my back in any case, mainly because I need to acclimatise to carrying all my gear. Getting a photograph really was not at the top of my to do list. My wife decided to join me so I was not alone on this particular wee adventure.

The walk we chose wasn’t particularly arduous – a three mile round trip on good even surfaces, for the most part. Around halfway we paused and took a seat on a dry rock watching some pretty spectacular waves hammer the few miles of coast we could see from that point. I had a wee explore of the area, checking out a few rock pools and having a good think about the scene I found myself in. Looking south, across the rocks, the sun was low, about 30 minutes from setting. I could see it was going to set behind some trees on the horizon a little bit inland. Between myself, the rocks in front of me, and the setting sun was a little bit of the rough sea and some low farmland. The whole vista looked interesting but lacked any distinct focal point. For that reason it was one of those scenes that was lovely to be in, but not great to photograph. My thinking, however, was that if the sun were to bring a little bit more colour to the few clouds on the horizon just as it dipped behind the trees, that might create a focal point where there wasn’t one and bring enough interest to enliven everything to make a photograph worthwhile.

This was going to present enormous problems however. The rocks in my foreground were volcanic in origin and pretty dark, and given that they were now backlit I had very deep shadows to contend with. Secondly, the sky with the setting sun was extremely bright giving me the very brightest of highlights. This was worst case scenario stuff and made it very difficult to simply compose, never mind expose, as I was really struggling to see anything other than silhouettes of the foreground rocks with the naked eye. Here's a couple of pictures showing the extent of the problem:

Having plenty of time to mess around I used a 3 stop Graduated ND filter, the strongest I have, to see what effect this would have in darkening the sky but whilst it helped, it did not help nearly enough and it was very rapidly apparent I was going to have to bracket as well - the example pictures above were both taken with the GND filter. So with 25 minutes until sunset I started experimenting with my exposure. I made the decision very early to use a narrow aperture (f/20) because I wanted a sunburst effect and this would also help to keep the foreground rocks in focus – albeit at the expense of a little diffraction. ISO was staying at 100 and, on the tripod, shutter speed would be whatever was necessary – pretty quick for the shots to darken the sky, and pretty slow to brighten the rocks.

I took about 70 pictures – all just experimenting before the sun was in position and then, suddenly, it was all a bit frantic. The sun was only behind those trees for a few moments, and to avoid nasty lens flare I really did have to wait until the last minute before it finally disappeared and so I had to fire off the necessary shots very quickly. I figured if I had 8 pictures covering the full range of light that should be enough to get something and I guess this is where experience kicks in – if I was doing this more often I would be far more familiar with exactly what was needed to get the desired result. Instead I overcompensated. Still, I was overcompensating with a big old smile on my face as everything came together exactly as I thought it might. For the record, the shutters speeds were in the range of 1/25th of a second to 1.3 seconds, all at f/20, ISO 100.

Let’s summarise. On the positive side – I saw something with potential, I anticipated what was going to happen and what might make the scene better (position of the sun, potential colour in the sky and the decision to get a sunburst). I also knew that I’d need to bracket even with a GND filter on. On the negative side – inexperience meant I took far more pictures than necessary and once I found the initial composition I stayed anchored to my tripod and didn’t explore potentially better areas in that location.

In post processing I ended up using three of the 8 pictures, manually blending the correctly exposed parts of each to get the final, uncropped composition you see here. I also removed two small, errant lens flares from around the foreground rocks and added a slight vignette.

Blended composition

Now, I’m not saying that picture is perfect, not at all, but it is a pleasing and accurate representation of the scene I saw and conveys the barren nature of the place very well. With the sun being so bright the eye is naturally drawn to it first. As a focal point that works great. Overall it feels balanced with the large, slightly lighter rocks on the left giving some weight to that side and preventing the dark rocks in the mid-ground from being too dull and boring. If I have one complaint it is that there are no obvious leading lines from the foreground to the background and so it lacks an easy path for the eye to follow, and I do wonder if the mid-ground rocks are still too dark.

Obviously I could tinker with this further in post processing ad nauseum, but I’m not really inclined to at the moment as this is pretty much as I intended without looking over processed – it retains a wild and rugged feel whilst still being very simple. I like that. The takeaway here though is that I’m now starting to create photographs, rather than just snap them, which is definitely progress. Whether I’ve created anything worthwhile… well, that’s whole different article.

So, to answer the question that I posed at the start, what’s next is to keep getting outside, keep plugging away and learning the lessons from each failure and triumph but above all, to use that hard earned gear to create photographs that make me happy.

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WTF is HDR?

What is HDR exactly and how can you use it to your advantage?

Let’s start with the definition.  HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and this requires a bit more explanation. Dynamic Range is the term used to describe the range of luminosity within an image. Imagine you are standing on a beach watching sunrise: the sun is the most luminous object in the scene. The light from the sun will be lighting up the atmosphere and any clouds and reflecting off the water, so these will be the next most luminous aspects of the scene, then finally the sun will be shining on the beach and rocks, some of which will be casting deep shadows, so these will be the least luminous parts of the scene. All these ranges of luminosity, from the dark shadows cast by the rocks to the bright sun itself describe the dynamic range. And in this particular example, the dynamic range is extreme large going from extremely bright to extremely dark. If I were to take a single photograph of this scene I could do one of two things:

1)      Expose for the sky and sun and leave the beach, rocks and shadows in darkness or
2)      Expose for the beach, rocks and shadows and completely blow out the sky.

But, unless you are looking for a high contrast picture, neither of these scenarios is ideal and both will result in a photograph which fails to accurately capture the scene in front of you. This is because the sensor in your camera isn’t capable of capturing such a large range of luminosity – it can either expose for the really bright stuff or it can expose for the really dark stuff, but it can’t do both at the same time. And whilst the dynamic range of sensors is improving all the time, we are a long way from being at the stage where such a large variation in luminosity can be captured in a single image.

There are, however, a couple of things you could do to help.

The first is to use a Graduated Neutral Density (GND) filter. As discussed in this article, half of the GND filter is completely transparent and half is partially opaque, this serves the purpose of darkening the brightest part of your image whilst leaving the darker areas untouched and thus reducing the overall dynamic range of the scene. GND filters come in different “strengths”, and the “stronger” the GND filter you use, the darker it will make the brightest areas. In a situation like the one described above, this may work in a lot of instances but when we place a filter in front of the lens and point it directly at the sun we run the risk of introducing reflections into the image (light reflects off the lens, then off the back of the filter and then back into the lens). In addition, it is unlikely that even the strongest GND filter by itself would reduce the dynamic range of this particular scene sufficiently and you may have to stack more than one which in turn increases the risk of introducing colour casts into the image (Only really, really expensive GND filters are truly colour neutral) so what’s the alternative?

Well, if you’re prepared to put in the effort in post processing software, you can create an HDR image and this is the purpose of this article.

The principle of an HDR photograph is extremely simple but there are a couple of caveats. You will have to use software to create, and bring the best out of the image. To make your life simpler you should be using a sturdy tripod when taking the initial pictures, it will become apparent why in a moment. And finally you should either be in Shutter Priority mode or in full Manual mode with your camera for this to work well.

Okay, so we’ve established that taking one picture of our scene is not going to cut it, but what if we were to take lots of pictures, each exposed differently (by varying the shutter speed) so that in each one a single element of the total was well exposed? So for example, one or two pictures are exposed for the sun, two or three for the brightness of the clouds and the reflection in the sea, and a few more to properly expose the sand, rocks and shadows. On their own these would be useless but by using software we can blend these images to create one image which contains the properly exposed elements of all of them. By using a tripod to ensure the camera doesn’t move during the different exposures all the different images will align very easily and the end result will be a sharp and properly exposed image of the whole which can then be further adjusted in post processing to give you the final, desired result. And that, dear reader, is what an HDR image should be.

A few years ago, HDR photography got a bad name for itself when the internet was awash with overly processed pictures which, frankly, looked terrible; all sharp bold lines and pale haloes around edges, but thankfully that particular fad has passed and HDR is a legitimate way of dealing with situations where one picture alone just won’t cut the mustard.

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Fun without the sun

The last few weeks have seen downpours over the weekends. Because I’m at work during the week, the weekends are my only time to get out and about but as Autumn has given way to Winter it’s business as usual as far as the weather in Scotland is concerned and my poor camera was getting a bit neglected. As a beginner this isn’t good news. I want to practise as much as I can. However, all was not completely lost.

A couple of clear nights gave me the chance to try something I’ve been wanting to do for a very long time: try my hand at some simple star photography. Now I realise this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and if this isn’t yours then I take no offence at you leaving now. For everyone else, there were a few reasons why I wanted to do this – and not all astronomy related!

• I would be using my camera. This is never a bad thing.
• I would be forced to learn how to change camera settings in the dark. This improves muscle memory.
• It would be a clear demonstration of the limitations of my particular camera/lens combinations
• It would be an excellent training session for more advanced stuff later
• It would be cool to get some stars n stuff
• I would be able to give you a realistic idea of what you might be able to do yourself, as a beginner.

I set out with two goals: to get a simple star trail and to photograph one deep sky object. Now whilst I may not be the smartest man in the world, I’m not the dumbest and I knew from the outset that whatever I did I wasn’t going to get pictures that looked anything like the ones we can see from the Hubble space telescope – not by a long shot – this was always going to be somewhat less spectacular. And it’s important to know that before you begin. We are really spoiled with those stunning pictures and whilst it is possible to get amazing images from an earth based camera, I’m using equipment (camera, lens and tripod) with a total value of about £1000. I am not using any specialist equipment at all. And that is the whole point of this exercise: to answer the question of what can be obtained with equipment most amateur photographers (like me) already have?

Now, before I start to get into the meat and bones of this, I’m reasonably familiar with the night sky. I know a few of the constellations but I wasn’t sufficiently familiar that I didn’t need a bit of help navigating around and for this I used some free software called Stellarium. This will show you what is in the sky at your location and can help you find what you want to photograph. There are thousands of internet articles and YouTube videos which tell you how to use Stellarium properly so I would recommend you read up and watch these if you choose to use it. I live in a small town that has its fair share of light pollution and whilst I can see the brightest of stars from my back garden there is no possibility of seeing fine detail with the naked eye so I used Stellarium to show me where I would be able to find Polaris (the Pole Star) which I would need for my star trail test, and to find the Andromeda Galaxy which would be by far the easiest deep sky object for me to photograph. As it turned out, both of these were pretty much straight above my head – Polaris was up and slightly north (obviously) and the Andromeda Galaxy was up and slightly west. I used familiar constellations to point me to both – Polaris was clearly visible but with the Andromeda Galaxy I would be guessing – I could see a star it was supposed to be adjacent to so I would be pointing the camera there and seeing what happened.

Now, this isn’t just a case of pointing the camera, clicking the shutter button and coming away with what I want. It’s a little bit more complicated than that but not so complicated it’s not reasonably easy to get to grips with. The thing that needs to be considered first and foremost is the exposure triangle and to make this work you are going to have to use manual mode. Before you do anything else, put your camera into manual mode and set the aperture to its widest point (lowest possible f-number). We won’t be touching the aperture again. This leaves only the ISO and shutter speed to play with. For the shutter speed we need to employ a bit of maths (don’t worry, it’s simple stuff). Because the earth is spinning, the stars above us appear to be moving – and they are actually moving faster than you might think. If you want to take a picture of stars that are pin sharp, you are going to find that your shutter speed needs to be surprisingly fast. And the more you zoom into the stars, the faster they appear to move and the faster your shutter speed is going to need to be. This is where the maths comes in – it helps you calculate the fastest shutter speed you can use without seeing blurry stars. It is called the 400 rule (others have called it the 600 and 500 rule but when I tried those calculations I still ended up with blurry stars). The 400 rule works like this:

400 divided by your focal length equals the number of seconds you can have your shutter open without blurry stars.

 I was using a 50mm lens so the calculation is:

 400 / 50 = 8 seconds.

But wait – my camera has a crop sensor and the above calculation is for a full frame camera so we need to adjust the formula slightly:

 400 / (50 x 1.6) = 5 seconds.

So, now I know that my aperture needs to be wide open and my shutter speed needs to be no more than 5 seconds (as a guide) to keep the stars sharp the only thing I can now adjust is my ISO. With this in mind, it’s time to take a few test shots.

Many people find the hardest thing about this is getting the camera to focus but I actually found this very straightforward so here’s what I did. After mounting the camera on the tripod I switched the lens to manual focus (auto-focus is NOT going to work so don’t even bother) and switched image stabilisation off. I then switched the camera on and turned it to Live View. My aperture was at f/1.8, my shutter speed was set at 5 seconds and to start with I set my ISO at 1600. I then pointed the camera at the sky and by slowly scanning around eventually saw some very blurry blobs in the LCD screen – these were out of focus stars. I slowly turned the focus ring until the blur was a much smaller point. I then zoomed into the live view as far as it would allow and this allowed me to fine tune the focus on that random star. I then took the first test shot and chimped it to see how it turned out zooming in to see how the star looked at full zoom. It wasn’t a perfect circle and so I figured that a 5 second shutter speed was just a wee bit too fast so reduced my shutter to 4 seconds and took the picture again. The star looked much sharper. By doing this I’ve refined the 400 rule for my circumstances and going forward I’ll stick to 4 second exposures as my max for sharp stars (it would have to be less than this for stars lower in the sky as they move further in the same time – probably 2 seconds).

My next test shots were to refine the ISO. I chose 1600 as a random starting point as I knew I wanted to capture as much light as possible but on looking at the histogram I was far from clipping my blacks and I suspected all the ISO was doing was enhancing the light pollution in the sky above me so I reduced it to 800 and then experimented with lowering it still further just to see what effect it had on the final image. What I found was that 800 seemed like a reasonable compromise – I wasn’t clipping the blacks in the sky (so I wasn’t losing detail) and I wasn’t introducing too much noise. I suspect if I were in an area with much less light pollution I would need to revisit those settings but I would do that as a matter of course anyway. I now had my sharp star settings.

Next I wanted to crack on and capture the star trails. For best effect I wanted the stars to circle around a central point and that central point was Polaris. I eventually got the camera lined up with Polaris and looked again at my settings. To capture light trails I wasn’t worried about freezing motion in the stars as their movement was the very thing I wanted to capture. After some more test shots I settled on a 30 second exposure and an ISO of only 100 – this gave me some obvious movement in the stars but almost no noise which was a surprising bonus. To achieve the desired effect, I was going to need to employ another piece of free software – called StarStax.

StarStax (as the name implies) stacks all the pictures you’ve taken on top of each other automatically – so if you’ve taken 100 pictures with your camera pointed at exactly the same point in the sky, and each picture shows a very slight movement in the stars from every other picture, StarStax will create one picture that shows the total movement of the stars from your 100 pictures. I figured I would need to constantly be taking pictures over 30 minutes to give an obvious star trail and to do this I put the camera into continuous shutter and used my shutter release cable (which has a lock to hold the shutter button down). As long as this was locked, the camera would automatically keep taking pictures until either I stopped it or the batteries ran out. In the end my battery was barely dented (which was another surprise) and I stopped the process myself after 64 pictures had been taken. By now I was freezing and so because the forecast was to be clear for the following night I decided to leave Andromeda Galaxy for the moment and to process what I had taken. I must confess StarStax was a pleasure to use and the end result was pretty much exactly as I’d hoped.

Star Trails. The bright star near the middle is Polaris.

If I had gone for an hour – and taken 120 pictures, the trails would be twice as long, and so on. I am going to use the lessons learned by this exercise to incorporate star trails into future landscape photographs, including some sort of foreground interest which I am very much looking forward to. A worthwhile endeavour when there is more darkness than light at this time of year in Scotland – assuming there are clear skies!

Night Two

The weather forecast was correct and the second night was clear so it was all go for getting a picture of the Andromeda Galaxy. This is the closest galaxy to our Milky Way and is only 2.5 million light years away which is nothing in astronomical terms (there are galaxies which are 13 billion light years away). Because it’s so close, relatively, it’s actually quite a large object in the night sky but it’s faint enough that it can’t be seen with the naked eye if there’s any light pollution at all – hence the reason most people have never seen it. And such was my problem. Stellarium told me that the constellation of Cassiopeia pointed to it and I could see Cassiopeia just fine, so I could see the area of the sky where the galaxy should be, I just couldn’t see the galaxy itself. So it was all a bit of guess work.

Unlike my Star Trails experiment, this time I wanted any detail I did capture to be sharp with no star movement, so I was back to using a 4 second shutter speed with f/1.8 aperture and ISO 800, on the tripod using a shutter release and manually focused. I was still going to be taking a lot of pictures but this time over a shorter period of time – just 6 minutes. My plan was to place the galaxy about a third of the way up my picture. As the earth moved over the following 6 minutes, by the time the last picture had been taken the galaxy will have moved to the bottom third of the picture. These pictures were going to be stacked, but this time they would be stacked and aligned so that all the stars which are present in all pictures are placed over each other and some fancy software wizardry will clean up some of the noise leaving me, hopefully, with a recognisable picture of a galaxy. To do this I need to use a third piece of software, also free, called DeepSkyStacker. Now, that isn’t the most intuitive piece of software and I did have to watch several YouTube videos to get the hang of it and which settings to use but it did exactly what it needed to do, eventually.

Imagine my surprise when the first test picture I took revealed a small faint yellow smudge right where I expected to find the Andromeda Galaxy. Zooming in on the image confirmed I had found my target and first time too (with a little help from Stellarium for sure but I did have to point the camera myself – no fancy Star trackers here!). With that success I set the camera to rattle off 90 pictures. With this method, the more pictures I took, the more detail I would be able to extract from the final stacked image, however, if I wanted to run this for more than 6 minutes I would need to stop and realign the camera manually before proceeding – and whilst that’s perfectly possible, I didn’t feel it necessary for this experiment. So long as your settings don’t change you could take pictures of the same object over several nights to obtain thousands of pictures and the software will stack them all. Ninety pictures of four second duration each is equivalent to a 6 minute exposure time which I couldn’t undertake without specialist equipment so this was the only way to do this with what I had. I also took a bunch of “dark frames” which are just pictures with exactly the same settings as the images you want to stack but with the lens cap on so they only pick up the noise from your sensor which the software uses to clean your picture up. Very clever.

Once I got the hang of DeepSkyStacker I was still somewhat underwhelmed with the final stacked image – it lacked much detail at all. However, this is really only the start of the process. The image that DeepSkyStacker produces needs to be worked on further in your post-processing software of choice. It produces a Tiff file which should be pretty much universally accepted. However, this took an awful lot longer than any other part of this process – deepening the black of space and brightening the stars and galaxy without ruining one or the other and it was a chore I didn’t particularly enjoy. To give you an idea of what I was working with, here are some pictures from various stages of the process and un-cropped (although resized to fit this post) should provide you with a good idea of what you will see if you follow this methodology:

Andromeda Galaxy at 50mm straight out of camera.  Can you spot it?

The underwhelming,unprocessed, stacked image

The processed, stacked image. The Galaxy is clearer now.

A cropped version of the processed stack. The Andromeda Galaxy is clearly visible now.

And there we are – a picture of a galaxy so far away that light itself takes 2.5 million years to reach us. That yellow smudge contains about a trillion stars and (very likely) more planets than we will ever know. And I managed to glimpse it with a cheap camera and a £100 lens from my light polluted back garden. I’ll take that. With some more work, and a lot more photographs, I could pull out more detail and that’s something to work on in the future but the take away for now is that if I can do any of this, you certainly can. But not tonight, because it’s raining again.

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