Category Archives: Batteries

The Top 5 Night Photo Mistakes

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Bixby Panorama

Intern: I would like to follow in your footsteps to become an executive like you. What is the most important thing I need to learn?
Executive: That’s easy, do not make mistakes!
Intern: But how do I learn not to make mistakes??
Executive: You learn best how to NOT make mistakes by learning from the mistakes you do make. Also pay attention to the mistakes others make. You won’t have enough time to make all those mistakes yourself!

So what are the most common foibles that you hopefully won’t have to make yourself when shooting at night?

  1. Failing to turn off AutoFocus. Unfortunately at night autofocus is usually not a help as many cameras will seek focus and not finding it, refuse to take a photo. Or just as bad, will hunt for focus, and settle on something that is way out of focus for each shot. In the same league: forgetting to check focus!
  2. Forgetting to format the Memory Card. You’ve got autofocus off, and you’re really excited about that timelapse or star trail so you get your intervalometer all set and start. Whoops. That card is nearly full so instead of hours of great stuff you’ll get minutes and a full card.  It is best to format the card in camera to avoid possible problems if the card was formatted on a computer or in a different camera.
  3. Omitting a check for tripod stability. Uh oh. If you blow this one, it might mean your camera falls over and smashes against the rocks. We’ve been horrified to witness such a spectacle on more than one occasion.  Or about as bad: your camera waves in the breeze and gives continuously fuzzy results.  Step away from that tripod and look from different angles. Is the center column vertical?  If you push in different directions does the tripod move? Did you forget to fully tighten the leg locks? Center column lock? Head? Check again, just in case!  Steven snapped a lens in half because his leg lock wasn’t snug and the camera simply collapsed in the direction of the unlocked leg.
  4. Neglecting to start the intervalometer.  If you’re using an intervalometer it’s not difficult to press the start button and walk away only to discover you really didn’t press the start button OR the intervalometer was locked in OFF mode so just completely ignored what you wanted to do.
  5. Wrong settings. It’s easy to do, you spent the afternoon getting perfectly framed milky-smooth waterfalls.  Now it’s night time and you set your exposure to 30 seconds, but you left your aperture at f/16 and your ISO at 50!  Ooops. Or you just took that super high ISO test shot … and in your eagerness to catch some meteors you leave the ISO in the stratosphere.

You’ll notice we didn’t mention:

  • Failing to take the lens cap off.
  • Forgetting to charge the battery.
  • Failing to bring memory cards with you.
  • Leaving the quick release plate at home.
  • Toting your camera bag up a mountain while your camera remains in your car.
  • Leaving the polarizer on…

We’ve done all of the above. You might find our “Stackers Checklist” helpful to avoid these pitfalls and many more. Many of our students carry laminated copies with them.

What was your most embarrassing or frustrating camera faux pas?

How to Not Lose (Much) Sleep

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Save the Wonder II [C_070237]

If you want to catch the good stuff… like a meteor shower, or the Milky Way rising in Spring you have to be up in the wee hours. After midnight up to perhaps sunrise.  There are some tricks to pulling this off without collapsing – or worse, falling asleep at the wheel.  One problem with doing night photography is that motels and hotels aren’t particularly suited to the night photographer who would prefer to get to bed after breakfast and sleep until dinner – you often end up paying for two days worth of room that you only use for 8 hours!

So here are some ways you can “Store up Sleep” to support your night habit.

The No Stay Method

  • Get plenty of sleep in the afternoon.
  • Drive from home to the event.
  • Do the shooting
  • Get Breakfast
  • Nap on a cot, pad or bench
  • Drive back home, stopping to rest or nap as needed.

Obviously you can try to get to the shooting location sooner, but for most people it’s not safe to not get proper rest especially if you’re driving.  For example, if I know I want to shoot a milky way rise – I work backward from my arrival time.  Let’s say I need to be on site at 3:00 am and it is a 5 hour drive. That means I will want to hit the road at 10:00 pm. It might sound scary to drive from 10 pm to 3 am, but if you’re properly rested you may find the lack of traffic refreshing and the travel time that much quicker – I do this all the time!  To pull this off, see my “Body Clock Reprogramming” method.

Stay and Play method

  • Arrive in the early afternoon.
  • Check in to an area hotel, motel or campsite.
  • Get lunch.
  • Retire EARLY for sleep.
  • Get up EARLY (depends how far away you are from the location) Perhaps a 2:30 AM or earlier.
  • Do the shooting.
  • Get Breakfast
  • Get back to the hotel in time for at least an hour or two (or ask for late checkout)
  • Check out and go home… or stay another night.

Body Clock Reprogramming

A lot of people claim that they can’t sleep during the day. Hogwash, I say.  If I know I’m going to do a long weekend of night shooting, I can push my body clock around a little – in spite of my day job. For example, if I know I’ll be shooting mostly in the pre-dawn hours, starting on Wednesday, I’ll go to bed an hour earlier and get up one or two hours earlier. If you don’t get out of bed until 9:00 am… you’ll have to start reprogramming on MONDAY.  Do this each day before the trip – go to bed an hour or two earlier and get up an hour or two earlier the following morning.  If you normally arise at 6:30 (like I do), after two days you will find you’re easily awake at 2:30 AM – perfect!  And a day later you won’t have much trouble getting up at midnight and plowing through perfectly perky until well after breakfast.   Just remember to avoid caffeine and stimulants!  By the way, altering your body clock like this is a great way to get ready for an upcoming trip to another time zone.

If you can’t push your body clock that far, then plan to sleep or nap at your shooting location. I usually bring a fully reclining chair, a comfortable pillow and TWO sleeping bags – one very warm one, one that is only meant to take the chill off. I can then either sleep out-of-doors, or if necessary in my car.  This works well if I’m running a timelapse or star trail – the intervalometer does all the work. In fact, while I was taking the shots for this timelapse/startrail:

The Cove [C_071837-940br]

I was a dozen feet from my camera in my car out of the wind checking the progress every once in a while on my CamRanger. I didn’t have to leave the car except to change batteries or memory cards!  I didn’t have to use the CamRanger, of course, an intervalometer is just fine. There is an advantage to using a Canon for unattended operation, however. That red “exposing light” on the back of the camera can be seen from a long way off. I can easily and quickly take a look and know that the camera is doing its thing. With the Nikon, you have to watch carefully for the “green flash” as it writes to the memory card – if you have 6 minute exposures, you may have to wait a LONG time.  The CamRanger makes it a bit easier because I can also check the images, and the camera battery status, and memory card status remotely.

Leave The Gear

Oh, and there is one more way: set your camera up, leave, and come back for it. I usually aim to return BEFORE dawn because few humans bother to be out before the sun is up. My gear has been left alone in the wild quite often.  Of course I’ve already triple checked and prepared for the weather conditions and I place my camera where it’s not easily located – except by me. It’s a good idea to triple check all your settings. More than once I’ve left and upon return found I forgot a setting. For a belt and suspenders approach, I also keep track of the camera’s exact location with a GPS or by “dropping a pin” on my iPhone. Of course the downside here is you may need a huge memory card, a super strong battery, and you can’t have too much separation anxiety about leaving your gear. It won’t do you any good if you leave and DON’T get any sleep because you fear for the safety of your gear.  Trust me, your gear is braver than you are!

Sometimes when we run workshops, we take turns guarding the gear for one another, so you can also agree to leave a guard soldier behind if you shoot with buddies.  Just be sure to be kind to your guard – they will likely be grumpy.

Untimely Battery Death: How to Avoid It.

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As a night photographer I’m a proponent of the philosophy of “carry a big battery” and you’ll never miss that shot.  However I learned a hard lesson about my corral of batteries that I feel I must pass on before you too shriek in terror when you find your once reliable battery has met an untimely (and inconveniently timed) demise.

Lithium Batteries are Greatly Disturbed By Heat

This was the lesson I learned the hard way. I had a stable of five fully charged batteries ranging in size from 1800 milliamp hours all the way up to 8,000 milliamp hours. I kept them in a shaded part of my car through some summer days in the San Francisco Bay area.  And that was how I learned that Lithium + Fully Charged + Heat = premature death.  The two low capacity batteries previously allowed me two and a half hours worth of continuous night exposure. Now they each last about 12 and 15 minutes.  The three HUGE batteries that could easily power my camera all night long for continuous exposures now have about the same life in them as my regular 2000 mA hr batteries – that is, about 1/3 as long as they used to last.

I learned why my brutish batteries became so feeble at Battery University.  In a nutshell I discovered that storing batteries cool (less the 86 F) and at 40% charge is the most effective at prolonging their life.  What I do now is keep all of my batteries in a separate pouch which I take with me into my office or home – even if I leave my camera equipment in the car.

I’d like to heed the 40% storage method – but not all of my chargers accurately tell the battery capacity. And worse, when I’m running out for a night of exposures, I usually don’t have an extra hour or two to fully charge my workhorses.

And yes, repeated discharge and recharge of those batteries will diminish their life, but NOT as fast as fully loaded batteries baking at a mild 90 degrees or more.

 

Astro101: Checklist

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From the simple to the extraordinarly complex here is a list of things to take when you venture out to do astrophotography:

Starter Kit – Camera & Tripod

  • Camera
  • Wide field, fast lens (40 degrees or more, f/1.8)
  • Sturdy Tripod
  • Intervalometer – though a simple remote push button will work, too.
  • Memory cards
  • Batteries (plenty)
  • Binoculars
  • Green Laser (optional), see Target that Fuzzy
  • Planisphere / star chart / smart app like Star Walk.
  • Red head lamp / flashlight with red cellophane over them.

That’s about it.  This approach allow visual observation, and photographs of large areas of e.g. the Milky Way.

Intermediate Kit

Starter kit plus:

  • Intervalometer
  • Equatorial Drive + Polar scope + batteries  (Polarie for example)
  • Head/mount to put the camera on the Equatorial drive.
  • Stadium cushion or garden kneeler
  • Telephoto lens (zoom or prime)
  • Bahtinov Mask (focus aid)

Serious Intermediate Kit

All of the above plus:

  • Deep cycle marine battery (or astro power kit)
  • Laptop with imaging aid program (e.g. BackyardEOS, MaximDL, …)
  • BIG battery for your camera (or converter to use astro power kit)
  • Voltage inverter to power the laptop
  • Red cellophane to cover the laptop screen
  • Small folding table
  • Folding chair
  • Power strip, extension cords
  • Power inverter (convert 12 VDC to AC)
  • Modest sized apochromatic refactor, mounting rings, extensions, eyepieces, star diagonal, dual speed focuser, dovetail plate, heads up finder.
  • Optional: GoTo solution for the mount

Sold Out Astroimager

  • Large APOchromatic refractor or Reflector
  • Massive mount with GoTo control
  • Astro CCD image camera with thermo electric cooling
  • Filters for Hydrogen Alpha, Oxygen, etc.
  • Finder scope
  • Guide scope and autoguider
  • Lots of $$$$.
  • Large car to drive it around.
  • (optional) Sherpa to lift it all.

For more information, please attend a Webinar!  See the training list here, or see all events here.

Collecting and Processing Images

I have a Canon, and an windows machine. These two things together mean that I can use BackyardEOS ($25) to aid in the focusing and capture of night sky images; and I can use Deep Sky Stacker (Free!) to process my images.  Deep Sky Stacker takes some patience to learn, but it is mostly automated.

I understand “Keith’s Image Stacker” ($15) is available for Mac people – though apparently it’s not quite as powerful or as widely used as DeepSkyStacker.

Pricier and more complete options include ImagePlus, MaximDL, and much more. For a full list of options, prices and features, please see Jerry Lodriguss’s site.