Paul's Night Sky

A deep, inky-black velvet sky with pinpricks of diamond-white stars. This is most certainly Not Coming In Dubai. Even on a clear night, there's so much light pollution bouncing back from the humidity and dust in the air that the whole sky takes on the pinky-orange glow of high-pressure sodium.

My offerings are all straight out of the camera except for cropping to 800pix. I set up on a tripod and tried a whole variety of different shutter speeds and apertures. Here are the edited not-quite-as-low-as-the-other lights.

Natural

Nikon D300s
Nikkor 18-200 at 95mm
F/18 1.6sec
ISO 2500

This one is as close as I could get to what my eyes could actually see. The sodium glow over Dubai silhouettes the gate light and the edges of the buildings. The crescent moon is visible, but it's difficult to see the whole lunar disc.

Moody

Nikon D300s
Nikkor 18-200 at 75mm
F/5 1/6sec
ISO 2500

I think the second image is more pleasing to the eye because it expresses more of a 'night' aspect.

Short DoF

Nikon D300s
Nikkor 18-200 at 75mm
F/5 1/6sec
ISO 2500

See what happens at a wide F-stop? The gate light in the foreground falls out of focus. I wasn't sure whether this is a fault or a feature. Certainly, putting less important parts of the image in shot but out of focus can help to give an impression of depth.

Which is it, then: 'Natural' or 'Short DoF'?

Cars - Off topic sorry.

Hi Guys,

Some of you might have seen these but I'll stick them up here for some C&C and abuse.

All shot with a 500, shutter about 1/60 - 1/125, f8 ish.
They are from the last round of the UAE TCC, First time really panning and lots of fun, access at the Autodrome is great and can get to all corners.

Some more on my car blog.

Cheers,
Richard B.

http://diary-of-mgb.blogspot.com/

Lights in the nights sky

Well here you go gents (and other viewers) is my submission for the subject of "In the night sky".  While out camping on the great dividing range last weekend I was setting up for a night shot, you know, the same old same old star streaks etc when a light came out of the forest....

f18.0 30.0 ISO3200

Night Sky

Based on Nick's and YBOD's recent posts, "Night Sky" is the current subject. How it is interpreted is up to the photographer. Come on chaps and chapesses, time to get creative!

Please post pictures before the end of June 2011.

cool link

http://skysurvey.org/

After a several month hiatus I present the above link which I was in no way involved with. It is, however, pretty cool.

And in case anyone's still out there, how about another round of photos and critiques? Anyone? Who has the random number generator? I'll pick 11.

N

Polo

I say chaps, anybody for some Polo ?

Shot with 500mm, set at Apperture priority at 5.6 (biggest for lens) then Focus in Servo mode to track and shutter on rapid fire.



This one I went full manual and dragged the shutter to give a panning shot.





C&C as well as abuse for going to Polo welcome.

Cheers,
Richard B.

Richard's Recent Shots

Hi All,

My turn to share some recent work (although some of you might have seen on faceache).

All shot with a three image bracket HDR, about f8 with a 10mm.
Then blended to HDR in photoshop and convert to black and white with sepia and a vignette.
Makes Bastakiya almost look old !

C&C Appreciated.

Cheers,
Richard