Sunday, June 5, 2011

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'?

Thursday, June 2, 2011

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/