Anyone photographying the perseids meteor shower tonight?

Snowleopard

I am headed out with some friends and we are going to see what we can get.

proudgeek

I think I've got one more cloudy night here in northern New England. Hoping tomorrow or Friday are good. Are you planning on shooting single exposures or multiple time-lapse exposures?

Vipmediastar_JZ

IM planning on it. It is supposed to be clear tonight.

spraynpray

We are into hoping for gaps in the clouds where I live in the UK, which is a bummer because I have a new lens I am wanting to try out. I also have to drive over a hundred miles to find a dark enough area ($10 per gallon). X(

Parke1953

Sorry spraynpray I saw $2.09 yesterday and $2.14 for diesel here in Texas.

HipShot

Hoping to hear back from a couple friends in Springtown, TX, who have some acreage there, on a hill that overlooks a valley to the north. But they also have copperheads.

Edit: Just got home from my day job and I have to head out again early tomorrow. Maybe this weekend if it's still going on.

Vipmediastar_JZ

The nearest area to me is two streets away in a housing development area with a small dirt hill. However there have been coyotes there recently at night. Maybe I can finally use the TP-Link with a purpose (camranger equivalent).

heartyfisher

Went out for an hour .. saw nothing ..
But I dont know where to look(besides up) and I am in the southern hemisphere so ....

Vipmediastar_JZ

here is one of many articles to consider
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2015/08/11/how-watch-perseid-meteor-shower/31467383/

and how to photograph it

http://www.slrlounge.com/perseid-meteor-shower-2015-how-to-photograph/

heartyfisher

I did try photographing the night sky .. :-) I did teribly bad .. I may go again .. bigger tripod and shutter delay and more effort in focusing :-) thanks for the article will check to see if i can see anything ..

spraynpray

It was cloudy for me and the coming week looks worse :-(

@Parke1953: Thanks for that, makes me feel much better!

Wow, that slrlounge article is basic.

Nikoniser

Rather frustratingly this is a setup shot, I have lot of shots after this with much better composition and finer focus...but no bloody meteors in ! D810 and 24-70 at 2.8 - wish I had the 14-24 or 20mm 1.8 for this kind of work.

Vipmediastar_JZ

Wow, that slrlounge article is basic.

Found a more detailed one for you http://www.amsmeteors.org/ams-programs/how-to-photograph-meteors-with-a-dslr/

spraynpray

@Vipmediastar: Better, but still no cigar. He nearly gets to an important point but he gets it wrong at the last moment...

Ironheart

Which is?

spraynpray

Where he writes:

"The f/ratio or lens speed is usually written on the lens as a ratio (for example, f/2.8), and represents the focal length divided by the aperture. The f/ratio can be a difficult concept for new photographers, but what it means in meteor photography is this: with a faster lens you will capture fainter meteors. If the f/ratio is too high, you will miss most meteors. Ideally you want something in the < f/2.0 range. I have been successful with lenses up to f/2.8, but in my experience, once you go above f/3.0, your prospects of catching meteors rapidly diminish. There is nothing more frustrating than watching a meteor fly through your field of view only to check the camera and find out that the meteor was not imaged!"

The important point he didn't follow through on is the number which is the focal length divided by the maximum aperture is the important number. The larger this number, the better. HOWEVER this has to be balanced by the focal length of the lens. An 80mm f1.2 would give you a magnificent number 57 which is bigger than a 24mm f1.4 (17), a 14mm f2.8 (5), a 20mm f1.8 (11) and the 35mm f1.4 (25). Obviously you want the fov of the 14mm with the highest number but that isn't going to happen. The usually chosen lens is a 24mm but IME the coma of lenses wider than 35mm is too much so I have chosen to stitch two or more images with a 35mm f1.4.

I find these simple/bad technique articles are irritating as these people are treated like gods by so many people whereas all they actually are, are effective 'bloggers' who rely on the lack of knowledge of their readers.

Rant off.

There is a heck of a lot more to good nightscape photography than that, I am on a steep learning curve and still near the bottom because of the lack of dark skies in the UK.

Snowleopard

It's taken this long for me to get back to this, I left work, had a 2 hour drive to get to a dark sky with a friend, then shot for 5 hours, had a 2 hour drive back, 3 hours of sleep and work again....

For all that, I got a couple hundred of photo's of the milky way that exceeded my expectations (for the East Coast of the United States) which is heavily light polluted, and maybe 3 photo's with shooting stars in them (even at 14mm).

Outside of the 3 photo's with shooting stars in them, I saw around 90 shooting stars while I was setup with my friend and 4 Nikons' clicking away on tripods.

Rmologic

I too went out and setup in my back yard in San Jose. I saw a great big and bright Shooting star during setup and quite low on the Horizon. Wow was it cool. I got my intervalometer setup and let it fly by 10:30 pm. Woke up @ 5 the next morning and checked the rig out. Camera ran for over 4 hours with a 90% battery. Well The clouds rolled in around 11:30pm and completely obscured the stars by midnight!. No good captures.
I was using my D7100 and the Tokina 11-16 which had the highest rating light gathering from the list on Lonely speck pages. I had a heck of a time getting sharp focus at f2.8 live view 100%. I would pick the brightest star closest to center of the image and make the star as small and sharp as possible. I ended up at 15 sec time and still had small trials and hazy images. I will try again when I do not have an early call the next morning. R

proudgeek

Maybe next year.

spraynpray

Dratted clouds:

Snowleopard

Best Milky Way from the meteor shower..... Out of 5 hours of 20 and 30 second exposures I only got 1 photo of a meteor and it was so/so.

prototype

Managed to get a shot with 2 shooting stars (and a little bit of a third). The aurora borealis showed up as well...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/e233zrwgfwgzxa1/DSC_3565.jpg?dl=0

KnockKnock

Love these last 3 images. Thanks for posting!