optimist prime

On Monday I wrote that I was not only going to watch this year's Perseids Meteor Shower but I was also going to try and capture the event on camera via digital still photography. I tried, and although I wouldn't say that I failed, I wasn't successful in capturing a meteor on camera.

What I did do, however, is learn a ton about SLR photography and photographing the night sky and in doing so realized my passion for photography and my desire to learn more and take this up as a serious hobby. And I will.

Onto the (two) night's festivities. On Monday night/Tuesday morning I stayed up until 2am watching what was by far the peak of the shower. There were about 40 meteorites visible to me/us that night, on a relatively clear night. I took plenty of photographs but didn't catch a meteor on film (or memory card to be exact). The second night, after being very tired, I only stayed up until 12am. I only saw two meteors (the night wasn't as clear) but I suspect I would have seen more if I stayed up later on both nights.

I thought I caught one on camera on Tuesday night, because I was shooting and pointed in the right direction when I saw a meteor appear, but since I was playing with aperture at that point and the meteor was faint, it didn't show up on camera.

After the first night I learned what I was doing wrong/right and therefore I was way more comfortable heading into the second night. I actually had a strategy heading into night two of using a higher aperture (of about 8.0) with a shutter speed/exposure of 8 second intervals with a cable release remote. This gave me some good results with some nice looking photos from night two, problem was that there were next to no meteors to capture. If only I practiced one night before the peak (I wasn't even aware that I was going to do this on the day of) then I would have been more ready. Ah well, it's all a learning experience.

Here is a link to my Picasa album with all the photos that I deemed worthy of keeping: http://picasaweb.google.com/shaheed.devji/PerseidsMeteorShowerAug1209?feat=directlink

I have attached a few of the photos here.

The first is what I thought to be a meteor from the first night, but it turns out that my aperture was too low (I was letting in too much light) and it was just a bright starin orbit.:

The second is when I began playing around at the end of the first night, letting in lots of light for a photo of the moon. Turned out cool. The album has a progression of different aperture levels:

The third is a photo of trees and the constellation Perseus from which the meteors were radiating. This was from the second night:

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I'm going to attempt to set up my camera pointed to the sky, with long exposure and high ISO and try and capture the meteor shower. I've never done this before and don't even know if my camera is powerful enough (in various ways) but this remote that I bought will allow me to look up at the sky and take photos instead of my eyes being glued to the viewfinder.

Hopefully it works. I'll post a post-project report.

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Guildford Golf Course in Surrey.

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