One Click – Milky Way And Meteors

 One Click  Add comments
Aug 132012
 

f1.6, iso3200, 15 seconds with Canon 5D Mark 3 & 24mm f1.4 II

Some of you might know that every August the earth passes through the trail of a comet and we experience a meteor shower know as Perseid.  This year it would take place on August 11th and 12th so I spent a couple of night trying to make a cool shot.  When you are shooting the sky like this you always need to have something in the foreground to give some scale and place.  I like the way this clump of trees is triangular, leading into the corners and as luck would have it , I captured this meteor right in between the trees and the Milky Way.  Compositionally it was a jackpot as anywhere else would have unbalanced the image slightly.

I kept the ISO high to keep the exposure time low and avoid any star trails.  This is where the awesome Canon 24mm f1.4 II comes in, and the high ISO quality of the 5D Mark3.  Minimal noise reduction in Lightroom 4 cleaned this up to near perfection.  In all I spent about ten hours under the stars over two nights and it yielded probably three images that I’m really pleased with.  I’ll share the other two in due course!

Equipment Used:

 

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  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=675110736 Seamus O’Really

    Once again Dan, loved it. Making me wonder if I should be looking at the 24L instead of 16-35 or 24-70….. thoughts?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=675110736 Seamus O’Really

    Also been shooting with the 300 2.8 IS II and loving it. Have been using the 1.4TC mk III with it and the combo works so well that I’m considering getting the 2.0TC mk III as well. Have you had any experience with that last combo? If so what did you think?

  • DanCarr

    I think the flexibility of the zooms is initially more important but after that I believe the Canon 24mm f1.4 II is one of their all time best lenses. It’s hard to just get the 24, you really then need a 50mm to go with it to fill the gap up to the 70-200.
    As for the 2x III , I own one actually and I use it on my 300mm sometimes. I also own the 1.4x III. It produces a useable image if you stop down to f11 but to be honest, the main area of trouble is the AF speed decrease.
    I would say that if you only want to get to 600mm occasionally then by all means get one, just don’t go thinking that it’s a definitive alternative to a 500mm or a 600mm.

  • http://twitter.com/QimpBeloso QimP

    Hi Dan,

    As you say “Minimal noise reduction in Lightroom 4 cleaned this up to near perfection”

    That means you just don’t use the 5D mk3 noise reduction option?

    It’s not really worth it?

    Thanks.

  • DanCarr

    This is a good question.

    No in this instance I did not use the in camera long exposure noise reduction. It is not something I have ever tried using and actually when I got home from shooting this I really wish I had tried it out. So I can’t speak for whether that would be a better way to do it but I can say that the results are perfectly acceptable like this anyway. Next time I will compare the on board noise reduction.
    thanks,

    Dan

  • http://twitter.com/QimpBeloso QimP

    That happened to me last time I was out at night shooting at high ISOs, that’s why I asked.

    I’ll do my own tests too but definitely looking forward your own experiences and thoughts.

    Cheers.