panstarrs c/2011 L4 Archives

Artborghi’s 11 hints for astrophotography pictures with D800: from tripod to ISO choice

1. Location: choose a shooting place out of cities / airport areas (whatever camera you own).

2. Tripod: buy a sturdy tripod. It will be heavy, but the D800 is heavy too. You want a tripod stable whatever wind strength / terrain. I bought a Manfrotto 055XPROB (2.9 Kg!)

3. Tripod Head: choose a smooth and precise “move and shoot” head with a quick release usable also by night (i.e. easy to mount/ dismount). I chose the awesome Manfrotto 054 Q2 Head. The head can stand more Kg than the tripod, but I love how easy is to point and shoot with this supersmooth head.

4. Sensor: full frame! You own the D800 or another Full Frame camera, you’ll get as much light as you can even with fast esposure time. Fast times are preferrable to avoid airplane / star trails.

5. Zoom Lenses: as fast as the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II . Open down to f/2.8 at 200mm this lens is excellent for astrophotography – unless you have > 4,000 euros to spend on other awesome prime long Nikkor lenses.

6. Manual focusing: the 70-200 VRII is sharp and fast (and heavy) and its manual focus is amazingly accurate. AF for comets and similar weak objects by night mostly fails.Read More

MOVEMENT, NIGHT, SKY

Artborghi PanSTARRS C/2011 L4 – THE MOVIE

Pardon me for posting a looping animated picture for a real movie. Nevertheless, I think this few frames looping for 40 seconds will give you a better idea of the show we could shoot from the Uto Kulm in Zurich, Switzerland.

Enjoy it in full HD (go for Youtube full screen and after starting “play” choose HD settings by clicking on the small gearwheel)

Here is a easy to follow setup to ALWAYS play in HD when in full screen!

AWARDS, NIGHT, SKY

Artborghi PanSTARRS C/2011 L4 gets published on 20minutes.ch

One of the pictures I shot yesterday night to PanSTARRS C/2011 L4 got into the news of the top Swiss news portal (as ranked 2013 ) 20minuten.ch ! Many thanks also to the editor of Astrolexikon (http://www.astronomie.info) for publishing the picture! Not bad for a chilly night !

PS Click here for additional Artborghi PanSTARRS pictures on flickr.com

NIGHT, SKY

PanSTARRS C/2011 L4 on Üetliberg on 15.3.2012: the comet comes to Zürich, ARTBorghi is there to catch it!

Finally a clear sky tonight. With the help of a new and very sturdy Manfrotto tripod, up in the though wind of Üetliberg Uto Kulm panoramic-terrace , my D800 could catch PanSTARRS C/2011 L4 showing off west of Üetliberg. Thanks to the Polish guy with the brightest binocular I ever seen for helping us finding the comet.

Enjoy the pictures as we enjoyed the Uto Kulm restaurant after freezing on the top level of its panoramic antenna. Click HERE on the post picture to open the flickr.com set on Artborghi PanSTARRS!

LESSONS, SKY

Waiting for the PanSTARRS comet: D800 time lapse option

Watch the movie full screen at HI-RES (1080px) (you set it by clicking on the settings icon in the youtube window after play starts) or you will miss several details.

Waiting for the PanSTARRS comet, I trained with the D800 time-lapse option. First part of the post movie was shot 1 frame / min (too fast), second at 1 frame / 10 sec (the speed I prefer), third at 1 frame / 20 secs (still too fast).

The camera mounted the Nikkor 50 mm F/1.4G and was set on:

– f/2

– ISO 640

– Mirror up and tripod to avoid vibrations

– centre balanced metering to have small overexposed areas.

The pictures of each movie part were merged into a .MOV file in camera, so not too many options were left for editing except into Windows Movie Maker or similar. Next time I will try D800 Interval pictures instead, as each frame is separately saved as single file and open for more modifications.

PS Mind switching off every automatism from the camera or you will get the flickering unwanted effect of this post movie… I suspect the AWB being the cause for it.

In the movie below every automatic feature of the D800 was off: much better!