Studying Orion with a Camera

 Life in General, Photography  No Responses »
Mar 182012
 

Orion is one of the most readily identifiable constellations in the night sky. Most visible in winter, when it’s a night-time feature of the sky, Orion is easily located via its triumvirate of aligned stars, known as Orion’s Belt.

Orion, Jupiter and Venus

In this first shot, Orion is left-of-frame, with Jupiter and Venus in close attendance with each other on the right.

In this second shot, the streak under Orion is the International Space Station, crossing completely under the massive constellation in a mere forty seconds.

ISS Underscores Orion

Orion’s Stars

Surrounding Orion’s belt are four other stars, held to be Orion’s shoulders and feet. His highest shoulder (right, facing the observer) is the red supergiant Betelgeuse, some 640 light years from Earth. It is the eight-brightest star in the night sky. The blue giant Bellatrix is Orion’s left shoulder, and is maybe the 22nd brightest star in the sky (accounts vary).  It is a blue-white because it burns considerably hotter than the sun, and is only 250 light years from Earth. Orion’s left foot, Rigel, is the brightest star of the constellation, considered to be around 860 light years from Earth. Rigel is actually a binary system, with the Rigel B star’s brightness dwarfed by the A star. Saiph (Kappa Orionis) is reckoned to be around 650 light years from Earth, and is 22x larger than our Sun. Saiph is the sixth-brightest star in Orion, although the majority of Sapih’s brightness is in the ultraviolet spectrum, and thus not visible to the human eye.

Orion’s Belt

Orion’s Belt consists of Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka (left to right). Altitak is 100,000 times brighter than the sun. It is approximately 800 light years from Earth. Alnilam is much further away – estimated to be 1,340 light years from Earth. It emits most of its light in the ultraviolet spectrum, totalling 375,000x more brightness than the Sun. Mintaka is 915 light years away and is in fact a binary system, with its two stars orbiting each other every 5.73 days.

In this third shot, Orion’s Belt is the three stars in a line pointing towards the top-right of frame.

Orion's Belt and Orion's Sword

The camera has resolved a number of stars not visible with the naked eye, and although this shot is taken at a relatively low zoom range of just 260mm, the top and middle stars of Orion’s Sword are already clearly distinguishably multiple stars.

Orion’s Sword and the M42 Nebula

I set out on this post to take photos of Orion’s sword. This appears to hang down below his belt, and appears as three stars. However, it’s much more complex than that, and with the naked eye, the middle “star” can be understood to be something else entirely. Indeed it is, the M42 nebula, held to be the most photographed nebula of all.

Orion's Sword at 520mm

At a 35mm focal length of 520mm, the lowest star is a singleton, the middle is a clear pair with a cloud surrounding it, and the upper star is a slightly more distant pair. The camera resolves a number of other stars not visible to the naked eye – at least not in a city with its light pollution.

Orion's Sword and the M42 Nebula

Zooming in further (1,040mm) we can clearly see the gas/dust clouds of the Orion nebula (lower-right-middle of frame) surrounding the brightest star, Zeta Orionis. Clearly I have more to research regarding the many other stars that the camera has resolved. However, I’m quite pleased to have clearly captured my first ever nebula. That’s enough for tonight!

Camera geekery…

All shot with a Canon EOS 1d MkIII on a Manfrotto 190 ProB tripod with a 390RC2 head and a Canon TC-80N3 remote.

  1. Lens: Canon EF16-35 F/2.8L II. 16mm. Exposure: 1.3s @ F/3.5 ISO 1600
  2. Lens: Canon EF24-105 F/4L IS. 24mm. Exposure: 5 frames at 8s @ F/6.3 ISO 800
  3. Lens: Canon EF100-400 F/4-5.6L IS plus EF2x MkII teleconverter. 200mm. 3.2s @ F/11 ISO 3200
  4. Lens: Canon EF400 F/5.6L. 400mm. 4s @ F/11 ISO 3200
  5. Lens: Canon EF400 F/5.6L plus EF2x MkII teleconverter. 800mm. 1.6s @ F/11 ISO 3200

Note that the text refers to zoom lengths including the 1.3x crop factor of the 1d MkIII camera body.

Mini Studio First Shots

 Tips and Techniques  No Responses »
Jan 112012
 

A combination of circumstances led to a mini studio setup being ordered from Amazon and subsequently delivered to the Edinburgh Chap’s house. Followers of my photography will know that an interest in product photography has been lurking, spurred on by occasional forays exchanging crap unwanted valuables for cash on the world’s largest tat bazaar.

When you come down to it, product photography is a lot harder than it looks. Trying to get a base and background that are not distracting is a challenge, and then so is lighting it. Trying to balance the inevitable blend of tungsten and flash lighting can be a nightmare, and I actually found best success using natural light from an offset window.

Canon EOS 1D MkIII with EF 24-105 F/4L IS USM and 580EX II
40mm. 1.0s @ F/10 ISO 250 Flash: Fired

Flash used for fill around the left side and catch lighting on the knobs. Primary light source is massive window to the right. Huge edits required to sort out shadows and surface issues with the base for this shot. You can actually see the power cord disappearing into the table!

Canon EOS 1D MkIII with EF100 F/2.8L Macro IS USM
15s @ F/25 ISO 200. Flash: Not Fired

This image was shot with darkness outside. Four tungsten lights directly above produced a nasty mix against the colours of the flowers, so were switched off. There was diffuse light from 2, 6 and 11 o’clock relative to the subject, but a very long exposure was required.

As for the base/background, I struck a usable seam with our kitchen work surface. Jet black granite backing up to white brick-pattern tiles. Place the object far enough from the wall, and then use aperture control to defocus the tile grouting worked reasonably well, but then lighting control was still immensely difficult.

Canon EOS 1D MkIII with EF100 F/2.8L Macro IS USM and 580EX II on PocketWizard
2s @ F/14 ISO 100. Flash: Fired

Reasonably successful shot this, although I’m not completely happy with the lighting. The flash was held at around 7 o’clock relative to the camera, pointing straight at the ring at a flat angle.

 

Canon EOS 1D MkIII with EF100 F/2.8L Macro IS USM
10s @ F/25 ISO 200. Flash: Not Fired

Cheating! Because the angle between the camera and subject is much more acute, the texture of the granite can be seen in the F/25 shot. Accordingly, this one is composited with one shot at F/9, where the chilli is not as sharp through its length, but the background is relatively defocussed.

Doing a bit of research revealed that I could buy a light tent – a fold-out white cube, with detachable backdrops. These came in varying sizes and with various additional accessories. It seemed that some daylight-balanced electric lights would be a good plan too.

A kit from Ex-Pro offered a 45cm cube with two lights and a mini-tripod for around thirty pounds. I suspected that the tripod wouldn’t be able to support a 1d with a macro lens and a twinlight flash, so would be next to useless, and the lights came in for some overheating-related criticism in the Amazon reviews.

I ended up traversing slightly upwards in Ex-Pro’s range. A 75cm cube sold by itself (with red, blue, black and white backdrops) for around £25, plus a pair of midi tripod-mounded day lights for around £40 would ditch the unusable tripod, provide a larger “tent” and replace the criticised lamps with more universally well-received units. Here’s the link for the tent, and here’s the link for the lights if you’re interested in following my path.

They arrived today, so I unpacked them and used the kitchen table as a support, placing the lamps either side – in the case of one of them using a handy chair.

Although the subject I chose (a set of Bowers and Wilkins headphones) did not require true 1:1 macro shooting, I chose the macro lens anyway, partly because I wanted to use the twinlight flash for additional light (and catchlighting) and partly because it’s an immensely sharp piece of glass. However, the reach isn’t quite enough from a centre-mounted position on the tripod, so I detached the centre column and remounted it horizontally. This creates stability worries, but allows advancement of the rig into the tent from a floor-mounted tripod.

Now the experimentation begins, learning how best to place the three light sources to light various subjects. Here’s my first effort, which I’m quite pleased with.

Canon EOS 1D MkIII with EF100 F/2.8L Macro IS USM and MT-24EX
2.5s @ F/22 ISO 100. Flash: Fired

First go with the studio kit! Happy with this.

 

Jessica, a Balance Bike, and a whole lot of photography experience

 Parenting, Photography  No Responses »
Jul 172011
 

Jessica on a Balance Bike. Picture © giles-guthrie.com

Camera: Canon EOS 1d MkIII
Lens: Canon EF 24-105 F/4L IS
73mm. 1/50s @ F/10 ISO640

I find photography to be a solitary hobby. I actually like it that way. In my head I mix my gear’s capabilities, my experience, what’s coming through the viewfinder, my knowledge of the situation, what’s about to happen, and what I want the shot to look like.

I press the button.

Sometimes it works.

But it’s mainly about me and the craft of photography. I need to shut out the parts of the outside world that are not related to the shot. The distractions have to go. And this often makes photography – for me at least – quite incompatible with family life. Children are – bless them – incapable of not being distracting. In the time it takes me to do my thing, they’ve probably run out in front of a car, goosed an elderly person or spilled a drink (not necessarily theirs). I’ve been doing macro in the garden, only to have the shot ruined by a child standing on the flower I’m trying to shoot, or frightening away the butterfly, or crashing into me just as I take the shot.

Every so often though, it all comes together, including the children, and I’m able to make a shot that I’m really proud of, and which has not required the exclusion of the ankle biters.

Above is a case in point. Here’s Jessica, during a balance bike (it’s a bike with no pedals) class at Center Parcs. Being an adrenaline activity, she was well up for it. While other parents sat on the periphery with their compacts or their iPhones, I got in amongst it. The shot above is uncropped and unedited (save for the watermark and Lightroom’s default sharpening).

Above, you’re seeing the experience of thousands of panning shots, the knowledge that to shoot a child you have to get down low, that you have to get in amongst it, ignore the stares of the observers, and that the wheels absolutely must be blurred.

Sometimes it works and I can bring the family back into my hobby, into my private world. I can cast off the worries and the insecurities that tell me I’m a crap photographer. I can point to an image, and say “There! There you were, doing your balance bike thing, and I captured it.” The pixels remain after the synapses have failed.

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