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Nice! Great pictures! Keep 'em coming.

Matt...Love the Milky Way over Durango shot.

The Garden of the Gods shot inspired me to post one of my own that I took on Christmas morning. I had just bought a new 50mm lens and wanted to see what it could do. With just a hint of light on the eastern horizon, I put my camera on the tripod, opened the lens all the way, set the exposure to 30 seconds and the focus to infinity. It's wasn't a perfect result, but I kind of like the dreamy feel created by combination of the unintentional soft focus, the star trails, and the vignetting in the corners.

I decided to add some stars to the big dipper while on vacation in Minnesota this past summer :D

vonmackle wrote:My wife and I camped a couple nights near treeline along Matterhorn Creek this week. This is the view from our camp as I woke up at 4:15 on Thursday morning to hike Uncompahgre and Matterhorn:

Great shot! how do you get the foreground so bright and focused like that? I assume high F-numbers on your aperture, and a longer exposure, but even then...was the moon out?

TCUTED wrote:Great shot! how do you get the foreground so bright and focused like that? I assume high F-numbers on your aperture, and a longer exposure, but even then...was the moon out?

Thanks! Yes, I believe it was around a quarter moon. I love shooting using moonlight. For this shot I used a five minute exposure at f4, ISO 400. Everything was far enough away that I could use a wide aperture and still have everything in focus. I manually focused on the moon (which was above and behind me) and then carefully recomposed the shot so I wouldn't bump the lens back out of focus.

vonmackle wrote:Nice! Great pictures! Keep 'em coming.

Matt...Love the Milky Way over Durango shot.

The Garden of the Gods shot inspired me to post one of my own that I took on Christmas morning. I had just bought a new 50mm lens and wanted to see what it could do. With just a hint of light on the eastern horizon, I put my camera on the tripod, opened the lens all the way, set the exposure to 30 seconds and the focus to infinity. It's wasn't a perfect result, but I kind of like the dreamy feel created by combination of the unintentional soft focus, the star trails, and the vignetting in the corners.

Really nice shot, man. Good work.

Matt, I just recently checked out your photos on Flickr. You have some great stuff on there!

vonmackle wrote:Matt, I just recently checked out your photos on Flickr. You have some great stuff on there!

Thanks man... been trying to expand my horizons a little bit... doing a 365 project this year so it is keeping me thinking!

Moonrise, Raspberry Mountain, Pikes Peak

I was in Dinosaur National Monument for a few days last week and actually made the effort to get out and practice some moonlight shots. Despite being a couple days before the full moon, that moon was bright! Can't wait to get out and try some more moonlight photography the next time around.

Steamboat Rock from Echo Park Echo Park View from the overlook above Green River Campground

some awesome pics. the ones that look like daylight, is that from moonlight or iso 5 million?

I love night photos - probably because I barely see any stars where I live, so it's nice to see them in pictures.

One thing that has helped is buying a remote shutter release (very inexpensive Nikon model) so you don't shake the camera when you press the shutter.

These two are probably my favorite so far, taken from a camp on the Colorado River in Canyonlands National Park - a full moon was rising and lighting up the canyon walls




For those with the star trail photos, how long of an exposure does that typically require? I haven't yet had the patience for those!

prestone818 wrote:the ones that look like daylight, is that from moonlight or iso 5 million?

In my Dinosaur NM set, it's more of a combination of bright moon, longer exposures, wide apertures and exposure adjustment in Lightroom. I try to keep the iso setting lower to reduce noise.

Here are the settings I used for the three pictures.

Photo 1:
2 minute exposure at iso 200, 24mm at f4 I had to increase exposure in lightroom because it was underexposed.

Photo 2:
20 second exposure at iso 400, 50mm at f1.4

Photo3:
30 seconds at iso 200, 50mm at f1.4

Leigh wrote: from a camp on the Colorado River in Canyonlands National Park - a full moon was rising and lighting up the canyon walls

Nice shots. I love how the Big Dipper sits just right over the canyon walls.