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UltravioletPhotography

The Night, and the Visitor


igoriginal

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Starry night sky, and the surprise visitor (meteoroid)

 

Full-spectrum photograph, custom-white-balanced.

 

I've been patiently working on this unique composition idea for quite some time, because it's not like you can schedule one of the main elements (the "shooting star") of this photograph to "pose" for you on a whim. It's a guest who chooses their own date and time of arrival, and unpredictably so.

 

Thus, it's taken months of routine nights under the stars, long-exposing multiple frames for hours at a time. But, the most difficult part about it is not the drawn-out outdoor time, in itself (that's the easy part) .. but rather ... going through piles of photographs after each shooting session, hoping to finally spot your intended target.

 

(It's not like one can sit there for hours, and keep a fixed gaze on their chosen multiple-exposure spot. Chances are, our human attention would miss the moment, when it finally happens.)

 

So, the real search only begins, when finally seated in front of the computer monitor, after the fact.

 

But, when it finally happens ... it's an unbelievable feeling; an overwhelming sense of accomplishment! So, I thought that I would share this triumph - the fruits of my labor - with the rest of my UVP family, at long last!

 

Equipment used: A full-spectrum-converted Pentax K-01 camera body (essentially a stripped down, mirrorless version of the Pentax K5 DSLR), and among one of the 28mm F/2.8 lenses in my arsenal which I had discovered to be UV-capable, and quite sharp. (I will eventually make a formal post about my growing list of viable 28mm F/2.8 UV-lens discoveries, by the way. This is in the works, among other pending tests / reports).

 

Color-balance choice: I decided to do something different. First, I set my camera's "CWB" (custom-white-balance) during the daytime (under sunny skies), by placing my usual UV-pass / IR-block filter stack on the lens, and using PTFE (teflon) for my target; something we UV shooters already routinely do, as the "default" color-balance choice. However, when finally undertaking my composition projects at night, I exposed the images bare-lens (no filter in front of the glass), but leaving my custom-white-balance as it was set earlier, as noted. The results are quite interesting, if not gorgeous!

 

Purplish-colored conifer (pine) in the foreground, illuminated by the faint glow from a high-pressure sodium street light, somewhere in the distance. To human eyes, these lights give of that soothing orange-tinted radiance which many of us have come to know. But, based on the color-balance which I have set, in-camera, during the daytime and through a UV-only spectral response, the reflected color of the pine trees now appear in a striking and otherworldly deep-violet.

 

Meanwhile, the night sky is rendered in a more naturally-leaning hue, albeit with some cyan undertones. One could also make out the subtle, gaseous patches and dense clusters of far more distant stars - that being the cross-cut view of the Milky Way galaxy, itself.

 

And ... last but not least, suddenly the cobalt-blue visitor arrives! Yet, his blazing trail of fire is but a mere flicker of time.

 

Note that I've had this photograph for a while (back from June of this year), but I finally got around to finding the time to sort through my piles and piles of frames, discover this "diamond in the rough", and also process the picked-out image.

 

 

Focal Length: 28mm (42mm resulting focal length, due to 1.5x crop-factor of APS-C sensor.)

ISO: 1000

Aperture: F/2.8

Shutter: 15 seconds (remote shutter release, on sturdy tripod.)

Actual date / time of photo: 23:35 (Central-Standard-Time, USA), during "Summer Solstice" of 2015 (June 21.)

Position: 32.27° North latitude, 89.99° West longitude, 137 meters (449 feet) elevation (above sea level.)

 

post-34-0-31927000-1450931196.jpg

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Thanks Iggy

The colouration is gorgeous....as you say B)

The CWB is unusual, at best, I am a little lost, but I must try this.

I am planning on getting into night sky photography. I am getting a tinny set-up so I can get to a quiet location & well away from city lights, with a 360 degree clear sky.

Col

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Thanks so much for chiming in, Col.

 

Astrophotography had already been a long-time passion of mine, even before I got into UV/IR photography. I have a number of telescopes of various optical designs, various camera-to-telescope adapters, dedicated tripods, and other relevant equipment and accessories.

 

But, when I finally got into digital UV/IR photography, by way of a full-spectrum-converted camera, I was so excited to discover that so many additional celestial objects could be picked up by the sensor and imaged, due to the vastly improved sensitivity. In particular, "wide-field" astrophotography with a full-spectrum camera opens up a whole new world of night-sky shooting, because you go from having a stock (unconverted) camera being able to see only a few hundred to a few thousands of stars (on average), to a full-spectrum camera that can see as many as millions of stars (and other objects)!

 

Thus, what a huge enabler that it is, to use a full-spectrum-modified digital camera for astrophotographic endeavors, over a stock/unconverted digital camera.

 

Some of my other pending projects (in the works), is to test the UV transmission of various telescopes (especially for terestrial use, such as birding), and see if some telescopes have a good UV response. In fact, from what I can tell (by associated literature), some models of telescopes are DELIBERATELY built with a full-spectrum transmissive capability, given that their use will involve the detection and photography of celestial objects which give off a greater proportion of radiation in other bandwidths, rather than the visible bandwidth.

 

So, to be continued.

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