First Published November 17th 2017
When i started out to John O’Gaunt last night i was reminiscing about my previous 2 jaunts here. The first, was the first time i got a cracking shot of the milkyway. I spent the whole night here shooting and got home at around 6am the first time i was here, and really enjoyed the whole evening.
The second time involved an altercation with a pretty angry farmer. We were walking across ‘his land’ as it were. We left pretty much immediately as i had a couple of backup locations to go to anyway.
This time, i did roll up to the farm and knock on, hoping to chat about what i wanted to do, but no one was available. Either way i drove up to where i wanted to be and started getting the kit ready.
As i wanted to do a quick walk to the location and back, i just setup the tripod and camera with the 14mm Samyang. Set the focus to infinity, as that has always been perfect for everything else i’ve done, and attached the external intervelometer.
I did a couple of test shots from the edge of the road looking over the field while finishing my cracking filter coffee and chocolate hobnobs.
Exif: f2.8, 25 seconds, ISO5000
From here, even when you get out the car, it is so clear and also so dark, you can see the milkyway with the naked eye.
Really happy with the clarity of the the shot, even at such a high iso.
This was from the road looking over towards the viaduct and the public footpath down to it.
I thought at this point i would brave venturing down the public footpath.
A bit closer.
I took a few shots at different ISO’s and different lengths upto 2 minutes, to get a nice foreground. Even with that in mind, there wasn’t too much star trailing, so stuck with this shot.
Exif: f2.8, 78 seconds, iso1500
And kept walking up to where i wanted the shot.
Exif: f2.8, 25 seconds, iso4000 worked in Photoshop and using the google nik tools.
Really happy with the result. good clarity in the stars and foreground. The Andromeda galaxy and the Pleiades star cluster really bright in the sky. The constellation Perseus is up there somewhere as well.
As i walked back to the car as i was quite happy with what i had.
I decided to travel a little further up the road to a Bridge on the way to Marefield.
I setup a star trail shot one side of the road and went off to setup the skywatcher staradventurer.
I don’t know whether it was a week at work and having to start wearing glasses this week, but i just had a complete mare with it. Couldn’t get the alignment i wanted, so gave up after about 20 minutes. I will get some more practice in with the alignment process somewhere a bit better for now. When i’m happy with it, i will try again.
The star trail looked good through all the single shots. A little editing required to work out the car lights though, they did add some nice touches. Maybe for a later blog.
Exif: f2.8, 25 Seconds, ISO1600 x 63 shots
I’m sure there’s something involving steel wool spinning that would complete this shot nicely.
After finishing up this i did get back home, as it was a school night. Doesn’t usually stop me, but responsibilities.
I now have a store for Prints and anything else. Look at the top of the page and click on Shop. If you want to email me for a custom order, or something not in the shop drop me an email.
Finally, have fun and stay safe, and enjoy shooting.
Any suggestions for future blog posts, drop me an email. I will at some point be going into more detail on future posts.
you can see more of my work at
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