Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Whitney Photo topic

Next trip up I plan to take a tripod, to make the "ultimate" pan summit photo. I would also like to shoot star photos at Trail Camp. Any advice on that, for f-stop, shutter? Yes, this would be a film camera.

Bob

Here's my Astro album.

You need a combination of
)fast lens
)fast film
)long exposure

The above album was done on film a long time ago. I'm not sure I remember correct, but I think it was 1000iso film, 30 second exposure, 50mm F1.8 lens.

Exposures longer than about 30sec start being less sharp as the stars start moving enough to be noticable. This becomes more pronounced the higher the MM of the lens. i.e. you can get away with longer exposures on the wider lenses.

p.s. on the subject of Whitney panos.
Some Whitney panorams I created from Richard Piotrowski's photos.
Mt Whitney Summit 360deg panorama
( requires Apple QuickTime to view, non QT image in above pano album )
Richard's original album


THANKS Richard!

It has been a while since I've shot starlight stuff but I would go for 400-speed film or so and a wide-angle (35mm, preferably 24mm) lens and, as noted, the faster (smaller f number), the better. A fast 35mm, like the Nikon 35mm f1.4, would be preferable to the more typical 24mm f2.8, although it would cover less sky.

I'd bracket pretty widely, lens wide open and run from 1 second to at least 1 minute, maybe 2. Depends on your camera and whether it has a cable release and T or B setting. My DSLR is kludgey if you want anything longer than 30 seconds...unless you have the pricey electronic "cable release." My old (1972-vintage) Nikon FTn had a T setting that you opened the shutter and left it that way as long as you liked, then rotated the shutter speed ring to close it. Generally, I'd open the shutter with the button, manually time the exposure, then put the lens cap on before closing the shutter to minimize camera motion.

I haven't tried anything similar with the DSLR yet...next time I'm somewhere really dark, I'll take my tripod and 12~24 zoom or 10.5 fisheye and see what happens with the DSLR.

As far as panoramas, I shot this one at the top of Whitney back in 2001 with my first digital camera (Nikon 990) and fisheye adaptor. Now that I have the DSLR and 10.5 fisheye, I ought to go back up Whitney do redo that pan in this quality. (There is a full-screen Quicktime version linked to the bottom of that page. If you don't mind 4meg files, take a look at it for what can be done with my newer rig. The Java version that comes up with the page is ok, but the full-screen version shows what the real sharpness looks like.)

There is a bit more info about how I shoot and build those pans under the "Panoramas" pulldown on my web site.

I shoot with a Nikon D50 digital using a 50mm and an 80-300mm zoom. Would anyone like to make suggestions on settings, etc. concerning the use of digital for this type of photography?

Thanks!!

Walt,
I would say your 50mm lens would be best for both pano and astro photography. Obviously for both you will want a decent tripod to reduce movement (for astro) and assist in frame alignment (for pano). I use a D70 and it has a built in noise reduction setting, however can only be activated with the remote shutter release. When taking extended timed images, noise starts to develop as the sensor starts to heat up. The noise reduction helps to remove this .

As far as your settings goes, it depends on the lighting available. I would say in both situations you should use an aperture setting of at least F10.

The good thing about digital is you can keep trying until you get it right.

This was my attempt a few years ago with an astro timed exposure. It was taken at about 10 PM, for thirty minutes plus the thirty minutes for the noise reduction cycle.

The other thing that will really help pano shooting is a "nodal point" mount. The tripod socket in many cameras isn't even lined up on the lens axis, and to minimize the parallax between successive shots and make your images stitch easier, you want the system to pivot about the point at which the light rays cross inside the lens (typically where the iris diaphragm is located, give or take).

If you're shooting 35mm in landscape orientation, it's pretty easy to make a mount out of nothing fancier than a piece of flat aluminum, say 1/16" or so thick. If you plan on shooting in portrait orientation (for greater vertical coverage but more shots to cover the horizontal view), you'll need a bit fancier bracket either pieced together or made out of something like 6" by 6" by 1/4" or 3/8" aluminum angle. Been there, done that, need to document my stuff one of these days. (Helps that I have access to a machine shop at work...and remember how to run a milling machine from my undergrad days.) Adding either a carpenter's T-level or one of those omnidirectional bulls-eye levels is important to keep the rig square and plumb when you're taking the shots. Otherwise, your horizon will look like you were seasick when you shot the pan...

For a very good discussion of nodal points and how to identify them for particular lenses, take a look at this page on the 360texas.com site.

One other thing...I leave the tripod at home. My hiking staff has a knob on top that mounts on a 1/4-20 threaded stud, so I take the knob off and attach the pano bracket to that. Using the level on the bracket and keeping the spike on the hiking staff as the pivot point works quite adequately and saves lugging a separate tripod. Of course, if you're shooting star shots, you'll be lugging the tripod regardless.

Thanks, Alan. Lugging the tripod will not be a chore. After you go to the effort to hike up there, your photos would be that much memorable, I think. For the star shots, I would like to take a photo of the Trail Camp ridge line with stars with enough exposure to show the stars and mtns, but not star trails. I also have a simple cable lock for the B exposure setting.

Bob Rutledge

Hi,

There is some very good information in the posts below. Fast film, a fast lens and a good tripod do indeed make a difference. I would also like to point out that the digital age offers some great tools to make such photos much easier to produce. Here's a shot taken this summer on the summit, which is actually 6 different photos stitched together using Adobe Photoshop software. The process is so simple, anyone can do it. I took these shots, click, click, click, click while hand-holding my camera and rotating my body. I paid little attention to keeping the horizon straight and only made sure that each of the frames overlapped so Photoshop could find common elements and join the images together.

Mt. Whitney Panorama

You don't need a digital camera for this since you can ask to have your film images loaded to disc at the photo processing lab these days.

Star trails are a different story. In some ways, older film cameras with their limited battery drain are easier to use than digital cameras.

It is best to wait until well after sunset before beginning the shot because the western sky will record much more brightly than the rest of the sky. Aiming the camera straight north will ensure that the star trails circle around the North Star. I use either a locking cable release, or strong gaffer tape to hold the shutter release down for the 15 minutes or more I prefer for exposure time. Trip the shutter release with a lens cap in place. Tape the shutter release in the open position, then remove the lens cap. Start your stopwatch, and wait at least 15 minutes or more. Use an f stop around f 4 to f 5.6 to ensure the image will be nice and sharp. Try exposures at 15 minutes, 45 minutes, and two hours and see which one you like best. If you live in an area with a reasonably dark sky, you can make some test exposures at home to find out what works best. Clear moonless nights produce the best stars and high altitude really helps. Film suffers from a condition known as reciprocity failure during long exposures, that is, the longer the exposure, the more the film will record colors incorrectly and the longer the exposure will need to be to compensate for the film's inability to respond in a linear fashion as time increases.

Here is a picture taken last summer from high in the White Mountains to show what you could achieve.

White Mountain Stars

Nice photos Bjammin.
I applaud you on the summit pano containing people. Often people do not cooperate, wandering from one frame to another and without definate lines or spaces between makes a clean pano very difficult. A crowd is even more challenging if not impossible. Regardless, it does take forethought in the composition, it's an easy press of the button otherwise.
Joe