Dawn and Dusk
The way I see it is that is you are up at 5 am, why not go outside and take some pictures.
Professional photographer Scott Kelby correctly states that there are only two times of the day that you can take landscape shots, thirty minutes on either side of dawn and thirty minutes on either side of dusk. I have plenty of pictures stacking up in my library that I took at dusk or in the late afternoon, so I would like to work on the other end of the spectrum for a while.
And so I wait for first light.
A few hours later. Looking back, I realize there was a fatal flaw in my plan: the sun actually has to rise in order for there to be light. 5:30 is a little too early. I waited for about an hour until I had to start working here. I took a few pictures of flowers in my backyard, but I used the flash and they didn’t look too good when I viewed them on the camera. I have yet to unload them and see how bad they really are.
For the record, you’re completely insane. But have fun with that.
… I suppose I can’t say you’re too insane, I’m up at 5 every day, and I’d love it if I had the time to take pictures. So I guess you’re lucky. ^_^
Yah, I guess I am insane. I won’t be getting up that early many more times.
I wish I had a tri-pod right now. I would do outside and take a long exposure of the night sky, capturing lots of stars and maybe the Orion arm of the Milky Way, if I am lucky. There is no way to do this without a tri-pod though, as you need to leave the shutter open for over thirty minutes, thus requiring ultimate camera stability in order to avoid blurring.
Having the 70-300mm lens would also help, if you wanted to get that much detail. You need to get a tri-pod, as do I, along with a camera.
Using a zoom lens to take a picture of the night sky is a bad idea. It just doesn’t work. They have telescopes for that. Not only does it not work, but it does not produce a technically correct image.
True, but without it, how can you capture the Orion arm of the Milky Way?
A picture is an imprint left as photons (particles of light) are captured by the image sensor. The longer the exposure (slower the shutter speed) the more particles have time to hit the sensor. The farther away something is, the less light reaches the sensor. Lets say that you take a regular picture of the night sky with a 1/60th of a second exposure and one photon sent from a star a thousand light years away hits your sensor. You see nothing. Now take a one second exposure. This means you capture sixty photons and sixty times the light from that star. Multiply that by 1800 seconds (30 minutes) and your can actually see some things that are very far away. Expand this to the entire night sky. Getting the idea?
Yeah. Makes sense