Category Archives: Photography

NEOWISE

In July, my sons and I went to Danehy Park in Cambridge to see Comet NEOWISE. We got there before sunset to find a good position on the hill in the park.

Sunset from Danehy Park

It wasn’t the best location, even besides the mosquitos that came out after dusk, but it was a good opportunity to try time lapse/astro photography.

A night out with Comet NEOWISE

It wasn’t easy to find Comet NEOWISE with the naked eye, so I pointed my camera in the right direction, took a long exposure photograph, then checked if the comet was in the photograph. Whether it was there or not, I repositioned the camera to either find it or get a better picture of it.

A night out with Comet NEOWISE

It was an iterative process.

A night out with Comet NEOWISE

I played with the duration of the photographs experiencing that long durations at high focal lengths result in star trails. Some had a good balance.

A night out with Comet NEOWISE

The next day, clad in bug spray and long pants, my son and I tried photographing the comet from the top of the Alewife MBTA stop garage in Cambridge. The combination of the clouds and the bright garage lights hindered my efforts to get decent pictures. It was a good scouting opportunity. Unfortunately, the weather since hasn’t been great so it was good we went out the earlier night.

Flowers and a Spider

Photographed flowers in the yard recently. No use of focus peaking this time, but I used HeliconFocus to stitch the sharp part of images together. Click on the images to view them in more detail. You can then zoom into them further.

One among many Raspberry dewdrops Getting the day started The real raspberry creator Pretty weed

Also found this spider in our house. It was a mostly willing model, but eventually it had had enough.

Ready for my closeup Done with modeling

All images taken with my Sigma 105mm f/2.8 macro lens on my Nikon Z 50 via the Nikon FTZ adapter.

Rhododendron flower

With the warmer weather of Spring, our Rhododendron is blooming. I continued my adventure with macro photography and focus stacking by taking multiple images of some of the flowers. This one was the best:

Rhododendron flower

I zoomed in on my camera’s screen and manually focused the lens for each photograph. Next time I will try using focus peaking.

Robins in the Rain

I played with my new camera yesterday by photographing the birds that gathered in our back yard. Due to the rain and a desire not to scare them off, I took most of them through the back door window, which wasn’t as bad as I expected.

The ISO of the images is higher than it should be and they may not be as sharp as I would like since I haven’t learned the autofocus system well. Rather impressed by the camera, though. A noticeable improvement over my Nikon D3300.

At least the birds are free to move about even if we aren’t during the pandemic.

The sun will come out tomorrow Robins in the Rain Robins in the Rain Turn your back on the world