Star Light

This is my first "serious" attempt at a nitescape. I was at Summit Lake,

at the base of Mt Evans, Colorado around 0200 hrs doing some

nitescape shots. In this image, I took a series of shots of the Milky Way

with Summit Lake in the foreground, and Mt Evans just off to the left. In

this shot, I took three images, one exposing for the milky way (around

0400 hrs), and the other for the rocks and mountains (around 0500 hrs).

The difficult part of doing these kinds of shots is getting the focus right

due to the lack of detail during nightime. The story behind the scene was

bats were flying and feeding on the moths and other bugs around the

shoreline. I even had two bats nail me on the head. Just before daylight,

the bats were going crazy all over the place or it was just that I can see

more without my headlamp. also, there is a little bit of light pollution in

the background from a few mountain towns, like Georgetown.

Anyways, these were taken using a Nikon D700, Tokina 16-28 f/2.8, 25

sec exposure for the Milky Way. Getting to the point of taking this image

was a little bit of a learning process, and should have it nailed down next

time. I think ideally, my Sigma 50mm 1.4 lens would have been the

choice, but, I could not get the scene composed properly w/o a wide

angle lens.

Anyways, comments are always welcomed!

© Dejan Smaic | SportifImages.com 2012

Subtle, yet sweet, Dejan! This one's best viewed in a darker room and really imparts a feeling of a night shot. Excellent work!

All the best,
Neil

excellent work...brilliant...my best

Beautiful shot! Always wanted to do something like this.

I think in such case DOF calculator would be helpful. Accordingly to the calculator, the parameters you used and the distance to the closest rocks in foreground 30 feet away the DOF is 4.7 ft - Infinity. So my point is it is not required to focus it at all, but  just set the distance approximately using the lens scale. Moreover I think you could keep the apperture more opened and thus decrease ISO or exposure time and have enough DOF.

Would be nice to hear feedback from people who have practical expirience