Shooting meteor showers

[CaraRose]

We go to Leelenau State Park in Michigan every year, which always coincides with a meteor shower. I'd like to set the tripod up for a long exposure and see if I can capture any of the showers this year. Unfortunately, I do have some factors that I'm not sure if decent photos will be possible.

#1 is the lighthouse. There's a lighthouse not far away and while it isn't horribly intense, I'm afraid it may be enough to make such shots hard if not impossible.

Second is that I'm not alone. I can set the tripod out from the group but I don't want to have it completely out of site. People do come and go with flashlights. I'm not sure the best way to minimize the impact of this would be, or how bad the effect would be.

Thanks all...

[another view]

I've never been to that exact spot, but it's a beautiful area of the world. I think the flashlights are your biggest concern, having had that experience myself. You can either take a hike down to the water or point the camera in a direction that's perpendicular most of the action (for example, on a trail and pointing at a 90 degree angle to it). A longer lens would reduce the odds of a flashlight being captured, but then it also reduces the odds of getting a meteor in the shot too. Trial and error...

On the other hand, you never know what you'll get with somebody else's light. Here in Austin about five years ago, we watched the bats take off at dusk. Some guy had a huge flashlight with a red filter on it and at first I was a little disappointed because he kept using it (I have no idea why). I did kind of like the result though. The lighthouse - because it's consistent and spreads the light across the scene by rotating - might do something interesting too.

[mjs1973]

Good to see you're still around Cara. I haven't done any meteor shower photos, but I have done a few star trail photos. I'm guessing you will be shooting with your DRebel? If you are want to do long exposures, you are going to have a ton of noise. To help prevent this, I use a series of shorter exposures, and then combine them in post later. The first time I did this with my DRebel, I set the camera to take 30 second exposures, then locked the shutter button down on my cable release. Since the DRebel only has a 4 shot burst, the first 4 frames will go fine, after that, there will be a slight delay between the 4 & 5 frames while the camera writes an image to the card. The delay shouldn't matter much. Depending on how long you let things go, you can end up with hundreds of photos. You can use photoshop, or some other programs to combine all of the images once you get home. Here is a great article about using this technique for this type of work. I use the free Startrails program that Moose mentioned in the article,and it works great.

Not sure about the light house... Light pollution is always a problem with long exposures. If you use the technique of combining multiple shorter exposures, the light pollution may not be a big deal at all.

Since your camera is going to be pointed at the sky, people walking by shouldn't be a big problem. Unless they shine their flashlight into the lens or onto something you have in the frame. Sometimes I will take a lawn chair, and just sit with my tripod. Other times, I go back to the truck and take a nap while it's doing it's thing.

[CaraRose]

Thanks guys for your input.

I guess the best thing will be to just try and experiment. And scold anyone who shines a flashlight in the direction of my camera. I should probably try and finish up before the second bottle of wine is gone though if I want people to listen to me :P

I know what you mean about the noise, mj. I did star trails in Rocky Mountain once and in Buffalo National River, both were really nice aside from the noise. I'm not great at photoshop though, so I'm a bit intimidated by your suggestion (I do a little post processing in lightroom for exposure such, but that's about it).

I was at the south congress bridge last summer when we visited some friends in Austin

[another view]

I was at the south congress bridge last summer when we visited some friends in Austin

Cool shot with the silhouettes and the person pointing! I'll bet we were standing almost in the same spot. Smelled pretty good right about that moment too.

[mjs1973]

I understand what you mean about being a little intimidated about PS. If you use this free program, it does all the work for you.

http://www.startrails.de/html/software.html

All you have to do is point the program to the files you want to combine, and it does all the work for you.