I want you to
understand the nuts and bolts of the classic photographic process. This is good
background even if you move on and do everything in digital format. For the
moment, it’s still true that the best astrophotography happens on film, even if
the film is then scanned and darkroom’ed digitally. So, here are the required
projects for the different sections.
Astro 9A Students:
These required
photographs must all be submitted by the beginning of the last day of class, so
they can be part of our final end-of-the-semester class exposition and
critique. They must be submitted as 8x10 or larger prints, mounted on
mountboard or, if you like, framed. The photo must be accompanied with the
following information as a bare minimum. This information should be on the back
of the mounted photo.
(a) Length
of the exposure
(b)
f/ ratio and
focal length of the lens
(c)
The date the
photo was taken
(d)
The type of film used (e.g. T-max 400)
(e)
Any special
techniques used in the dark room (push-processed? Dodge/burn? Filtering?)
(f)
You can also,
for fun, add a title to the piece, just for artsey fun (e.g. “Cosmic
Unconscious”)
1.
Star Trails. A tripod picture, unguided, showing the
movement of the stars. This will require an exposure of at least 5 and more
like 10-15 minutes to get good trailing. Can be in any direction that makes
artistic sense.
2.
Foreground. Most astrophotos
are much more interesting if they include the foreground; trees, hillsides,
people, observatory domes… things that give a sense of place and help tell
a story. So this photo will be of the sky and will include the foreground.
The Foreground must not be trailed. That means if you’re doing a long guided
exposure, you’ll need to do a sandwich with two negatives; one of the scene
without guiding, and one guided. One will show a deep photo of the star fields,
and the other a nice sharp foreground. If this is beyond your skill level,
you can always just use fast film, like T-max 3200, and take a picture lasting
less than a minute and you’ll still get a fair number of fairly round stars
and an untrailed foreground.
3.
Guided. Take a photograph
which tracks the stars. This should be at least 5 minutes long, and (better)
10-30 minutes long (need a very dark moonless sky to go long). This will require
piggy back mounting on a telescope, or (easier) using the GM-8 mount. The
GM-8 mount is capable of taking very good guided pictures without you having
to do guiding corrections by hand. Your best guided picture opportunity will
happen at the mid October field trip to Mercey Hot Springs, where we’ll have
all night long under very dark skies. But, you can still do things at the
observatory.
4.
The
Moon. Your moon picture must be taken through
the telescope. On class nights when the moon is up, we’ll have a telescope
out and I’ll help you get your camera mated to the telescope so you can do
your pictures. These pictures will be fast… realize that the moon is just
a normal daylit scene. You won’t be taking time exposures, but instead just
a snapshot. For T-max 400 film, a typical exposure on our 10” f/10 telescope
at prime focus will be about 1/60 of a second. If you have a very long telephoto
lens (1000 mm) then ask me if you could do your moon picture with your lens
instead of the telescope. What we don’t want is a moon picture where the moon
is a little teeny tiny white spot in the middle of a vast, empty gray sky.
This is what you’ll get if you just use your regular lenses and a tripod to
try and get your moon picture.
5.
Special Effect. This is a photo which is clearly not “realistic”,
but has some interesting and bizarre aspect to what was captured. Sometimes,
students end up with interesting special effect shots by just goofing up some
other picture they tried to take. The possibilities are endless – you trip
over your tripod at mid-exposure, someone runs across your foreground picture
with their flashlight… go hog wild! I don’t want to constrain your imagination
or creativity, so go for something really cool. The main requirement here
is that when you present it, the class will think – “that’s cool! How did
you do that?”, rather than “Yow. Too bad that shot got muffed”. So, don’t
just turn in an uninterestingly bad picture, turn in something that’ll bring
a smile!
6.
A digital picture. Your digital picture will clearly not require
any darkroom developing or printing, so in many ways this will be the easiest
project. However, you’ll still have to take the jpeg file and play with it
in the computer and then take it to Costco or Walmart or Bay Photo or somewhere
to get an 8x10 print made, and then mount it in the lab. Your digital picture
can be anything. During class nights I’m having students come through the
12” observatory and sit at the computer so they can get a deep, guided photo
of something really cool, like a distant galaxy with a supernova explosion,
or a planetary nebula or globular cluster or other deep sky wonder. You can
also use your own digital camera on a tripod or guiding platform if it can
take time exposures. Or, we have a Minolta Dimage 5 digital camera which can
be used for moon or planet pictures at the telescope. We’ll have a chance
to take pictures of Saturn and Jupiter late at night on the Mercey Hot Springs
trip.
Astro 9B/9C Students.
You guys have
already done your film work and so the film projects above are not required. I
don’t want to constrain your desires or creativity, so I’ll just say that I
want 5 photographs from you too, on any subject. They can be digital if you
like. They can use our 12” scope, they can be in color, they can be…. anything,
as long as they’re astronomical in subject.
Experiment:
I do want to encourage (but not require) you to do one other project – an
experiment. (this is, after all, a class in a lab science department!). Your
experiment should be designed to help all of us learn something about taking
better photos. Run your idea past me to see if I think it’s good, or have
some suggestions. But here’s some general ideas…