August 18, 2021
Above Neverland
One of the photographers that I have been shooting with this year has been touting the hills above the Santa Ynez Valley as a great place to shoot for the last year or so. We had originally planned to shoot at the Alabama Hills for the new Moon, but the smoke forecast up there was grim, so we headed out to Santa Ynez. Unfortunately the smoke followed us there as we discovered as the sun set over the distant Pacific. The site we shot from is in the Los Padres National Forest northeast of Los Olivos and we past Micheal Jackson's former home, the Neverland Rand, just before we headed up the narrow and winding road into the hills. As the sun set, we shot the Sun that was more orange due to the smoke in the air. After astronomical twilight we began shooting Milky Way shots. I decided to use my star tracker for this shoot and was using my Surface Pro to connect to the iPolar to do polar alignment. I didn't test this out(I tried it when I first got the iPolar device and it didn't connect), and encountered trailing stars with zoomed in long exposures. I also had a cable problem between my wireless trigger and my camera since for some reason, the cable that the manufacture of the trigger designed for my camera didn't work(I had a backup that did work). My initial shots of the Milky Way were 30 second stacked shots, once I got the cable to work, the second were 4 minute tracked shots. I went on to use my zoom lens to attempt to capture the Lagoon and Trifid nebula, but ran into the trailing stars problem on the 4 minute test shots, so I shot it with a series of 30 second exposure.
Read MoreOne of the photographers that I have been shooting with this year has been touting the hills above the Santa Ynez Valley as a great place to shoot for the last year or so. We had originally planned to shoot at the Alabama Hills for the new Moon, but the smoke forecast up there was grim, so we headed out to Santa Ynez. Unfortunately the smoke followed us there as we discovered as the sun set over the distant Pacific. The site we shot from is in the Los Padres National Forest northeast of Los Olivos and we past Micheal Jackson's former home, the Neverland Rand, just before we headed up the narrow and winding road into the hills. As the sun set, we shot the Sun that was more orange due to the smoke in the air. After astronomical twilight we began shooting Milky Way shots. I decided to use my star tracker for this shoot and was using my Surface Pro to connect to the iPolar to do polar alignment. I didn't test this out(I tried it when I first got the iPolar device and it didn't connect), and encountered trailing stars with zoomed in long exposures. I also had a cable problem between my wireless trigger and my camera since for some reason, the cable that the manufacture of the trigger designed for my camera didn't work(I had a backup that did work). My initial shots of the Milky Way were 30 second stacked shots, once I got the cable to work, the second were 4 minute tracked shots. I went on to use my zoom lens to attempt to capture the Lagoon and Trifid nebula, but ran into the trailing stars problem on the 4 minute test shots, so I shot it with a series of 30 second exposure.
