Selection of shooting equipment and shooting skills of meteors

In study, work or life, many people have been exposed to some classic sentences, and different sentence types have different functions in the article. There are many types of sentences. What sentences have you seen? The following is my collection of equipment selection and shooting skills for shooting meteors. Welcome to share.

Selection of shooting equipment and shooting skills for shooting meteors 1 The meteor cut through the dark night sky and soon disappeared. Isn't it a pity? Have you ever thought about taking a close-up of Sharon and taking a touching moment of her?

Can the general public take good pictures of meteors? The answer is yes, as long as you are willing to attach a heart, you will be rewarded on the peak night of the Leonid meteor shower. Then you will feel that everything is worth it.

Advantages of photography

You may ask, why use a camera to record meteor shower activities? In fact, in addition to the above-mentioned meteor shower photos, your meteor shower photos can help astronomers calculate the orbit of the meteoroid belt with high accuracy, and can also record its color, haunting position, luminosity and so on. Fragments of a meteor. These photos provide very valuable information for studying meteoroids. In addition, photographic observation can record more meteors than visual observation.

Equipment review

Many people have what we commonly call a silly claw machine, which is an automatic camera. Naturally, they had the idea of shooting meteors with stupid cameras. But ordinary silly claw machine can't shoot meteors, because these cameras are not used for long exposure, so they can't shoot fleeting meteors.

Now, let's look at the equipment needed to shoot meteors.

Manual camera

First of all, the most important thing is a mechanical camera with a B shutter. Its shutter can be operated without batteries, otherwise the batteries will be exhausted quickly under long-term exposure, which is not counting. If it stops during photography, the loss will be more serious. If the camera itself has a battery, remember to take it out, because any light-emitting element in the camera will affect the photo.

In order to use the B shutter with the camera, there are few shutter ropes.

tripod

Secondly, we need a fixed tripod to hide the camera, otherwise the images taken under long exposure will swing from side to side. And try to ensure that the camera will not vibrate even if there is a strong wind blowing at the observation site.

Photographic base plate

As for the principle of choosing a negative, it is to choose the highest speed negative with the finest particles.

A film with a lower speed sensitivity of 400 is acceptable, because we generally require a sensitivity of more than 800 when shooting meteors. If you have experience in taking astronomical photos, you may think that the sensitivity of 800 is a bit high, but if you think about it carefully, meteors that last for more than two seconds are rare, so we try our best to make up the most light in the shortest time.

No matter what kind of film you use, you must buy 36 films and one more tube. This is a well-prepared method, which can avoid unexpected problems, such as too many meteors and sudden failure of the camera.

In addition, if the shooting environment is really dark enough, readers can rest assured to use higher-speed negatives, such as sensitivity 1600 or 3200.

camera lens

Since we are not professional photographers, you need not worry about not having a telephoto lens. Generally, a standard lens of 50 mm can easily shoot meteors. If there are enough instruments, it is recommended to bring a wide-angle lens such as 28 mm and a telephoto lens above100 mm. It would be better if it were a zoom lens.

duration of exposure

This is a very critical factor. Generally, the normal exposure time is 10- 15 minutes. If the light damage where you are shooting is particularly low, you can increase the exposure time to 30 minutes.

However, due to the great difference in light loss between shooting locations, the best exposure time will be calculated according to your shooting location, which is the most suitable.

If you encounter a star rain, you can consider changing the exposure time to five minutes.

Or you can expose it for ten to twenty minutes more, in order to show the meteor shower activity all night on a negative.

hole

Open the aperture as wide as possible, because it helps to shoot dark meteors. The recommended value is f 1.8.

Shooting number

The ideal number of people is two, one is an observer and a photographer, and the other is a recorder. I want to emphasize the independence of data here. Even if any recorded data must be observed by one person, even if the recorder insists that he saw a meteor that the photographer can't see, he can't fill in the information about the meteor on the record, because the error can be minimized through statistics.

Equipment selection and shooting skills for shooting meteors 2. If you plan to shoot meteors, you need to prepare a wired releaser, set the SLR camera to M, continuous shooting mode, set the manual focus to the farthest, set the aperture to the maximum, and set the shutter for 20-30 seconds, with ISO 1600 or so. Ambient darkness depending on ISO and shutter settings. Shoot continuously around the radiation point, and choose photos with meteors after dawn. The wider the lens, the better for shooting meteors.

First of all, the basic steps of shooting the starry sky: turn on the manual focus, remove the UV mirror, turn off the lens anti-shake, and choose to shoot RAW files for photos (if there is really insufficient space for shooting meteors, you can choose jpg, and still choose RAW for the background starry sky and scenery). Then, shoot a meteor with maximum aperture, high sensitivity and short exposure. Take a little aperture, low sensitivity, long exposure to shoot scenery+starry sky.

The high sensitivity and short exposure is to make the meteor brighter and the starry sky darker, which is convenient for finding stars later. Because the sensitivity is fixed and the aperture is fixed, the exposure time of the meteor only depends on the passing time of the meteor itself. At this time, it is best to darken the starry sky. Adopt low sensitivity, long exposure and 1 aperture to discharge the scenery and background starry sky with less noise.

main content

1, know the starry sky that night.

Including the rising and falling time of the sun and the moon, the maximum time, the position of the radiation point and the astronomical twilight. Astronomical dawn begins.

The moon and the sun have great influence on astronomical observation. At the same time, the position of a large celestial body can be known very early, so let's take a look at the situation of the moon and the sun on that day.

Starry sky simulation software computer/Android can use stellarium, and IOS can use skysafari/skyguide, etc. Choose a good place and time to simulate the starry sky you saw at that time.

At sunrise and sunset, you can take pictures of scenery and starry sky as the first picture of continuous shooting. In this way, the ground is more layered and the picture is neither dead nor black.

Step 2 prepare the equipment

Camera, shoot the starry sky, try to choose high sensitivity. You can set the exposure manually, shoot at intervals or use the cable release machine.

The camera needs continuous shooting, so we need it. If the camera has its own interval shooting, there is no need to take cable release. (If you really don't want to buy a wired release, turn the camera to continuous shooting mode, set the parameters, and press the shutter button with tape and stone. )

Lens, wide angle, the best aperture f value is less than 2.8. The larger the aperture, the easier it is to catch dark meteors. In this respect, Sigma's lens is very suitable. Sigma's maximum aperture 14mm f 1.8 and 20mm's maximum aperture f 1.4 are all very suitable for shooting meteor showers. It should be noted that the wider the lens is, the smaller the shooting meteor is, and the longer the focal length is, the fewer meteors can be captured, so the focal length of 14 mm-28 mm is more appropriate.

Red flashlight or headlight:

Try not to use a white flashlight. A red flashlight can make people's eyes constantly adapt to the darkness.

Multiple batteries and memory cards:

After shooting all night, the camera is easy to run out of power. The same is true for memory cards.

Hoshino equatorial instrument;

When the earth rotates, the stars will also rotate. The function of the equatorial telescope is to track the starry sky and facilitate the later alignment work. Cinda and Ayrton use it more.

Put on more clothes and be careful to catch cold. The weather in April is still very cold at night.

3. Selection of weather and starry sky observation points

4. Fixed-point stepping and shooting parameters

The shooting location should choose a place with a wide field of vision on the premise of ensuring safety. Because meteors are not the biggest radiation points, it is possible in the whole sky, so ensuring the widest field of vision is the first.

Generally speaking, the closer to the radiation point, the smaller the meteor is visually.

Equipment selection and shooting skills for shooting meteors III. equipment

Camera: Try to shoot with a full-frame camera. The fuselage pursues high photosensitive performance, not high pixels. If conditions permit, the more cameras the better, so that more meteors can be captured in different directions. Lens: Use super wide-angle and large aperture lens. At present, many equipment manufacturers have wide-angle and large-aperture ptz, which has good performance. You can choose according to your own situation.

Tripod: a stable tripod, a necessity.

Cable release: programmable cable release, continuous shooting at intervals of 1 sec. If the camera has its own time-lapse photography function, there is no need to release the cable.

Spare battery: meteor shower consumes more shutters, so take spare batteries, or replace them with fake batteries of charging treasure.

Large-capacity memory card: continuous RAW format photos are needed, so the memory card needs 64G. 128G and 256G are more suitable.

Second, the parameter setting

Basic steps: turn on the manual focus, take off the UV mirror, turn off the lens anti-shake, and choose photos to shoot RAW files (jpg can be selected for shooting meteors, and RAW is still selected for background stars and scenery). Then, shoot a meteor with large aperture, high sensitivity and short exposure, and shoot the starry sky with small aperture, low sensitivity and long exposure. Meteor partial parameters

Third, the later period

After the shooting is completed, the next big thing is post-superposition. Briefly talk about this step later.

1, find out the photos with meteors, pick them out and put them in the folder.

2. Save the processed scenic starry sky as the background.

3. Align the meteor with the background starry sky and save it.

4. Pull out the meteor part with lasso tool, darken the background starry sky with ps curve tool, and brighten the meteor part and save it.

5. Cover the layer with a light color and save it.

6, moderate correction of starry sky color, dark light pollution, etc. , save.

7. Output: Print it out or send it to a circle of friends.