Michael Harris Photography

Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better. Albert Camus

It should be noted that children at play are not playing about;  their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity. Michel de Montaigne

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. Carl Sagan

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes;  fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong. William Shakespeare

If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life, it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.  Mitsugi Saotome  Taken with the camera held stationary on the deck of an anchored sailboat, while gentle waves and soft breezes rocked and swayed the boat.

The following images were taken as a night time 5DmkII camera test. This camera along with the other new high ISO cameras have a wide range of exposure options for night photography. In this test I set the camera in one location on a tripod. I used the same 20mm 2.8 canon lens set at 2.8 for all exposures. I took a sequence of different shutter speeds and ISO settings, however all the images are from the 30sec exposure with the ISO the variable. All images were processed in Lightroom 2 with 50% luminance and 50% color noise reduction. They are cropped from 100% magnification, exported as a 10 jpeg. I included the house that had a single 60w lamp behind relative thin curtains as an additional reference. One thing that is clear, all images at 30 seconds show the stars as small dashes at 100%. The bright star above the bright door is Sirius the brightest star (not counting the sun duh). One more point I let the camera determine when to do the in camera noise reduction. This is the ISO 160...

Canon 5DmkII 20mm, iso1600, 30sec at f/2.8 Thought I'd share this lucky shot. While I was doing a night test, I hope to publish the results soon I caught the meteorite in this image. This is one of the best settings for this camera with the 20mm f2.8 lens

Click to see complete image. Canon 40D, 10- 22mm at 10mm, iso 3200, 30sec at f/3.5 In camera noise reduction. Always loved astronomy since my first 3 inch refractor telescope at 10 years old, the equipment is much better now. I like this image for the accindental red glow from my red headlamp and the green from the inside lights. The only post processing on this was to skew the house back into something a little more square. This image was taken in Eleuthera, Bahamas very little light and air polution. Another star image can be seen at TJ's Thoughts , he used a Canon 5D and the faster 24-70mm 2.8 lens. TJ has given a detailed account of how to take this type of shot, take a look.