New beginnings

I've been in North Carolina for three weeks so far. Not that I've really explored yet, but what I have seen has certainly shown promise for photo subjects and direction.

Not done a lot yet in the way of photography, although I have started dabbling in video a bit more. I did consider picking up a small "action" camera for things like timelapse and pov work, but until my finances recover a little from the move, I'm sticking with trying things out with my little Sony point and shoot. Not like it's a slouch, it can record in 1080P hi-def; it does suffer from the 29 minute clip limitation that all non video cameras suffer. Despite all this, I'm still finding it a valuable introduction to video.

I did break out my DSLR last night though, the first time since moving to NC. Since I've been here I've noticed the night sky is a lot more photogenic than where I was in OK, and last night was particularly attractive. Of course it also highlighted one of my "pet peeves" about photography; how there is still no camera or process that can (accurately) capture what the eye can see. Of course this is also further complicated by the fact that no two individuals will see the same scene exactly the same, as differences in their visual acuity will come into play.

I've not done much with night-time long exposures; not since I played with reciprocity failure of different film stock and how the colors morphed. A lot is due to how digital cameras behave at longer exposure times; instead of color morphing you are more likely to get "noise" in the image. Newer cameras are able to better handle this, but I currently use an aging Nikon D2X, so have to rely on my software to clean up the images.

This is a fairly good representation of the night sky I saw while walking my dogs; although it's far from what my eyes really saw. The eyes can perceive a lot more subtle colors, shading and transitions than the camera can capture. I would really be interested to know if any camera maker is working towards the capability of the human eyes.

I believe the stars and other celestial objects in the photo are "real" and not digital noise but it's not that easy to tell, so I let my noise reduction algorithms do their best and left it at that. For the technically inclined the details of the photo is, 30secs @ f4, ISO 1600 (H1), Tokina 12-24 @ 12mm.