milky way

I find photography at this time of the year difficult.  Early mornings and late nights I just can’t do any more.

But last weekend conditions were so perfect that I just had to haul myself out of my bed and get out with my camera.

You see, the skies were perfectly clear, there was no moon, and rain all day meant that any dust had been washed from the atmosphere.  That’s right.  STARS!!!

So, we all (Lisa, Dexter and me) piled into my MX5 and headed for the dark sky area that is the Brecon Beacons just as midnight was approaching.  And I’m so glad we did.  On dropping the car’s roof, the view above was incredible:  billions of stars in a perfectly clear sky. Easily the best display I have ever seen.

August also sees the Perseid meteor showers fill the heavens, so we spent a while watching shooting stars (and the odd 747!) race across the sky.

Anyway, I set my camera up looking due South (the glow on the horizon is from my home city of Swansea), and used my MX5 as a bit of foreground interest, and lit it very briefly (around 1 second) with my head torch.  I used my manual focus Samyang 12mm f2.0 lens which is absolutely ideal for capturing the night sky and shot a vertical panorama of 4 shots which I later “stitched” in Photoshop.  I was amazed at the level of detail I was able to pull out of the shadows in Lightroom - testimony to the excellent sensor on the Fujifilm X-T2.

I’m really pleased with the result.

Fujifilm X-T2, Samyang 12mm f2.0

4 images at 20 seconds @ f2.0, ISO 6400

tripod, remote shutter release