Half-day at work, busy weekend ahead. I’ll be heading up to Fox Park, Wyoming (not listed in Mapquest!) this weekend for the Weekend Under the Stars star party. I’ll be camping for two nights, hanging out with lots of other nerds, and not getting much sleep at all.

The main objective (’But wait!’ you say, wise guy that you are, ‘I thought you had a Schmidt-Cassegrain reflector, which has a primary mirror, and not an objective’) will be long-exposure, wide-field photography of the summer milky way and a few other key star fields. I may take a few snaps of Mars, but film imaging of the planets in my equipment was never very satisfying; gonna have to go digital for that, I’m afraid.

A quick anecdote about buying the film for this trip: yesterday, I went to the South Broadway, Englewood, CO location of Wolf Camera to purchase a roll of film recommended for astronomical use. The emulsion is sensitive up at 654nm, which is the all-important hydrogen alpha emission line, without which photos of the summer Milky Way are just not worth it. (Most consumer films conk out after about 600nm, which is apparently red enough for everyday redness.) Anyway, the Camera Store Guy had to rummage around a bit for this particular film, so I made small talk, mistakenly mentioning that I would be using the film for astrophotography. The starving photograph-artist/college student quickly corrected me for wanting ISO 400 film, suggesting I should use something slower.

“Don’t you mean faster?” I asked. I didn’t want anything faster, because as you may already know, faster means grainier, and the trade-off at ISO 1000 and above for color emulsions is usually not worth it.

“No, you shouldn’t go above 100,” he replied. Sensing my incredulity/sudden thoughts that he was more or less incompetent, he asked the Smart Guy in the shop, who agreed wholeheartedly.

“Oh yeah,” the Expert Guy said. “You’ll get better colors, and you’ll be able to blow it up better if you get a shot you like.”

“But don’t I want something more light-sensitive?”

“It doesn’t matter, since you’re going to have the shutter open for 30, maybe 60 minutes anyway.” Wow, this guy is a photographic genius! One who has never spent all night motionless in a sleeping bag at 9000 ft. above sea level in 35°F weather making guiding corrections and trying to keep blood flowing in his fingers. If you think that doesn’t sound cold, try it sometime. You’d be surprised.

If you doubt me, check out an actual professional, the thumbwheel of whose shutter release I am not worthy to tighten. I have gleaned many helpful Photoshop insights from Jerry Lodriguss’ site, and have found nary a beautiful shot of his that was taken with anything less than ISO 400. And Jerry is a guy who could explain to the Wolf Camera professionals how it is this “film” stuff works, so I think I’m on fairly solid ground here.

So anyway, I have 36 exposures of this nice, red-sensitive, high-performance, ISO 400 Fuji film, and I’m ready to encourage a few photons to interact with the whole roll. I will of course post any worthwhile shots here, but it may be a couple of weeks by the time I have a chance to post-process them sufficiently for public consumption. I may also be keeping some notes during the weekend, which I’ll post with artificial times and dates upon my return.

Have a safe and enjoyable weekend! I will endeavor to do the same.

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• Posted by Tim on Friday, July 25, 2003 at 10:58:40 am PDT
• Category: Miscellany
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