I figured that this week’s meteor shower is as good a time as any to make a stab at doing a proper shoot of the night sky. Karen has been asking for some, and with the camera upgrade, I didn’t have an excuse not to drag out my tripod for some stellar shooting.
Getting the technical specifics right was a little tricky at first. Focusing was difficult since autofocus was useless and I couldn’t make out the stars enough to manually focus properly, so I had to resort to trial and error to get as close as I could. And as much as I was looking forward to using my phone as a remote via the D7200’s wireless connection, connecting the two was finicky enough that I spend as much time rubbing my phone on my camera to get the NFC to connect as I did actually shooting. Fortunately, I was able to just kick back and enjoy the evening once all the settings were where they needed to be.
In fact, firing off the occasional exposure from my phone, as I stared up at the stars was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had in recent memory. I’m usually working on at least two things simultaneously at any given hour of the day until I just pass out late at night. And for all my love of science and astronomy, I’ve spent so much more time listening to Neil Degrasse Tyson talk about the stars than I have actually looking at them. But sitting out there in the cool, August air with nothing for company but my camera and the stars was a peaceful feeling I had almost completely forgotten.
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