Tyler Cipriani: pages tagged photos/70-200mm-f-2.8

C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) from Longmont Sandstone Ranch

Tyler Cipriani — Mon, 20 Jul 2020 21:40:13 +0000

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Single, untracked shot of the comet NEOWISE from Sandstone Ranch in Longmont, Colorado.

I hadn’t planned on going to see the comet–it’s been cloudy the last few days and I was slowly starting to lose hope for a clear night.

An hour before this picture was taken, as I was taking the dog out just before going to bed, I noticed the stars for the first time in days. I threw my camera in the car, grabbed the binoculars, and drove to the highest, closest public spot.

Blazey’s niece is staying with us for a few weeks of this strange summer. We attempted to see NEOWISE on Saturday from the same vantage, but all we found were cloudy skies and roving hordes of teenagers. Tonight was very different–small groups of nerds gathered around telescopes, all there to see the same thing.

EXIF
ExposureTime	2
FNumber	2.8
FocalLength	200.0 mm
CreateDate	2020-07-20 21:40:13
Lens	70-200mm f/2.8
ISO	3200
Model	NIKON D610
Make	NIKON CORPORATION

Lunar Eclipse Composite

Tyler Cipriani — Sun, 20 Jan 2019 23:21:59 +0000

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This is a composite image combining some of the 689 pictures I took of the full lunar eclipse on the night of Sunday, 20 Jan 2019 from the middle of my backyard in Longmont, Colorado. The time span covered in this image spans from roughly 21:00–23:45.

Gear ¶

Nikon D610
Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II
Nikon Auto Focus-S FX TC-20E III 2x Teleconverter
iOptron SkyGuider Pro
Cheap Pangshi intervalometer

Acquisition ¶

I took 50 shots (or so) every 15 minutes for the duration of the eclipse.

Software ¶

I do all image processing with FOSS software (with the unfortunate exception of camera and tracker firmware).

Debian Buster
Darktable
- Chromatic aberration
- Lens correction
- Cropping
- Export to 16-bit TIF
Siril
- Create new FITs sequence from exported TIF
- Planetary Full-Disk registration
- Average stacking with rejection – Windsorized Sigma Clipping
- Wavelets sharpening
- Save final stacked as 16-bit TIF
GIMP 2.10.8
- Combining images into one composite
- Export as 8-bit JPEG
Bash
- So much bash.

EXIF
ExposureTime	1
FNumber	5.6
FocalLength	400.0 mm
CreateDate	2019-01-20 22:21:59
Lens	70-200mm f/2.8
ISO	1600
Model	NIKON D610
Make	NIKON CORPORATION

Fall Sunrise at McIntosh

Tyler Cipriani — Sat, 27 Oct 2018 07:25:18 +0000

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Sunrise looking West towards Meeker from the path around McIntosh Lake.

EXIF
ExposureTime	1/6
FNumber	8.0
FocalLength	105.0 mm
CreateDate	2018-10-27 07:25:18
Lens	70-200mm f/2.8
ISO	50
Model	NIKON D610
Make	NIKON CORPORATION

Orion Cloud Complex

Tyler Cipriani — Sat, 10 Mar 2018 21:35:40 +0000

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Orion cloud complex from my back yard.

Equipment ¶

Nikon D610
iOptron Skyguider Pro
11 Frames captured at ISO 800, 45 seconds, f/2.8
Processed using all libre software.

Software ¶

Debian GNU/Linux buster
Siril (GPLv3 license)
- Global Star Alignment (deep sky)
- Sum Stacking
- Winsorized Sigma Clipping – all images in sequence
- Background Extraction
- Color Calibration
- Auto stretching
Raw Therapee (GPLv3 license)
- LAB noise reduction
- Cropping
GIMP 2.8 (GPLv3 license)
- Saturation
- Sharpening

EXIF
ExposureTime	42.2
FNumber	2.8
FocalLength	200.0 mm
CreateDate	2018-03-10 21:35:40
Lens	70-200mm f/2.8
ISO	800
Model	NIKON D610
Make	NIKON CORPORATION

Orion Nebula, M42

Tyler Cipriani — Sat, 17 Feb 2018 20:34:58 +0000

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This is the Great Orion Nebula, M42. I realized this is fairly easy to see with a sufficient optical boost from my backyard which is roughly Bortle 6/7. This is my second night trying to image this object (or any DSO, actually).

This is a stack of 10x88-second exposures (roughly 15 minutes total exposure time). Polar-alignment on my SkyGuider Pro proved to be a bit difficult (once I added the camera and counter balance I had to re-align), so this 15 minutes is the result of me fiddling for an hour and a half or so. I did all the processing for this photo using libre software. Camera/lens correction in RawTherapee, aligned using align_image_stack in Hugin, average stacking using G’MIC, final stacked image tone curve/RGB curve/saturation adjustments in RawTherapee.

EXIF
ExposureTime	88
FNumber	2.8
Description	This is the Great Orion Nebula, M42. I realized this is fairly easy to see with a sufficient optical boost from my backyard which is roughly Bortle 6/7. This is my second night trying to image this object (or any DSO, actually). This is a stack of 10x88-second exposures (roughly 15 minutes total exposure time). Polar-alignment on my SkyGuider Pro proved to be a bit difficult (once I added the camera and counter balance I had to re-align), so this 15 minutes is the result of me fiddling for an hour and a half or so. I did all the processing for this photo using libre software. Camera/lens correction in RawTherapee, aligned using `align_image_stack` in hugin, average stacking using G’MIC, final stacked image tone curve/RGB curve/saturation adjustments in RawTherapee
Title	Orion Nebula, M42
FocalLength	200.0 mm
CreateDate	2018-02-17 20:34:58
Lens	70-200mm f/2.8
ISO	400
Model	NIKON D610
Make	NIKON CORPORATION

Bald Blue Jay

Tyler Cipriani — Fri, 25 Aug 2017 13:16:00 +0000

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Evidently…in late summer each year juvenile blue jays exhibit a very unusual molt pattern. The things you notice when you have a bird feeder

EXIF
ExposureTime	1/800
FNumber	5.6
Description	Evidently…in late summer each year juveniles blue jays exhibit a very unusual molt pattern. The things you notice when you have a bird feeder
Title	Bald Blue Jay
FocalLength	400.0 mm
CreateDate	2017-08-25 13:16:00
Lens	70-200mm f/2.8
ISO	1100
Model	NIKON D610
Make	NIKON CORPORATION

Solar Eclipse

Tyler Cipriani — Mon, 21 Aug 2017 10:17:27 +0000

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The view of a 93.8% solar eclipse from Sandstone Ranch in Longmont, Colorado. These photos were taken from 10:23 AM MDT – 1:14 PM MDT. The center of this image is the peak of 93.8% of the sun obscured at 2017-08-21T11:47:39-06:00.

Gear ¶

eclipse camera setup (the big blurry spot is a scratch on the lens of my Nexus 5x)

Nikon D610 - full-frame DSLR that I’ve had for a few years
Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II - longest lens I own
Nikon Auto Focus-S FX TC-20E III 2x Teleconverter - gave me an effective 400mm focal length
iOptron SkyGuider Pro - this canceled out the motion of the earth relative to the sun, so didn’t have to worry about constantly realigning my camera.
Thousand Oaks 77mm threaded mylar solar filter
ThinkPad x230 acting as a shitty intervalometer

“Software” ¶

(notice the quotes)

I used my ThinkPad x230 as a shitty intervalometer rather than my x220 as I have no faith in the battery life of the x220. I really thought this was my PocketCHIP’s time to shine, but gphoto2 was pretty out-of-date. Updating to stretch proved to be a bad time, as one might expect. I used gphoto2 to take 7 pictures every 4(ish) minutes at different exposures using a bash script I wrote:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

starttime="$(date +%s)"

# 4 Minutes intervalometer
sleeptime=$(( 4 * 60 ))

gphoto2 --camera='Nikon DSC D610' --set-config autoiso=1

while /bin/true; do
    # Shutter delay 1s to avoid mirror-up shake
    gphoto2 --camera='Nikon DSC D610' --set-config d06a=2
    gphoto2 --camera='Nikon DSC D610' --set-config f-number=f/8 \
        --set-config capturetarget=1 \
        --set-config shutterspeed=0.005 \
        --set-config iso=100 \
        --set-config imagequality=3 \
        --trigger-capture
    sleep 1

    # Turn off shutter delay
    gphoto2 --camera='Nikon DSC D610' --set-config d06a=3
    gphoto2 --camera='Nikon DSC D610' --set-config f-number=f/8 \
        --set-config capturetarget=1 \
        --set-config shutterspeed=0.00125 \
        --set-config iso=100 \
        --set-config imagequality=3 \
        --trigger-capture
    sleep 1

    # Shutter delay 1s to avoid mirror-up shake
    gphoto2 --camera='Nikon DSC D610' --set-config d06a=2
    gphoto2 --camera='Nikon DSC D610' --set-config f-number=f/11 \
        --set-config capturetarget=1 \
        --set-config shutterspeed=0.005 \
        --set-config iso=100 \
        --set-config imagequality=3 \
        --trigger-capture
    sleep 1

    # Turn off shutter delay
    gphoto2 --camera='Nikon DSC D610' --set-config d06a=3
    gphoto2 --camera='Nikon DSC D610' --set-config f-number=f/11 \
        --set-config capturetarget=1 \
        --set-config shutterspeed=0.00125 \
        --set-config iso=100 \
        --set-config imagequality=3 \
        --trigger-capture
    sleep 1

    # Shutter delay 1s to avoid mirror-up shake
    gphoto2 --camera='Nikon DSC D610' --set-config d06a=2
    gphoto2 --camera='Nikon DSC D610' --set-config f-number=f/11 \
        --set-config capturetarget=1 \
        --set-config shutterspeed=0.02 \
        --set-config iso=100 \
        --set-config imagequality=3 \
        --trigger-capture
    sleep 1
    gphoto2 --camera='Nikon DSC D610' --set-config f-number=f/8 \
        --set-config capturetarget=1 \
        --set-config shutterspeed=0.125 \
        --set-config iso=100 \
        --set-config imagequality=3 \
        --trigger-capture
    sleep 1
    gphoto2 --camera='Nikon DSC D610' --set-config f-number=f/8 \
        --set-config capturetarget=1 \
        --set-config shutterspeed=0.5 \
        --set-config iso=100 \
        --set-config imagequality=3 \
        --trigger-capture
    sleep 1

    sleep $sleeptime
done

endtime="$(date +%s)"
totaltime=$(( endtime - starttime ))
echo "Total time: $totaltime"

Overall I was happy with this setup. You can see sunspots in each of my images fairly clearly. So what changes for the 2024 eclipse? Longer lenses never hurt anyone: I wasn’t a huge fan of the teleconverter and I felt that I lost some sharpness. I’m also not sure that I didn’t lose some sharpness with my solar filter, too.

EXIF
ExposureTime	1/200
FNumber	8.0
Description	The view of a 93% solar eclipse from Sandstone Ranch in Longmont Colorado.
Title	Solar Eclipse
FocalLength	400.0 mm
CreateDate	2017-08-21 10:17:27
GPSLongitude	-105.037979
Lens	70-200mm f/2.8
ISO	100
GPSLatitude	40.152786
Model	NIKON D610
Make	NIKON CORPORATION
GPS Link	View in OpenStreepMap

Adult male broad-tailed hummingbird

Tyler Cipriani — Mon, 07 Aug 2017 16:33:25 +0000

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Hummingbird that frequents my feeder. Sounds like a little UFO zooming around my backyard.

EXIF
ExposureTime	1/1000
FNumber	5.6
Description	Hummingbird that frequents my feeder. Sounds like a little UFO zooming around my backyard.
Title	Adult male broad-tailed hummingbird
FocalLength	400.0 mm
CreateDate	2017-08-07 16:33:25
Lens	70-200mm f/2.8
ISO	3200
Model	NIKON D610
Make	NIKON CORPORATION

Lily

Tyler Cipriani — Fri, 07 Jul 2017 17:06:55 +0000

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A lily Blazey potted last weekend.

Used a 12mm extension tube to focus a little closer in this instance.

EXIF
ExposureTime	1/200
FNumber	13.0
Description	A lily Blazey potted last weekend.
Title	Lily
FocalLength	200.0 mm
CreateDate	2017-07-07 17:06:55
Lens	70-200mm f/2.8
ISO	320
Model	NIKON D610
Make	NIKON CORPORATION

Bushtit

Tyler Cipriani — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 10:45:51 +0000

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Super tiny bird that kept attacking its reflection in the window of my office. I went outside and there were a group of these tiny birds in my bushes. I think it is a bushtit.

EXIF
ExposureTime	1/500
FNumber	2.8
Description	Super tiny bird that kept attacking its reflection in the window of my office. I went outside and there were a group of these tiny birds in my bushes. I think it is a bushtit.
Title	Bushtit
FocalLength	200.0 mm
CreateDate	2017-06-16 10:45:51
Lens	70-200mm f/2.8
ISO	560
Model	NIKON D610
Make	NIKON CORPORATION