Jupiter and zodiacal light from Boulder, UT. (You'd think I would have realized the camera was aimed right at the power lines, but it was the end of a long, cold day.)
Test shot of Milky Way in Cygnus and Lacerta, using f3.5 zoom lens wide open. This photo shows that you CAN photograph the Milky Way using a $500 DSLR with a cheap kit zoom lens.
So many things I would have done, but clouds got in my way. At least the clouds arranged themselves nicely for this shot.
This is my best shot of the Milky Way from Ogden's foothills, looking up Taylor Canyon toward a relatively dark sky.
Looking up Willard Canyon, with the Sigma 20mm f1.8 lens at f2.8.
Looking up Willard Canyon, with the zoom lens that came with my camera (Canon 18-55mm, f3.5 at f4). This shot probably could have been focused better, but it's extremely hard to focus this lens accurately at night.
An attempt to photograph the Milky Way with film. Fujicolor Superia 1600 with a Canon FT and a cheap 28mm f2.8 lens, wide open. (Tried the lens at f4 but it picked up even less.) Scanned cheaply by Inkley's in Ogden. Even if the scan were better, however, I'm convinced that this film suffers from significant reciprocity failure and therefore can't be used to make tripod photos of the Milky Way that are comparable to those with a DSLR. (I've also tried scanning the same negative on a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 desktop scanner. It introduced less noise than Inkley's, but I still couldn't get more contrast in the Milky Way or the cliffs--and I couldn't figure out how to keep the negative free of dust while scanning it.)
Just for comparison, here's a photo of the southern Milky Way with my point-and-shoot Canon SD880. Max exposure that the camera allows (15 seconds), max ISO (1600), and max aperture (f2.8). Aesthetically worthless due to the noise, but the camera did pick up a few clusters and nebulae around Sagittarius.
Venus, Mars, and Saturn, all lined up from right to left, above Willard Bay. Many hot pixels were manually Photoshopped out. Metadata seems to have gotten lost but this was with the Canon Rebel XS and kit zoom lens at 18mm, f4.5, 15 seconds, ISO 400.
Multiple-exposure composite of the setting sun on the summer solstice, June 21. Taken looking out the window from the WSU stadium skybox, using a pair of cheap crossed polarizers to cut out >99% of the sun's light. Plus a final scenic shot without the polarizers, of course.
Night view of a ranch on the outskirts of Boulder, Utah. Foreground illumination is from a crescent moon and a sodium light.
The clouds didn't clear until after the moon had set, but at least I got this nice photo of the clouds themselves, with the moon, Venus, Mars, and Saturn peeking through.
8-minute exposure of the Milky Way in Sagittarius with the camera riding piggyback on a motor-driven telescope. The Sigma lens does pretty well at f4! Probably could have gotten away with 4 minutes at ISO 1600. Taken from along the Burr Trail in Capitol Reef National Park.
This is a test shot to show that (a) you can photograph the Milky Way using a bottom-of-the-line DSLR with kit zoom lens, as long as you don't mind dark corners; and (b) the light pollution from Salt Lake City is a big problem in this part of the sky even from the Monte Cristo range, 60 miles away.
The best of many attempts to catch a meteor during the Perseids--and this one seems to be going the wrong way to be a Perseid! But if you look carefully, you'll see another very faint track that might be one.
Montage of three multiple-exposure sunset sequences, taken on June 21 (right), September 21 (center), and December 16 (left), 2010. Each sequence spans about two hours, with 4 minutes between exposures. Taken from the stadium skybox on the Weber State University campus.
