Five Questions: Barns, Filters with Auroras, Star Trail Settings and More

The night photography world is full of questions, and we’re happy to help with answers.

This installment of our “Five Questions” series features inquiries about photographing barns on the Blue Ridge Parkway, coma with Nikon Z lenses, moving a Lightroom catalog on a Mac, using filters when shooting auroras and settings for star trails.

If you have any questions you would like to throw our way, please contact us anytime. Questions could be about gear, national parks and other photo locations, post-processing techniques, field etiquette, or anything else related to night photography. #SeizeTheNight!

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1. Clapboard on the Blue Ridge Parkway

Question:

I am thinking about traveling to the Blue Ridge Parkway to do some star photography and would love to do some light painting of old barns or structures. I am wondering if you have any locations you can recommend. — Michael S.

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Mabry Mill, Blue Ridge Parkway. © 2021 Chris Nicholson. Nikon D5 with a Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, lit with four Luxli Fiddle LED panels. 30 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400.

Answer:

The Blue Ridge Parkway is a great place to find barns! But many are on privately owned or leased farms along the parkway; you could still shoot those, but would want to ask permission of course, especially if photographing them at night, and absolutely if you’re going to light paint them.

Sticking to barns that are not privately owned, here are some tips:

Stay north of Asheville. The section of the parkway south of Asheville (and even for a bit north) is mostly mountainous. The northern two-thirds of the parkway—perhaps safely stated as “north of the Linn Cove Viaduct”—is more rural and agricultural.

If you’re open to just historic clapboard structures that aren’t barns, you can’t drive more than a few miles without seeing some. These come to mind immediately: Mabry Mill, Puckett Cabin, Brinegar Cabin. Lots of others scattered about.

For barns in particular, off the top of my head: the Johnson Farm at Peaks of Otter (you’ll need to hike to it), Explore Park (though you’ll want to ask about access after 8 p.m., as it’s managed by the city of Roanoke) and the farm at Humpback Rocks Visitor Center. — Chris

2. Non-Coma Z Lenses

Question:

I just switched to the Nikon Z 6II and am looking for a recommendation for a lens without coma distortion. I have tried and returned two Rokinon 14mm f/2.4 lenses with severe coma. My preference would be a lens in the 14-24mm range. — Edmund

Answer:

You are going to love the Z 6II! The FTZ adapter works well, so it gives you lots of options, but both the Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 and Nikon Z 24-70mm f/2.8 are among the very best lenses Nikon has ever produced. Pricey, but worth it. Another option (assuming you have the FTZ adapter) is the Nikon’s F-mount 14-24mm. There is nothing better than those three lenses at this time. — Lance

3. Moving Lightroom on a Mac

Question:

Is there a simple way to migrate Lightroom files on a Mac? I will soon have to bring in a new and larger external hard drive. — Julie P.

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Answer:

Yes, and the process is actually pretty simple.

1. With Lightroom closed, plug in the old drive and the new drive.

2. Copy all of the information from the old drive to the new drive.

3. Unplug your old drive and launch Lightroom. You will see question marks next to your folders, because Lightroom can no longer find your old hard drive.

4. You need to locate the parent folder for your images. In Lightroom, navigate to the topmost folder in your Folders hierarchy. That may well be the parent folder, but it’s possible that the true parent folder is hiding above it. By right-clicking on that topmost folder, you will see an option to Show Parent Folder. This command will show the folder containing that topmost folder, if there is one.

5. Right-click on your parent folder and choose Find Missing Folder. Lightroom will open your system’s Finder.

6. Navigate to the new drive, then choose the matching parent folder and click Choose.

The parent folder and all of its subfolders (all on the new hard drive) will now be linked back with Lightroom. — Tim

4. Light Pollution Filters and Auroras

Question:

I just read your article on light pollution filters. Will these filters also be usable when shooting Northern Lights? — Claron K.

Answer:

Yes, I believe they would be useful for shooting Northern (or Southern) Lights when near inhabited areas. As auroras tend to be green, pink, purple and sometimes blue, the orange/yellow blocking ability would have a complementary effect. However, you could be lose up to 1 stop of light, so keep that in mind. — Matt

5. Star Trail Settings

Question:

I just reviewed your “How I Got the Shot: Lake McDonald” blog post about star trails. Phenomenal image! I have done a ton of research on how to do this kind of photo, but was hoping for a simple recommendation for settings and timing. I’ll be shooting with either a Nikon D850 or a Nikon Z 6 with a 14-24mm lens. — Darlene

Star Circles Over Lake McDonald. © 2015 Gabriel Biderman. Fujifilm X-T1 with a Fujifilm 10-24mm f/4 lens. 41 stacked frames, each shot at 2 minutes, f/4, ISO 3200.

Answer:

There is no simple formula for star trails. You need to find the balance between a proper base exposure, how long you want to go, and image quality.

You can capture trails with either one long exposure or with multiple shorter exposures that you later stack in Photoshop. Single exposures are often best for up to 15-minute shots, but when you want longer trails you’ll most likely want to shoot multiple frames to stack.

Do a high ISO test shot to figure out the proper exposure. Then you want to get to a more optimal image quality setting. Lower your ISO to something you’re comfortable with in terms of noise (for example, maybe ISO 800), and then adjust your shutter speed accordingly to compensate.

Also consider apertures, in this regard: The wider the aperture, the higher number of stars will appear. While that might sound like a good thing, too many star trails could look too chaotic and distract from the rest of the scene. For example, on a dark night f/2.8 will show an overwhelming number of trails, while f/8 would create a more subtle effect. Under a full moon this isn’t so critical, as not as many stars are visible anyway. Either way, just be careful that you don’t stop down so much that you have to crank up your ISO and sacrifice image quality.

Another consideration is how long your camera’s shutter can be open without generating long-exposure noise (speckled red, blue and green confetti-like specks in your image). This noise is produced when a camera processor overheats during long exposures, but higher outdoor temperatures and lower humidity also play a factor. You have to learn what your camera can tolerate by running some tests in different conditions. For example, if the ambient temperature is 60 to 65 F or less then you can usually get away with 4- to 6-minute exposures, but if the temperatures are 80 F or higher then you might be limited to 30 seconds or 1 minute.

To counteract that effect, you might wonder about using long-exposure noise reduction (LENR). You can use that quite effectively if you’re shooting one long exposure for star trails, but it would be countereffective for stacking. The reason is that for most cameras, LENR disables the shutter after each exposure (for the same amount of time as the shutter speed), which would create breaks in your star trails.

The final decision is how long you want your star trails to be. When facing north for circumpolar trails, you want to shoot for at least 1 hour, and the longer the better. If you are facing east, west or south, you can get away with shorter total exposures—8 to 30 minutes might be sufficient. — Gabe

Chris Nicholson is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night, and author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015). Learn more about national parks as photography destinations, subscribe to Chris' free e-newsletter, and more at www.PhotographingNationalParks.com.

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

How I Got the Shot: Puente Nuevo, Ronda at Night

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Puente Nuevo, Ronda at Night. Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon Z 24-70mm f/2.8 S lens at 40mm. Foreground: shot with a 10-stop neutral-density filter at 20 seconds, f/11, ISO 100. Sky: 460 stacked frames shot at 3 seconds, f/8, ISO 800.

The Location

Dream location—conquered!

The rich history of Ronda, Spain, dates to the Neolithic Age. The Phoenicians, Romans, Muslims, Christians and the Spanish have claimed this remote outpost as their home. The Spanish Inquisition, Napoleon War and Spanish Civil War all had major impacts on the town. Ronda is proudly known as the birthplace of the modern style of bullfighting and has influenced and attracted such artists as Orson Wells and Ernest Hemingway to call it home.

Beyond this colorful past, what attracted me to Ronda were the images of this cliff-clinging town and the historic bridges that unite the old and new settlements over the 400-foot-deep gorge known as El Tajo. The most famous of the three bridges is the Puente Nuevo, or New Bridge, that was completed in 1793. (Imagine how old the older bridges are!) It could be one of the most dramatic bridges in the world and definitely one of the most photographed sites in Spain.

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Figure 1. Puente Nuevo, or New Bridge, is in the mountaintop city of Ronda, Spain. (Satellite imagery courtesy of Google Earth.)

I had an image of this in my notes as a place to visit if I ever went to Spain again. Truth be told, that image has been in mind for a long, long time. I had been dreaming about Ronda and the New Bridge since I was a child.

One of my favorite children’s books growing up was Ferdinand the Bull, the story of a gentle bull who refused to fight. Ferdinand was from the Andalusia region of southern Spain, and there is a scene in the book where they send Ferdinand off to fight in Madrid. The illustration backdrop is Puente Nuevo!

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Figure 2. The image I remember so well from Munro Leaf’s The Story of Ferdinand, illustrated by Robert Lawson.

The Shoot

In researching the town and looking at pictures of Puente Nuevo, I found very few pictures of the bridge at night, and none with stars. This is because the bridge is lit by sodium vapor floodlights that make it difficult to see anything in the pitch-black night sky.

The typical prime time to take photographs of Puente Nuevo is when the sun sets directly opposite the bridge, basking it with golden light, or during civil twilight when the sky is still a bright rich blue that perfectly complements the golden floodlights (Figure 3). But I’m always one for a challenge, so I set off to capture it at night.

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Figure 3. Twilight at Puente Nuevo. Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon Z 24-70mm and a 10-stop neutral density filter. f/2.8 S lens at 40mm. 20 seconds, f/11, ISO 400.

My strategy was this: Combine a twilight blend with a star stack. This is a fairly common technique, but it would definitely prove to be difficult given the high contrast between the lit bridge and the surrounding darker rocks and sky.

So I hiked down the gorge to a vantage point I liked and shot the bridge during twilight. This foreground shot perfectly balanced the bridge and its lights (which had just come on) with the rocks and waterfall that were lit by the ambient light of twilight. I shot a few more frames and chatted with rock climbers and other folks coming down the path as I waited more than an hour for the stars to come out.

An additional challenge was the inky black sky of the moonless night. Having even a little moonlight would have helped the visual transition from a bright bridge to a more illuminated sky.

Yet another challenge was the lack of stars in the frame. With my naked eye I could see one star in my composition. I could have shot wider to include a bigger part of the sky that was unaffected by light pollution, but then the waterfall would have been too small and lost in the image. I chose a tighter 40mm focal length to get the viewer into the landscape, and I left one-fifth of the composition for the sky.

I could have opened my aperture to f/2.8 or gone to a high ISO to help my camera record more of the fainter stars, but that would have resulted in more of the streetlight spilling into the sky. Instead I chose an aperture of f/8 to control the direct light from the lamps and an ISO of 800 so the stars would retain some of their color and not blow out (Figure 4).

Figure 4. My first test shot was at 15 seconds, f/8, ISO 800. Note the spill of the streetlights into the night sky. I wanted to limit that so that blending in Photoshop would be easier. A 3-second shutter speed was the right balance, as it kept the bridge lights from not bleeding into the sky and still recorded more stars than my eyes could see.

It definitely felt weird to think of star-stacking a series of 3-second exposures. I would need a lot of frames to create a lengthy trail. But I felt this exposure gave me the best balance to blend everything together to create the final photograph that I was envisioning.

I was facing east, the only angle possible for this shot, so I knew the stars would trail downward toward the left. I planned for at least 1 hour of exposure, because I knew that would yield nice long star trails. I was shooting with my Nikon Z 6II, which is a 26-megapixel camera. With my shutter speed at 3 seconds, I used the built-in intervalometer to continually take successive shots.

As busy as this location is during the day, I bumped into only three people during my shoot. It is a bit of a hike down to the lookout, and people just don’t explore at night. So I dangled my feet over the fence and thought of Ferdinand the bull and all the historic places I had visited in Ronda that day.

After half an hour my eyes were adjusted enough and I could see that the brightest star had most likely moved out of the composition. That star had started in the middle of the frame, and because I was zoomed in with a 40mm focal length it had traveled a considerable distance to yield a long star trail. So even though I really didn’t see many other stars, I felt confident I had what I needed to put it all together in post.

The Post-Production

After loading the frames into Lightroom, I made only one adjustment: I turned off the automatic lens corrections. I always advise turning this off for stacking stars, otherwise you run the risk of creating moiré in the final stacked image. I was using 460 frames, which would result in about a 30-minute total exposure for the star trails.

Even though I have a fairly new souped up MacBook Pro M1, to stack 460 30-megabyte files would have definitely caused it to choke. So I stacked the images in sets of about 100 to create a series of five star trail images. Each stack followed this process:

1. Select the frames in Lightroom.

2. Choose Photo > Edit In > Open as Layers in Photoshop.

3. In the resulting Photoshop file, select all the layers by clicking on the first, scrolling down, then shift-clicking on the last.

4. Change the blend mode to Lighten.

5. If desired, review the individual layers to edit out plane trails, stray light, etc.

6. If desired to save hard drive space, flatten the layers.

7. Save and return to Lightroom.

I then brought each of the five flattened stacks into Photoshop as layers, and used the Lighten mode on them to connect all the trails (Figure 5).

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Figure 5. My five sequential star-stack images combined into one long stack.

Finally, I added the twilight shot as the top layer, and I and used a variety of masks and adjustment layers to match the exposures and blend them together as one cohesive image.

In the final photograph (Figure 6), look at the foreground areas outside what’s being illuminated by the streetlights. They are very dark, and that’s why I needed the twilight shot—just to bring out a little bit of detail in the rocks, waterfall and the rest of the foreground to make the overall image more pleasing, and to complete the visual story.

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Figure 6. Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon Z 24-70mm f/2.8 S lens at 40mm. Foreground: shot with a 10-stop neutral-density filter at 20 seconds, f/11, ISO 100. Sky: 460 stacked frames shot at 3 seconds, f/8, ISO 800.

All in all this photograph took me about 1.5 hours of post-production work—the same amount of time I committed to shooting the image in the field!

Wrapping Up

Ferdinand didn’t want to fight, but I didn’t mind fighting all of those obstacles to get the shot that reminded me of one of my favorite stories from boyhood.

I’m pretty happy with it. I set out to create a complex photograph of a dream location under conditions I couldn’t control. I put my stamp on it, and hopefully inspired you to seize the night no matter what the scenario!

Gabriel Biderman is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night. He is a Brooklyn-based fine art and travel photographer, and author of Night Photography: From Snapshots to Great Shots (Peachpit, 2014). During the daytime hours you'll often find Gabe at one of many photo events around the world working for B&H Photo’s road marketing team. See his portfolio and workshop lineup at www.ruinism.com.

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

New York Minutes: Our Day-to-Day as Reps of the Night at OPTIC 2022

This week, a lot of things were nice to get back to, all at once. It was nice to be back in New York City, nice to be back among a large group of like-minded people, and it was nice to be back at OPTIC.

In one way or another, the National Parks at Night crew has been involved in every OPTIC Imaging Conference. I was a speaker at the inaugural event in 2015, and that’s where and when Matt Hill and Gabriel Biderman talked to me about joining this new little company they wanted to put together. (More on that later.) The next year all five of us (the aforementioned plus Tim Cooper and Lance Keimig) presented together for the first time ever, on OPTIC’s Main Stage. And every year since one or more of us has served as speakers, portfolio reviewers, photo-walk leaders, etc.

We couldn’t be more grateful. B&H Photo, which produces the conference along with Lindblad Expeditions, has been one of our most loyal and ardent supporters since even before Day 1. We strive to meet their hospitality with a dedication to bring our very best to educating attendees about night photography and everything that goes into it.

This year, OPTIC was held as an in-person event for the first time since 2019. A recap of how we engaged:

The Conference

OPTIC began with 2 days of conferencing at The New Yorker hotel on Manhattan’s west side, just a block from the B&H Superstore. More than 40 presenters were on the Main and Second stages (for the live audienc, plus livestreamed to offsite attendees), including Night Photo Summit speakers Jess Santos, Susan Magnano and Erik Kuna.

On the second morning, Matt, Gabe and I delivered a 1-hour presentation titled “Nine Steps to Becoming a Better Night Photographer.” We covered ideas such as not rushing through a setup, learning about astronomy and investing in quality gear that’s capable of night capture. (You can see our presentation at the very beginning of the Day 2 recording.)

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While all those presentations were happening, attendees were also busy visiting exhibitors on the show floor, including us. We hosted a table right in the corner of the main room, where we had the pleasure of meeting dozens of potential new workshoppers as well as reconnecting with many New York-area workshop alums.

We also enjoyed reconnecting with our brand partners Manfrotto and Tether Tools. Our friends from Luxli were there too, as well as those from Nikon, Sony and more.

The Photo Cruise

This year’s NYC Harbor Sunset Cruise was once again hosted by Canon. The boat pushed up the Hudson River for a bit, then headed south into the Upper Bay where the group enjoyed and photographed a stunning sunset behind the Statue of Liberty. We got to chat with scores of attendees and sponsors, enjoying a beautiful evening out with friends old and new.

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The cruise was also a special moment for Matt, Gabe and I, as we realized it was the first time the three of us had been on the deck of that boat together since 2015—when they invited me to help launch NPAN with them. So we had a nice little seventh-anniversary moment, complete with hugs and a photo (see above).

The Photo Walks

The conference always includes a photo walk, and this year saw us back at one of our favorite NYC photo haunts, Brooklyn Bridge Park. Our good friend David Brommer and a few of the other OPTIC speakers led attendees during a daytime shoot, and then Matt, Gabe and I took over for sunset and twilight.

About 40 photographers first joined us for ice cream at Ample Hills Creamery (priorities!), and then we wandered the waterfront of the East River, photographing passing boats and the Manhattan skyline. We worked our way south to our final location, the famous spot for photographing old pier pilings in front of the East River with the skyscrapers of the Financial District in the background. (See the video above.)

The twilight shoot was scheduled to end at 9 p.m., but if you know us then you know that didn’t happen—we stayed until well after 10:00, helping folks photograph the scene with the millions of twinkling lights of the city at night.

Wrapping Up

All good things must end, just as OPTIC 2022 did on Wednesday. If you had to miss the conference, individual videos of the presentations (including ours) will be live on the B&H Photo YouTube channel within the next couple of weeks.

If you were there, we’d love to see your photos. Post them in the comments or on our Facebook page, or tag us on Instagram (@nationalparksatnight).

OPTIC is one of the most dynamic conferences any of us has ever been a part of, and we absolutely recommend you attend in the future. Be sure to watch the B&H social channels, as well as ours, for news about future dates. (Including—ready for a teaser?—a big OPTIC announcement for later this year. Stay tuned!)

Chris Nicholson is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night, and author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015). Learn more about national parks as photography destinations, subscribe to Chris' free e-newsletter, and more at www.PhotographingNationalParks.com.

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

The Many Ways that PhotoPills Helps a Night Photographer

It’s been not even a week since Gabriel Biderman and I returned from teaching at PhotoPills Camp on the beautiful Mediterranean island of Menorca, and I still think about the adventures and the camaraderie with new friends and colleagues.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about how much knowledge PhotoPills provides to night photographers. The app has become so ubiquitous in my workflow that I’d come to take it a little for granted. Spending a week with people who are learning to master it—and seeing their wonderment at the creative options the app enables—made me consciously appreciate again all that this tool can do.

It also reminded me of a blog post idea that’s been sitting in a corner of my mind for years: “The Many Ways that PhotoPills Helps a Night Photographer.” That’s what we’re covering below.

Know When Darkness Will Fall

Anticipating darkness can be relatively important for night photography. PhotoPills tells you when the sun will set, when the different phases of twilight will begin and end, and when the sky will finally be as dark as it can be. Then it tells you all that info in reverse, all the way to the next sunrise. And it does this for any day of any month of any year, for wherever on Earth you want to shoot.

Want to shoot in Bryce Canyon National Park tonight? PhotoPills tells you all you need to know about sunset, moonrise, astronomical twilight, Milky Way visibility times and more.

Find the Milky Way

PhotoPills’ most famous feature is probably its ability to help you visualize where in any given scene the Milky Way will appear, whether tonight or any night in the future, whether you’re on location or scouting from half a globe away.

You can use the Planner to scout ahead of time, or use the Augmented Reality (AR) mode to overlay the Milky Way right on the scene that’s in front of you. Find where and when it will be for the photo you want to create, then just be there.

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In a daytime scout in Death Valley National Park, Night AR showed exactly where the Milky Way would be at 10:04 that same night. Or, more importantly, it showed what time the Milky Way would be exactly where I wanted it for this composition. Nikon D5 with an Irix 15mm f/2.4 lens. 20 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400.

Find the Moon

PhotoPills helps you do the same with the moon. I love photographing in moonlight, as well as including the moon in a composition when it’s relatively near the horizon. The Planner, the Moon and the Night AR pills all help with that.

The moon can move around in the sky quite a bit from night to night, and might not appear in the same place at the same time for half a decade. That makes guesswork just a little more than hard, but PhotoPills makes guesswork unnecessary.

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In Acadia National Park, Night AR showed precisely where the moon would rise over the Atlantic coast. Nikon D3s with a Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, light painted with a gelled Coast HP7R flashlight. 4 seconds, f/5.6, ISO 800.

Find an Eclipse

Every now and then the moon creeps into Earth’s shadow, and every now and then the moon blocks sunlight from reaching us. You’re probably more likely to win the lottery than to catch an eclipse by happenstance, so if you want to photograph one, you need inside information. PhotoPills gives it to you.

Want to photograph an eclipse sometime in the next few decades? PhotoPills holds eclipse data, for both the solar and lunar varieties, through the next 28 years. So there’s no excuse to miss the annular solar eclipse on May 31, 2049, nor the total lunar eclipse on October 29, 2050.

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The eclipse information in the Planner helped me anticipate this total lunar eclipse composition over Price Lake on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Nikon D5 with a Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. Three blended frames: 15 seconds (sky), 30 seconds (foreground); 1/4 second (moon), all at f/2.8, ISO 6400.

Find a Pole Star

If you’ve been doing night photography for more than a minute, then you probably know how to use the Big Dipper to find Polaris, or how to use the Southern Cross to find Sigma Octantis, so that you can photograph star circles. (If not, join us for a workshop and we’ll point you in the right direction.)

However, if you’re scouting in daylight, none of those stars will help you find anything, because you can’t see them. So turn on Night AR, the PhotoPills feature that plops a sky map over anything your device’s camera is aimed at. Included in that overlay is the point in the celestial sphere that all the surrounding stars appear to revolve around, allowing you to strategize star-circle composition hours before the sky is dark enough to shoot them.

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In Menorca (during PhotoPills Camp!), Night AR showed that the North Star would center right above this stone wall that I’d had my eye on. Nikon D5 with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. Sky: 8 stacked frames shot at 8 minutes, f/8, ISO 1600. Blue-hour foreground: 30 seconds, f/8, ISO 400.

Envision Star Trails

Not all star trails are circles—some are curved or diagonal lines that stretch across the skies of our non-pole-star compositions. If you’re experienced and have a good optical imagination, you may be able to visualize which way those stars will appear to be moving based on which direction your camera is facing. Or you can look at PhotoPills.

In Night AR, all those lines that appear over your scene are the celestial arcs that stars will be moving along during long exposures. You can see exactly which way those stars will trail, and discern whether that might help or hinder your composition.

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This view of Moro Rock in Sequoia National Park faces southeast, and the arcs of the lines in Night AR mimicked the shape that I could expect from star trails in the frame. Nikon D5 with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. Sky: 18 stacked frames shot at 5 minutes, f/5.6, ISO 1600. Blue-hour foreground: 10 seconds, f/5.6, ISO 400.

Calculate a Long Exposure

When you’re setting up a star-trail photo, your exposure (or your cumulative exposure, if you’re stacking) will be relatively long—perhaps only five minutes, or perhaps a few hours. But testing a 2-hour exposure to see if it’s correct takes way too long, which is why we recommend running a high ISO test.

Once you know your high ISO exposure, how do you convert it to an equivalent long exposure? You can use the Six-Stop Rule as a shortcut for simple conversions, or you can use PhotoPills’ Exposure calculator for more complex ones. You have a good test shot at 10 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 25,600? In a fraction of a second, PhotoPills will tell you that your 45-minute exposure should be at f/8 and ISO 400.

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In Colorado’s Uncompahgre National Forest, I was able to use the Exposure pill to quickly calculate a 15-minute exposure with better depth of field based on a test exposure shot wide open at ISO 6400. Nikon D5 with a Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. 15 minutes, f/5.6, ISO 250.

Calculate a Shorter Exposure

When you don’t want your stars to trail—even a smidge—you need to know the maximum shutter speed you can use before that happens. The 400 Rule is a useful shortcut to that information, but it’s not entirely accurate and doesn’t account for every variable that can affect the result.

What does? The enormously complex algorithm known as the NPF Rule. Use that, and your stars will stay as tiny little dots in the dark sky, just like you want them to. No one is doing NPF calculations in their head—you need a calculator, and PhotoPills has one in its Spot Stars pill.

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For this Milky Way photo in Joshua Tree National Park, I used the Spot Stars pill to calculate an NPF Rule shutter speed that would render the stars as supersharp pinpoints. Nikon D5 with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. 10 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 12,800.

Determine Hyperfocal Distance

Of all the ways to focus in the dark, using hyperfocus is the hardest to master and the most surefire to work in every situation. Because of the latter, learning the technique is worth the investment.

The calculations for determining a correct hyperfocal distance are too complex to tackle in the field with pencil and paper, so a microchip is necessary. PhotoPills will do all that math for you and report the data in a table or in a streamlined chart, depending on which format makes more sense to you.

Even with that assistance, hyperfocus is a complex concept that is also incredibly abstract. PhotoPills makes it easier to understand and to apply by making the information concrete: Using AR, it can overlay the hyperfocal distance, as well as the near and far focal planes, onto the scene you’re standing in front of. You still need to measure in the real world to be sure of accurate results, but seeing that display goes a long, long way to understanding how this technique will help you nail focus and maximize depth of field.

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In Big Bend National Park, PhotoPills Augmented Reality gave me a preview of how I could use hyperfocus to get the foreground brush and the background stars all sharp, even at f/4. Nikon D3s with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens, light painted with a Coast HP7R flashlight. 92 stacked frames shot at 25 seconds, f/4, ISO 5000.

Figure Out Pano Panel Widths

If you photograph Milky Way panoramas, or if you’ve investigated how to, then you’re aware that the frames need to overlap by about one-third to one-half.

When actually shooting, many photographers guess that third or half, or they eyeball something in the scene to approximate how far to pivot the camera from one frame to the next. But some photographers like to be more precise and overlap by an exact increment, using degree measurements etched into their tripod-head bases.

In order to do that, you need to know how many degrees wide your frame is, which is based on the size of the camera sensor and the focal length of the lens. This requires referencing manufacturer data, and—once again—running calculations.

The PhotoPills FoV (field of view) feature can do that all for you. Just enter your camera and lens models, and the app will pull the pertinent numbers out of its database and tell you how many degrees wide your frame is. Divide by 2 or 3, and you know exactly how many degrees to rotate your camera between pano panels.

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For this Milky Way pano at California’s Mono Lake, I used PhotoPills to determine that the ideal rotation for my camera between frames would be about 35 degrees (75 divided by 2, rounded). Nikon D5 with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. Sky: 6 stitched frames shot at 15 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 12,800. Foreground: 6 stitched frames shot at 30 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 12,800.

Plan for a Meteor Shower

To photograph a meteor shower successfully, you need a lot of info to help plan when to be outside: dates of the shower, the date and time of peak activity, the moon phase, when the moon rises and sets, twilight times, etc. It’s also helpful to know the shower’s radiant—that is, the point in the sky where the meteors appear to originate.

I’m sure you’ve seen the pattern by now, but I’ll write this anyway: PhotoPills has all that info. You can view a year-by-year chart of all the Class I, II, III and IV meteor showers for the rest of this century and beyond. The chart and the more detailed info pages that follow include all the info mentioned above—plus more, including easy-to-read bar graphs depicting how good each shower will be for photography.

As for the Planner and that stellar AR feature I keep mentioning, they also work with meteor showers. View all the above info on the map from home, or stand in the place you want to shoot, and you can see where the radiant will be at any time.

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This year the Eta Aquariids and Gemenids were predicted to be the best for photography. We can see this quickly by viewing the “energy bar” to the left of the shower name.

Wrapping Up

So there you go, a long list of tasks that PhotoPills can help you with when photographing at night. The app does more too, including a whole host of cool things for daytime photographers. Moreover, it does most of these things without needing an active cell or Wi-Fi connection.

By the way, we teach all of this—almost the whole app, in fact—on our PhotoPills Bootcamp workshops. Our next of those will be at Bryce Canyon National Park at the end of this month, and a couple of spots recently opened. If you want to learn all the ways that PhotoPills can help you become a better photographer, sign up now!

Also keep your eye on this blog. All of the National Parks at Night instructors use PhotoPills, and it’s inevitable that we’ll write about the app in this space from time to time. We will certainly cover some of the above features in more detail in the future.

How have you used PhotoPills to create better night photography? We’d love to see those images. Feel free to post them in comments section or on our Facebook page, or tag us (@nationalparksatnight) on Instagram. Be sure to tell the story of how you used the app to scout the shot!

Chris Nicholson is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night, and author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015). Learn more about national parks as photography destinations, subscribe to Chris' free e-newsletter, and more at www.PhotographingNationalParks.com.

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

Wishing Upon Some Falling Stars: The Tau Herculids May (or May Not) be a Night of a Lifetime

One autumn night in 1995 I arrived home late. I was about to walk into the back door of the house when I casually looked up at the stars, and there it was: comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3. Wow. It was as clear as anything else in the sky, beautifully floating amidst the stars. I’d never seen anything like it. Moreover, after Halley’s Comet had so disappointed me as a young teen in 1986, I’d really expected never to see any comet at all.

Sometimes the universe can seem so static. From one night to the next we look up and see what seems like the same stars, the same moon, the same unfathomable expanse of nothing that surrounds our pale blue dot.

Then something reminds us that the universe is always in motion, always in flux, always ready with a surprise. We get a lunar eclipse that seizes the interest of half the globe. Or a comet that no one had known existed sails in from the Kuiper belt and dazzles us for a glorious summer month. Or, in the case of this week, a brand new meteor shower rains stars into our night sky.

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Comet NEOWISE over Jordan Pond, Acadia National Park. © 2020 Chris Nicholson. Nikon D5 with a Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. Six stitched frames shot at 15 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400.

What? Well, maybe. This Monday, May 30, we might see one of the most dazzling displays of meteors ever. Or not. Astronomers aren’t sure, and the only way to find out is to stay up and look up.

The meteoroids in question do exist. They’re left over from that 1995 flyby, and now Earth is maybe about to come upon them in space.

Maybe? Well, astronomers aren’t exactly sure how far the debris has traveled, but some credible projections put them right in Earth’s path. If those projections are accurate, and if we pass through the heart of the debris cloud, it could produce one of the densest clusters of shooting stars ever witnessed. The Tau Herculid Meteor Shower, as its come to be known, could be astronomically historic.

What does that mean in terms of the number of potential shooting stars? The meteorologist for The Washington Post says 1,000 per hour. Universe Today says as many as 1,400. (To put those numbers in perspective, consider that a really good year for the famous Perseid Meteor Shower yields about 100 per hour.)

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Perseid Meteor Shower outburst over Badlands National Park. © 2021 Matt Hill.

But, again, the Tau Herculid number could be zero.

In fact, zero is the hunch of Tyler Nordgen, astronomer, Night Photo Summit speaker and author of the book Stars Above, Earth Below: A Guide to Astronomy in the National Parks. “If I were to bet, I’d say this upcoming meteor shower will turn out to be nothing,” Nordgren says. “I still remember spending a perfectly starry night out in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore for the supposed Camelopardalids meteor ‘storm’ in May 2014 and not seeing a single meteor all night.”

Still, Nordgren says the potential for what could happen is probably worth a look. “It only has to actually happen once for you to see (or miss) the experience of a lifetime. So if it’s clear, I’ll go out. I’m not making a special trip to the desert Southwest, but I’ll hang out in my backyard and see what I can see. What’s the worst that can happen?”

Shooting the Potential Shower

This all brings us to what to do as photographers. I say get the camera ready and get outside.

If you choose that option, Nordgren has some advice: “Use a wide-angle lens to capture a lot of sky. Point upward with something on the horizon in the field of view to give a sense of scale, and just let the camera expose for 10, 20, 40, 90 seconds or more. See what you capture. It takes only one photo to make a night to remember.”

If you want to shoot the meteor shower, download our e-book Great Balls of Fire by clicking the image above.

For even more to strategize such a shoot, see our blog post “How to Photograph a Meteor Shower.” Better yet, read our e-book Great Balls of Fire: A Guide to Photographing Meteor Showers.

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Boötes the Herdsman

For this particular meteor shower, the radiant will be near the Boötes the Herdsman constellation, which is around the bright orange star Arcturus and not far from the handle of the Big Dipper. To find it, use an app such as Sky Map (Android), Sky Guide (iOS) or Stellarium (ambivalent). Alternatively, use PhotoPills—they just added the Tau Herculids to their meteor shower data, so you can do a full scout like with pretty much any other celestial event. Include the radiant in your composition to get the best chance of capturing a meteor, or to capture a series of exposures for creating a “meteor radiant” image.

The Western Hemisphere (and a small part of West Africa) will be the best place to view the shower (weather-permitting), unless you’re in a midnight-sun or simmer-dim kind of area. Be outside and look up around 1 a.m. EDT, or 10 p.m. PDT.

Again, this event might not be an event at all. If you’re undecided whether to try to witness or photograph the potential shower, here are some pros and cons:

Pros

• If the meteors do show, they could produce a once-in-many-lifetimes experience.

• We’re in a new moon, so lunar conditions are optimal to see any stars that may fall.

Cons

• Though the number of meteors could be high, most are likely to be dim. (Visible and photographable, but not bright like the Perseids.)

• The radiant is high—halfway up from the horizon on the east coast, and nearly overhead on the west. This makes including the landscape in compositions more challenging. (But not impossible.)

More Information

For more about the Tau Herculids, see these great articles:

• “Will the Tau Herculid meteors produce a storm?” (EarthSky)

• “Possible Meteor Outburst on May 30/31?” (American Meteor Society)

• “Shattered comet could produce dazzling meteor shower: How to watch the Tau Herculids” (LiveScience)

• “A meteor shower outburst from a shattered comet may spawn new Tau Herculids display on May 30” (Space)

• “May 31st Could Be the Most Powerful Meteor Storm in Generations, or Nothing at All” (Universe Today)

Show Us What You Get

Will you wish upon some falling stars? If you’re feeling lucky or adventurous and you go out to shoot, we’d love to see your photos. Please share them in the comments section or on our Facebook page, or tag us (@nationalparksatnight) on Instagram.

Chris Nicholson is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night, and author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015). Learn more about national parks as photography destinations, subscribe to Chris' free e-newsletter, and more at www.PhotographingNationalParks.com.

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT