Bloody Digital Photography

The worst thing about digital photography is I have to say the requirement to have power.  Yes batteries can last for days now, and they are quite small and light so you can carry a few with you, but there will always be the inevitable need to recharge.  “You just cannot forget about film” is a recurring message that I seem to be hearing over and over.  It still has its place.

One of the problems being out here as the Camera Operator is that I don’t get to shoot anywhere near as much as I would like. So when I do, it would be great if everything worked the way you think it should.

I have shot star trails on film before on a Hasselblad, and the results were great.  I have wanted to give it a go on digital for some time and managed something out in Canada once.  It didn’t work as the battery died before I closed the shutter meaning that the camera couldn’t do its post exposure clean up!  The resulting image was dreadful with all kinds of noise overly distracting from the general image.

Now with the D3, and finally in a location with no light pollution (not even any flashes from incoming rockets and mortars), I decided to give it another shot.  To get a decent trail of light I decided on a six hour exposure with some interest added as a reference.

So working out my aperture and ISO, I set the camera on my tripod, pre-focused and away it went.  Leave the camera in the middle of a compound full of squadies and hope six hours later not to have pictures of genitals.

Alarm set, getting up at ‘stupid O’Clock’ on a cold (by Afghanistan standards) morning, I was again disappointed as the battery had gone dead before I got there and the exposure had ended.  CRAP!  Clear nights are not all that common out here with dust light pollution and a bright moon.  Never mind I will get another shot.

Anyway here is the shot, it has taken some creative post production to get an image that I am happy to display but it is not the shot I wanted.

Not another bloody school day!