Planning a meteor shower shoot - Advice needed

[Visarend]

Planning a trip to do some astrophotography during next month's Geminids meteor shower, peak 14 December. The great advantage this year is that the peak period is a few days after the new moon, thus no moonlight to obscure the 2015 Geminid shower!

So what is important!
Location:
Open sky, scenic landscape, no/min light pollution. Hope to have this one coved.

Equipment:
Canon 6D
Ronkinon 14mm f2.8
Tripod and remote control (TC-80 N3).

Technical know how, this is where I need help!
ISO 3200-6400, f 2.8, time max 30-35 sec to ensure that on each photo the stars do not show any movement.
Shoot as many as possible, always in RAW. This will hopefully mean that you capture meteorites on some of the photos.
Seems that a minimum of 2 hours is needed to later compile star-trails.
Photograph scene already at twilight.
Focus on stars and not the foreground?
Spare batteries and cards.

What am I not thinking off, any other tips and suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[rfdesigner]

Concider the frequency.. 50 per hour at the peak should be achievable.. that's about 1 per minute, most of the time it will be less.

You might want to try allowing the stars to trail, point the camera at the radiant point and capture 10 minutes or so... you'll get star trails + plus streaks radiating out from the centre for each event.

Also take separate dark frames (several, not just one or two) at the end of the imaging session (lens cap on, same length & settings as you image frames), and use an astro program such as deep sky stacker, IRIS or soemthing to take away the dark frame. using the in camera "dark removal" (hot pixel cancelling) will waste half your valuable imaging time.. you can also use a dark frame and an astro program to just fix any hot pixels but not subtract a dark frame.

Take a plastic ziplock bag.. once you've finnished put your valuable gear in the bag before bringing it indoors (dew goes on the bag.. only get the camera out after it's thoroughly warmed up.. i.e. the next morning )

I don't know how humid your area is.. here it's often >90% at night and dew is a real problem.. something placed between the sky and the camera will prevent dew (with a hole in it for the lens to poke through of course).. maybe a plasitc bag, or a piece of cardboard. a Car windscreen heat shield is ideal.. silver side skyward.

If you can acquire a source of heat to gently keep the lens front element from dewing up that is handy.. it only needs to be half a degree warmer than the air not to dew up, but it will be radiating heat to the sky all the time

 

[Visarend]

Also take separate dark frames (several, not just one or two) at the end of the imaging session (lens cap on, same length & settings as you image frames), and use an astro program such as deep sky stacker, IRIS or soemthing to take away the dark frame. using the in camera "dark removal" (hot pixel cancelling) will waste half your valuable imaging time.. you can also use a dark frame and an astro program to just fix any hot pixels but not subtract a dark frame.

Thanks for the info on the dark frames, not something I have seen/read anywhere.
Luckily I will be in a dry warm area so dew should not be a problem.

 

[rfdesigner]

Also take separate dark frames (several, not just one or two) at the end of the imaging session (lens cap on, same length & settings as you image frames), and use an astro program such as deep sky stacker, IRIS or soemthing to take away the dark frame. using the in camera "dark removal" (hot pixel cancelling) will waste half your valuable imaging time.. you can also use a dark frame and an astro program to just fix any hot pixels but not subtract a dark frame.

Thanks for the info on the dark frames, not something I have seen/read anywhere.
Luckily I will be in a dry warm area so dew should not be a problem.

There's quite a lot written about dark frames.. and the rest of the astro processing process

http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/theory.htm#Calibration

In your case I'm not suggesting flat frames.. you could try them but it's so easy to get in a right pickle.. I'd just stick with getting the black point fixed (it's the most important issue)

Don't worry about processing until after the shoot, if you have any trouble after that add a note to this thread and I'll see if I can help. I'm sure Jrista will also be willing to lend a hand.

 

[Visarend]

There's quite a lot written about dark frames.. and the rest of the astro processing process

http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/theory.htm#Calibration

In your case I'm not suggesting flat frames.. you could try them but it's so easy to get in a right pickle.. I'd just stick with getting the black point fixed (it's the most important issue)

Don't worry about processing until after the shoot, if you have any trouble after that add a note to this thread and I'll see if I can help. I'm sure Jrista will also be willing to lend a hand.

Again thanks, learning a lot!
Need more advice on recommended camera setting to optimally capture the night sky (with the meteors in it). Do I just go with standard milky-way capturing, or _? A night is long, assume there is time to capture it using several different settings.

 

[jabbott]

What am I not thinking off, any other tips and suggestions?

Thanks!

If you are going to make star trails, you likely won't need a couple hours of shots. I did one recently using StarStaX with an hour of 30 second exposures and it turned out quite full looking. That said, it wouldn't hurt to capture a couple/few hours anyway to see which section has the most meteors. Also, be aware of where Polaris is in the sky (assuming you are in the northern hemisphere) - that is the center of where the star trail will be rotating about. As rfdesigner mentioned, the radiant point of the meteor shower is where the center of the meteors will be appearing from... so you have two interesting points to consider in terms of where to position the camera amidst the landscape and sky. If you put Magic Lantern on your camera, it adds an intervalometer feature which is very useful for capturing a continuous sequence of shots with minimal time between them. Practice using this before going out at night. Using manual exposure mode is recommended so that it doesn't change the exposure settings during the shot sequence. My approach is to tinker a lot first to get the exposure where I want it, then I keep it that way in manual mode during a shot sequence. Taking some dark frames is useful as others have mentioned. Going somewhere really remote also helps, as you can set up a tent near the camera and optionally get some sleep while it is snapping away with the intervalometer. Bring earplugs if you don't want to hear the shutter actuations while you're trying to sleep. Bring a headlamp with a red LED so that it doesn't interfere with your night vision. Best of luck!

 

[rfdesigner]

There's quite a lot written about dark frames.. and the rest of the astro processing process

http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/theory.htm#Calibration

In your case I'm not suggesting flat frames.. you could try them but it's so easy to get in a right pickle.. I'd just stick with getting the black point fixed (it's the most important issue)

Don't worry about processing until after the shoot, if you have any trouble after that add a note to this thread and I'll see if I can help. I'm sure Jrista will also be willing to lend a hand.

Again thanks, learning a lot!
Need more advice on recommended camera setting to optimally capture the night sky (with the meteors in it). Do I just go with standard milky-way capturing, or _? A night is long, assume there is time to capture it using several different settings.

RAW of course, Manual control, Aperture as much as possible usually, ISO....

Look at the DxO Dynamic range plot for your camera:

for the 6D.. http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Canon/EOS-6D---Measurements

You'll see a fairly straight diagonal line which then curves off to a limit dynamic range.. you want to pick the lowest ISO that's still more or less on the diagonal line.. a bit off is OK,

On the 6D that's about ISO1600.. this is the maximum ISO you should use.

If when you try a shot with that ISO and the maximum frame length you're happy with you find many clipping stars, then lower the ISO a bit.. if you want to stack many shots then it's better to just take more shots than to drop the ISO

 

[Visarend]

Long overdue feedback from my geminid meteor shower shoot. Managed to capture a few meteorites. Like this one with the tree aloe in the foreground, the light trail is me leaving the camera in the mountain, wakling and driving away.
6D, Rokinon 14mm, ISO 3200, 20s x 195 compiled in StarStaX and edited Elements.

 

[d]

Long overdue feedback from my geminid meteor shower shoot. Managed to capture a few meteorites. Like this one with the tree aloe in the foreground, the light trail is me leaving the camera in the mountain, wakling and driving away.
6D, Rokinon 14mm, ISO 3200, 20s x 195 compiled in StarStaX and edited Elements.

Nice shot, Visarend! Do you end up processing this using the dark frame technique as others suggested here?

d.

 

[rfdesigner]

Long overdue feedback from my geminid meteor shower shoot. Managed to capture a few meteorites. Like this one with the tree aloe in the foreground, the light trail is me leaving the camera in the mountain, wakling and driving away.
6D, Rokinon 14mm, ISO 3200, 20s x 195 compiled in StarStaX and edited Elements.

Nicely done.. I hope you have a large print of this somewhere.

 

[Visarend]

Long overdue feedback from my geminid meteor shower shoot. Managed to capture a few meteorites. Like this one with the tree aloe in the foreground, the light trail is me leaving the camera in the mountain, wakling and driving away.
6D, Rokinon 14mm, ISO 3200, 20s x 195 compiled in StarStaX and edited Elements.

Nice shot, Visarend! Do you end up processing this using the dark frame technique as others suggested here?

d.

Yes I shot at least 10 dark frames at the beginning and the end of the night, used all of them in StarStaX.

 

[Visarend]

Long overdue feedback from my geminid meteor shower shoot. Managed to capture a few meteorites. Like this one with the tree aloe in the foreground, the light trail is me leaving the camera in the mountain, wakling and driving away.
6D, Rokinon 14mm, ISO 3200, 20s x 195 compiled in StarStaX and edited Elements.

Nicely done.. I hope you have a large print of this somewhere.

Thanks!, no prints yet.