looking 4 tips on shooting Geminid meteor shower

[danchez]

OK, we are about 1 week away from the best meteor shower of the year. I'm looking for tips/hints on the best way to capture this. I experimented during the Leonid meteor shower and had mixed results. I am shooting with my Nikon D700, but I am curious as to which lens would be best for this type of shoot... Also, for anyone that has done this a lot, how long are your exposures? My last time I left the shutter open for 30 seconds, but then I had to wait 30 seconds for the noise reduction... Should I leave this feature turned on? or turn it off? Should I go with a faster shutter speed? 20 seconds? 10 seconds? Any hints or ideas would be truly appreciated, thanks in advance!!

[Flores]

turn off the noise reduction. widest lens possible. if at all possible, have some kind of timer to just take pictures for a few hours.

As far as exposure goes, how long does it take for a meteor to flame up and out?

[Sonny]

Found these articles and they seem to be very informative.

How-to: Photographing the Perseid Meteor Shower | Photography - PopPhoto.com Offers Camera Reviews and Exclusive Photo Tips

How to take photos of the Perseid meteor shower tonight - National Christian Worldview | Examiner.com

Leonid Meteor Shower 2010: Everything You Need To Know (PHOTOS)

Meteor

[Patti Edens]

Thanks for the heads-up on this. I think I'll give it a try. My thoughts were to set up to shoot a Star Trail and then stack all of the photos in Photoshop. Howard Marshburn wrote up how he does star trails here.

The only difference would be instead of aiming at the North Star, I think we would be aiming more toward the East? Not sure where Gemini will be on Dec 13, but I think East.

I took a Night Photography course a few weeks ago. I sent the instructor a note asking for tips. If he gets back to me in time, I'll post 'em up here.

[danchez]

Paul, Sonny, Patti, thanks for the info and the links!!

[HFMarshburnJR]

Dan -

I think some of the star trail photography method is applicable in that your focus needs to be on getting your static elements exposed properly. If you are going to take your photos of the shooting stars in the night sky over a windmill in the field or a bove a city skyline, then you need to focus on the exposure time needed to get these elements lit for the the look you want (and those two examples will be set up very differently), and then set the camera up to take multiple exposures at the determined setting.

Go wide with your lens, but not too wide because you could end up with barrel distortion at too wide of a setting (although, that may be the look you are going for!) Keep your aperature pretty large, because if you make it too small (>F8) some of the fainter streaks may get missed).

That is my 2 cents worth. Have some fun with it!

Patti - Thanks for the shoutout!

HFM

[danchez]

thanks Howard, your wisdom is appreciated.

[Jim Boyd]

Am I wrong, or are we not suppose to be looking to the west?

[HFMarshburnJR]

Jim -

from what I have seen in the stories online, the most active part of the sky ought to be the Northeast quadrant.

HFM

[arich]

Where will y'all be going to watch? I want to take my girlfriend and do some shooting but I don't know where to go lol

EDIT: I'll just drive towards Danbury, there's nothing out by Danbury =P

[danchez]

WOW!!! I can't ever remember seeing such a show... "Shooting stars" were streaking all over the sky, very impressive. I hope everyone that went out got as good of a show that I saw tonight. I haven't looked at any pics yet, hoping that I got some good ones.

[Patti Edens]

I hope y'all did better than I did. I took around 40 photos and I didn't catch a single one of those little devils. I didn't see that many either. I was shooting between around midnight and 1am. Did it get better later?

At least I got a short star trail out of the deal, but that's not what I went out for. I had two cams set up - one for star trails with 5 minute exposures firing at 1 second intervals between and the other I varied ISO, shutter speed, etc. On the second cam, I used much shorter exposure times. I know some meteors streaked by, but they just didn't get recorded.

I don't know what I did wrong.

Oh well, here's the composite of 8 shots for the short star trail...

[camera shy]

I went outside for about 20 minutes ( cold ) and did see one really quick one.

[danchez]

I was out from midnight to about 3am and saw tons!!! Sometimes 3 at once, truly spectacular. I only captured a handful on film, kind of disappointed, but still had a great time freezing my butt off watching a great show.

[SCone]

Saw a very bright one Monday about 6:10am...... no camera & haven't seen another one since........