Aperture Stars: Star-Gazing at the End of the World
Yesterday I had the distinct pleasure to go out to Cedar Key with my good friends J-Fin, c_love82, and santefeegret. I left my wide-angle of choice, the 12-24, at home with the intention of using my oft-neglected fisheye instead. At our very first stop, I took a photo of a dock with the fisheye, and I was suddenly inspired for the rest of the trip.
I ended up using an array of lenses, but in the end, the effect was almost always the same: the sun twinkled in a perfect blue sky, and instead of having a huge blob of white in the top half of the photo, I had a star. It’s a pretty easy trick. Instead of shooting at the largest aperture (f/2.4 or f/2.8 or thereabouts), I stopped down the lens a LOT – in some cases, all the way to f/22. It makes for some slow shutter speeds, but there was enough light to manage to handhold.
With the fisheye, I generally just kept it at 10mm and chose an autofocus point in the bottom right-hand corner. I manually exposed so that the sun wouldn’t be over-exposed. The rest of the photo looked very dark in the original but I made sure to shoot at the lowest ISO my camera offers (ISO 100) and then I dodged all the dark sections (the water and the sand) in post-processing:
“At the End of the World”
Pentax K200D, DA 10-17 @ 10mm, f/11, 1/160th shutter, ISO 100
This next shot was also taken with the fisheye, but because I was more concerned with the sandy forefront, the frame was taken up by a lot more of the “dark” stuff than the light and with getting maximum depth of field (hard to do without a tripod, which I didn’t have). Hence the huge difference you’ll see in the camera settings:
“Distortion”
Pentax K200D, DA 10-17 @ 10mm, f/20, 1/40th shutter, ISO 100
I took an all-bokeh version of the same scene using a much longer lens. For this one, I manually-metered the scene again and manually-focused until the image looked the right amount of out-of-focus. The DA 70 produces fanastic bokeh at its largest aperture, and I was more concerned with the reflections off the water than with with the sun in this one, but you can see how it’s just an amorphous white blob when the aperture isn’t stopped down. The shutter maxed out at 1/4000th, the fastest it can go:
“Bokeh Run”
Pentax K200D, DA 70mm, f/2.4, 1/4000th shutter, ISO 100
Compare that to the sun in the photo below, which was taken in manual mode with the FA 31 at an aperture of f/11:
“Last Shack Standing”
Pentax K200D, FA 31mm, f/11, 1/3200th shutter, ISO 100 
The DA 70mm, stopped down to f/22, made an interesting flare in this photo. Unlike the other shots which were basically focused to infinity, this one is of a roof that was no more than 6 feet away.
“Roof”
Pentax K200D, DA 70mm, f/22, 1/320th shutter, ISO 200
And finally, one last shot of the stunning light we were party to yesterday. J-Fin has the DA 55-300, and she was generous enough to let me use it for the majority of the day. I found it much lighter than I expected it to be, especially for its size. It seemed to focus quickly (especially compared to my D-FA 100mm Macro that I usually use for my long shots!). This is a shot of the light reflecting off the water around the piers taken at 190mm:
“Rain of Fire”
Pentax K200D, DA 55-300 @ 190mm, f/22, 1/2500th, ISO 100
November 17th, 20097:43 am at
Hi Keitha,
Those are some really, really nice photos, though the 4th one is not coming up. I really appreciate the exposure data and your thoughts as you were taking the shots, too. Although a bit torn between whether I like 2 or 5 the most, I’m leaning toward 5. Very interesting as an abstract shot, and even more so when you realize what it is you’re looking at.
November 18th, 20099:35 am at
Thanks for pointing out that missing 4th shot, Andrew! My friends spotted that ripped roof first and were taking shots from directly below, but I went on a staircase of the building next door and crouched down between the rails to take my shot – I was really enamored with the sun that day :)