A Shot in the Dark

This week I took the new camera to the woods, wanting to test out just how good at low light photography it was.

So far the camera has done superbly well in lighting where other lesser things have failed miserably.

Our night walks however are dark. Really dark. Darker than dark. Which sounds crazy, until you realise that you are walking under a thick canopy and the little light there might be from the stars or reflected from a cloud base is just about entirely shut out.

Nevertheless I took half a dozen shots with a long exposure malarkey. 30 seconds to be precise - so not a great speed to be shooting the mutts with, all you would get is the faint hint of a blur.

Apart from a shot where some stars were in the field of view the rest of the pictures were... dark. Inky black. Apparently it really is that dark. I did however take a shot with poor light from a torch - and despite the dubious light quality, the camera took a pretty good picture.

Ah well, no moody night shots. I might look into getting a proper tripod - I have a baby one - and taking even longer exposure shots, but I suspect it won't help for the woods, but would be nice for other night time shots that aren't in quite so dark and challenging places.

The weather turned briefly warm again - and during a midnight walk with a clear sky I gave up traipsing around to lie down on a patch of grass and watch the stars above. I never get bored of looking at the stars - it's a real shame there is so much light pollution around that filters out a lot of the detail. A few clouds scudded overhead to give the weird sensation that the stars were wheeling around at breakneck speed. I think I lay there for 20 minutes or so enjoying the sensation of rushing through space.

Of course, every 5 minutes or so was interspersed by one of the mutts checking up that I was A OK via a wet nose in my face, and suitable licks to ears, nose and anything else they could reach.

After one particularly thorough slobbering from the boy I decided to call my star gazing to an end, called him a punk, and we stalked off through the darkness to make our happy way home - and reached our door by 2AM.