Starry Night, Second Try

It was cold last night, (Tuesday), 5 degrees Fahrenheit, (about -15 C). I did learn one very important thing last night, and that is camera batteries do not last very long at that cold of a temperature. From fully charged to less than a half charge in about an hour. Fortunately I do have a spare.

I tried to use the "Hyperfocal" technique, I think I still need more practice with it, but the stars are not as blobby as the previous try, a bit more in focus. So here is one of the edited photo results.

This is the after results of some editing. The image was taken at 2000 ISO, with an 8 second exposure, and a 4.5 f-stop.

This is the view from outside my window, and the yellow glow at the bottom is the down stairs lights being on. Not ideal night time photography location, but at those cold temperature this will be the place to try and experiment.

Here is the same image not edited except for resizing for upload:
Pretty dark, and not many stars visible unless you zoom in. I am pretty happy with how the edit did come out.

The above were my second attempt of the evening.The first attempts I had much to low of ISO set. I forgot to look at the ISO, and it was only set at 320 ISO. So here below we have a 67.1 second exposure at 320 ISO and F-stop 4.5. Of course the first image is the edited one followed by the original unedited image.

And here is the unedited just resized image:

I actually kind of like the long exposure shot. It did not take a lot of post processing, and I think it looks pretty good. I do still need to work on getting the correct focusing down. and when I can manage that I may go out and brave some dark and cold and lonely place in the frozen land of Alaska to get some high quality shots, for now though I'll continue to opt for the comfort of the house, light pollution and all. Perhaps we will have enough clear nights to get in some practice, and by March of next year enough practice under my belt to go to a really dark spot.