2007-04-18

The ISS, Leo and Saturn

Tonight I had my first go at photographing the International Space Station.

Earlier in the day I saw on Heavens Above that there would be a good pass this evening so I decided to have a go at photographing it. I went out with about 15 minutes to spare and set the Canon EOS 400D up on the tripod and did a few test shots. I had a hell of a time trying to get it focused well but managed to get close to something useful before it was time.

Just as the ISS approached I realised that I had the shutter speed set to 30 seconds rather than bulb and that I'd not yet used the remote in bulb mode and wasn't exactly sure how it worked so, rather than miss the pass, I just went for the 30 second exposure. This is the result:

International Space Station
Click on the picture for a bigger version

That's the jpeg straight off the camera, just with a slight crop, a tweak of the levels and a resize before uploading to my Flickr account.

It's not perfect, but as a first attempt I'm pretty pleased.

3 comments:

Ian Musgrave said...

That's a pretty nice picture. I look forward to more ISS shots from you. It will be interesting to see how the RAW processing comes out.

Dave Pearson said...

I had one quick play with the RAW and, to be honest, it didn't give me anything better.

Then again I've found that so far with the 400D. That probably doesn't mean much about the camera though, that probably says a lot about my ability to process a RAW.

Paul Sutherland said...

It is great to see someone else's attempt at the ISS. We've had some good passages over the last few days combined with a run of clear, moonless skies. I managed to capture one pass here with my own Canon EOS 300D. It was interesting to note the relatively slow approach from the West.
I actually got all set up to take another image a couple of nights earlier but the camera refused to respond. I found the battery flap had somehow come open and I'd lose power!