iPhone Lightning Photos with Slow Shutter Cam App

I haven't found an easier way to photograph lightning than with Slow Shutter Cam () for iPhone. With a live exposure view, you can see what the final product looks like before closing the shutter. In light trail mode, it's just amazing. I wish my DSLR had this feature. The background is never over-exposed, it's like the app is just selecting the brightest pixel from a series of photos or video. With a DSLR, I'd imagine the entire scene continues to get brighter and brighter as you keep the shutter open - making bulb mode lightning exposures tricky.

Got lucky with this one! My favorite of the night.

I had my iPhone in my Glif tripod mount.

I used my Apple headphones with (+) volume button as a remote shutter release.

Several lightning strikes within the clouds

Storm rolling in from the NW

June 2013 Supermoon with apparent size comparison

It was raining when I came out of the movie theater after seeing Man of Steel, so I didn't have high hopes of catching the Moon of Steel, er, "supermoon" last night. As always, I was walking my dog when I noticed a break in the clouds. It wasn't totally clear (a few thin hazy clouds remained) but there was another wave of heavy clouds on its way so I knew this was my chance.

I must say, I like having plenty of yard space to the side of my apartment complex, rather than a courtyard where all the doorways face the yard. This way I can feel less self-conscious setting up a tripod with big zoom lens in the middle of the night.

I stacked 19 frames in Registax, which cleaned up the supermoon a bit, but it's obviously not as clean as my Snow Moon from February earlier this year.

Moon photographs for the birds! (and of birds)

There's this big dead tree across the street from my apartment complex. I see it every time I take my dog out, and I've been waiting for an excuse to photograph it. On Thursday, I saw about 40 birds perched on the tree and thought it would make for a great photo (especially with the moon rising behind it).

Shooting in the changing light was a little difficult. The sun had already set, so I was in that "magic hour" right before it gets dark.

Click to enlarge, ISO 100, 300mm, 1/200 sec, f/5.6

Nature in the warehouse district

Traffic was whizzing by at 35 mph with only a small sidewalk between me and the 5 lane road, but I'd still like to scamper across the street for a star trail photo some time. This big dead tree would be perfect (no moving leaves to blur the shots).

Brilliant ISS pass over Indiana

My brother called me on Thursday night to let me know the International Space Station would be flying overhead later that night. He said he heard it on the news. I verified by going to Heavens-Above and saw that indeed the ISS would be flying over Indiana at 11:00pm at -3.4 magnitude reaching a max elevation of about 60° or so.

I'm glad they reported it on the news, but you can tell they only report the really spectacular passes otherwise they'd be listing a handful of visible passes every couple weeks.

What luck! The station would be flying out of the NW directly toward my balcony, and the sky looked like it would cooperate. This was a great chance to try out ISS spotting from this new location, along with an app I've been dying to test under these circumstances - It's called Precise Time () and it "synchronizes time from high resolution Atomic Clocks from around the globe." Unfortunately it doesn't have the ability to SET your iPhone's clock, but you can open the app to see the seconds ticking away in precise time.

I used the app to watch for the appearance of the ISS, and was successful in comparing the predicted appearance within +/- about 1 second. This could be very handy for spotting Iridum Flares!

Series of 20 second exposures stacked (you can see little breaks in the ISS path)

Series of 15 second exposures stacked (point and shoot camera)

Clouds muck up first real star circle attempt from my Indiana location

271 images stacked, each at ISO 400 for 15 sec

I had my point and shoot set up on a mini tripod on my balcony overnight. I retrieved the camera around 3:50am with a dead battery, so I think 271 is about all the pics I can take back to back.

I noticed that from the NW I get quite a few planes coming presumably from Chicago toward Indy and beyond. On a clear night, maybe a little earlier, I'd like to get some air traffic stacked in with these long exposures. Then again, it's almost the shortest night of the year, so there probably isn't as much traffic that late at night.