Jatta's Summer Sunset Clouds

Jatta's summer sunset clouds.

 

Chasing clouds and seashore life in Hundvag

Chasing clouds and seashore life in Hundvag

 

Cloud surfing at Sola Beach

Cloud surfing at Sola Beach

 

It was cloudy all weekend with intermittent sunshine

From the verandah

Foggy nights colorful sunset

Spring is in the air. With winter slowly edging out to spring the temperatures are getting milder during the day of about 8-9 deg C though the nights are still cooler around 5-6 deg C. There've been a couple of foggy nights and mornings. The sun now stays out longer for a later sunset and rises earlier. It seemed like this year's winter is rather short, with hardly any snow on the ground at all.

Entire streets disappeared one foggy nights. I'm tempted to go out with a tripod to make a couple of Jack the Ripper shots along the streets in the neighourhood.

Not long now, spring is slowly making a comeback.

The fullmoon was supposedly to be the largest this month 19-20th Feb was sadly masked by clouds.

It's sunny up above the clouds.

It'll soon be time to take up to the skies again.

Jatta and Gausel in the distance under clouds.

New Year Clouds in moving pictures

These videos highlight the sensor dust problem more eloquently. There's no spotting facility in my current video making software, which doesn't make cleaning spots in post processing any easier. So for now until I've worked up enough courage to fiddle any where near the sensor, I have to live with the awful dirt on my sensors!

Sony A7S

Canon 6D

Sensor cleaning : Wet and dry method

Note to self:

"Garnett Leary

I do astro-modifications to dslrs. I’ll add that it being referred to as “sensor cleaning” is wrong. 99% of people call it that, even the products meant for cleaning. You never actually touch the sensor. Mounted in front of your sensor is your low pass filter. That is what you are cleaning. I guess it would just be confusing to call it a low pass cleaning kit.

Anyway, the reason highly evaporative cleaning solutions must be used is that if you oversaturate you stand a chance of actually having liquid enter between the filter and the sensor. Unless you’re a technician you’re pretty much done at that point. Regardless, the wand never actually touches the sensor. I’m not sure anyone cares about this point but a low pass filter replacement part is around $100. That might help convince people to try cleaning it themselves. The actual sensor underneath it is around 70% of your cameras value however. Venture there with a wand and you may as well throw it in the trash or post on eBay for parts not working.

If you’re interested you can see me removing the low pass filter from two different cameras on my channel. It’s essentially there to prevent redeye but for us astro guys it blocks hydrogen alpha transmission. I’m just rambling on now. Great video tho. It’s only scary the first time but far less so when you realize you never touch the sensor. Clear skies."

New Year's Clouds

New Year's day first few images of clouds. It's already January and this year the snow is late. Today though the clouds tried very hard to bring forth snow, they only managed to spew out a small hail storm and a dash of flurries as the day progressed. The temperature remains in the high single digits. About the only element persisting was the winds ...  cold winds blowing strong all day and all night long.

While making these images I started to notice the big lumps of sensor noise on my cameras.  Both the Sony A7S and the Canon 6D are showing severe image degrading sensor dirt. You don't notice them shooting wide apertures at night (both cameras are my workshorse night photography cameras) though the problem has been put on notice for quite some time.

Shooting low lights at high ISO and widest aperture the sensor dirt issue is less of a problem especially for aurora and nightsky shots. Even for portaitures where you tend to also shoot at wide apertures, sensor dirt implications are minimal. When you start using narrow apertures (f11, f16 onwards) these "blobs" of dirt/dust/foreign objects will start causing you appreciable grief.

Spotting these sensor dirt during PP is a viable workflow for those one or two stray blobs. Once they get too numerous, it's just not wort the effort and time anymore. This is a good juncture  to attempt at cleaning them off the sensor.

I ordered some sensor cleaning tools from Stavangerfoto.no ... let's see how that goes this weekend.