TIMELAPSE AFTERDARK

 The sun sets around 1643 these winter days ... only light pollution, the noon and light snow on the ground keeps the nightime landscape slightly brighter than the usual dark night.

Night time is the right time

By the time autumn reaches these northern shores Milkyway is at it's best. Well, actually the peak Milkyway season is around Jun/July everywhere else however being this far North reasonabe darkness only creeps in slowly around the 3rd week of August. The season then carries through till late October. By December when you start having clear cloudless sky, the nights are too cold and Milkyway isnt anymore at it's peak. But you may have aurora, meteor showers and other night time activities.

Over the past several years, my mainstay for imaging the nightsky are the Canon 6D and Sony A7S, both are fullframe cameras. I was initially using cropped bodies Canon 40D and 7D and obviously these weren't quite up to task for low light situations.

Both the fullframe bodies are coupled with several wide aperture lenses from Canon, Sigma Art and Samyang.

Canon 6D + Samyang AF85/1.4

Sony A7S + Sigma Art AF35/1.4

Milkyway in mid November 2018, it was cloudy all they way from Aug.

I also typically bring along a Sony RX100 PnS for backup. There are always nights when you realised too late that both cameras are flat out of juice and the extra batteries are either in the car at the bottom of the mountain or in the bag at the cabin. The PnS would then prove to be very useful for an idiot selfie with the Milkyway in the background!