Some shots from last night's camping trip

[David]

Stayed overnight at the highest camp site on Mount Diablo. I got a pretty good campsite (they're first-come-first-served) and had decent views of the Bay Area. One of my goals was to try star trails again. Here are the digital results. The film results won't be processed for a while.

1

Stars and planes landing at SFO. Captures over a 36-minute span, this image features somewhere between 8 and 12 planes coming into land along a few different routes.

2

Honestly, better for star trails than the previous, but much less interesting to look at.

3

Campfires -- mine and the modern-day campfires known as street lamps.

4

Sunset panorama near the camp site.

5

From the summit (not my campsite, unfortunately)

6

Sunset at the campsite.

7

Sunrise as I made coffee. I could not wait for this to come over the night. I had to put my gear away early and pare down to one camera because raccoons kept invading the camp site. At first, they wanted my dinner. One brazen one stuck his paw in my dinner bowl as I set up a camera for the next shot -- two feet away. When they began showing interest in the camera gear, I decided to go down to just the K-7 since I could watch it closely.

For all these shots, I used my Pentax K-7 and Takumar 50mm 1:1.4 lens. This is a pretty great combination, though the Tak did not like the long-duration images wide open. Stopped down to f8, it was very sharp for long exposures. Wide open, this lens is slightly soft was tends to be the case with this lens. I felt that for the 6-second and 30-second exposures, the Tak was slightly softer than normal when shot wide-open. Mostly I was shooting wide open for this to prevent the area's light pollution from drowning out the stars. THe stopped-down images, even over time, are plenty sharp with softness coming from wind movement.[img]https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-

[IAZA]

great series david. I'd love to see the racoon

[SonicScot]

Agreed, great series.

[hoanpham]

Beautiful landscape.

[kuuan]

wow, one can really feel the outdoor adventure here, great series!

[Katastrofo]

Love the sunset.

[Orio]

Some great landscapes there, I am especially captured by the last one.

[rbelyell]

really enjoyed them, esp 6. these night shots are not easy to pull off, so bravo to you.
tony

[David]

Thank you, everyone. It was a fun night and I'm hoping for similar luck when I got camping in Big Sur (https://maps.google.com/?ll=35.96592,-121.486645&spn=0.116012,0.222988&t=h&z=13) next month. Car light trails, star trails, and more, I'm sure!

[pich900]

What a great series and a stunning place for camped !