Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Extended Twilight

This was the scene last night while riding home from the jail.  It has a slight blur because I had the ISO low to keep the grain down.  It was about 9:45 with a fair amount of light left. I'm really liking these extended hours of light and we still have a couple of weeks until the longest day of the year.  Around here the fireworks on July 4th don't start until 10 pm.

I know there are more risks to riding at night but I still like it.  It's hard to beat riding in the early morning and watching the sun rise or in the evening on a full moon. 

Venus is always lurking in the western sky at sunset.  If you look closely you can see it.

Stay focused!

12 comments:

  1. A beautiful shot. I have never ridden in the dark.. For me, dark means snow and ice....

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  2. Richard,
    Thank you for stopping by and your comment! That's a good point you make. But talk about twilight... you get the best!

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  3. I love these long days and the lingering light. I have very little riding experience after dark. Very pretty scene. Love the color of the sky (and the lack of clouds).

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  4. Kari,
    Another nice thing about the long days is soon the rain will stop. It's relentless this time of year! But then I don't care for it over 75 degrees and that's coming too. :) Thank you!

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  5. Mike:

    I like twilight. best of both worlds, the meshing of the day and night. still enough ambient light for dramatic skies and then the lights of the city are visible. I took some night video down in White Rock last weekend. I have discovered a "secret" with night shots . . .

    Actually for sunsets it is better to catch the afterglow. I shot some of these when in Hawai'i last January

    You can imagine it more challenging when shooting video as 30 FPS is 1/30th of a second. You can't really slow the shutter down anymore or you will get a choppy frame rate, but then you don't do video

    bob
    Wet Coast Scootin

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  6. Thank you Mike, fabulous!

    You sure have some gorgeous countryside to travel through.

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  7. Bob,
    In the northwest we get a lot of twilight and it's great to take advantage of it. The G10 doesn't do so well with high ISO though. Photoshop's noise reduction filter is not impressive either so I'm thinking of getting a good inexpensive plugin for noise reduction. Then the twilight hours will have more potential. Maybe in the video world there's something like that for processing.

    Thank you!

    Geoff,
    Oregon is beautiful! If you haven't been here yet I hope you can visit sometime! We could have a motorcycle blog assembly with the number of bloggers there are nearby! Thanks Geoff!

    PS - NZ is beautiful as well!

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  8. Very nice picture - I like it a lot.

    Have I missed something. Can you please explain "jail"? Is that a nickname for your workplace or is it a real jail? Or has something got lost in translation when coming across the Atlantic?

    Gary

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  9. Gary,
    I do some volunteer work at the county jail. I fit it around my work hours with my job. Monday nights, Friday afternoons and everyother Sunday give me nice rides through the country too! I guess you could say I'm doing a little time! :) Thank you!

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  10. Mike:

    I also have a G10 and I think it takes great timed exposures. I just leave it at 100iso and then do a couple of tests around 15 sec at F8 and alter from there. I use a very steady Manfrotto 055 with Linhoff ball head. For travelling I use a small Manfrotto which I store in my tool tube.
    When I first used the G10 for night shots the display on the LCD didn't really look that good, but when viewed on the computer, it looked great. To tell you the truth, I don't notice much noise at all.

    bob
    Wet Coast Scootin

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  11. Bob,
    Naturally at 100 ISO you won't get noise but I find anything over 400 on the G10 is kind of rough for my taste - especially evening shots like this with that blue sky.

    I have a good Gitzo carbon fiber tripod that I wish I could have on the bike. If I could find a way to mount a tube like you I would. My travel tripod is a Benro A269. It folds down so small I can fit it in one of my side cases or the top case. The trouble is, I don't carry it with me like I should. Two things I might start doing is using a tripod more and shooting in RAW. You've inspired me Bob! Thank you!

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  12. Nice shot. I'm going to have to do some twilight photography. Although it's the dawn that really enchants me for some reason.

    Guess we know how Gary feels about his work place, don't we?

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