Astrophotography – Capturing the Milky Way with Smartphone

There’s a thing with Photography, no sooner as a piece of equipment allows you to do something that you want it to do more. This is especially true in astrophotography. For years I’ve been waiting or smartphone camera’s to get good enough to take pictures of the stars, finally when I got one that could do the job it was cool, but I wanted more.

There’s some amazing pictures of the milky way being taken by photographers and they take hours of taking and processing many pictures, but can the smartphone take a picture of the Milky Way? I was told it’s possible.

For ages I’ve tried and failed, never able to get the sky dark enough, or the clouds get in the way. That was until the other night when I looked up. It was one of the darkest and clearest nights I’ve ever seen and I could just see the Milky Way with all of the billions of stars and clouds of dust. The Pixel 5 I now own is said to boast the best features on the market, tt was time to try and I got these:

I was hoping for a bit better, but the pale milkiness can be seen – the pictures needed some enhancing. My tool for this is an app called Snapsee. By running each of the pictures through the structure, brightness, contrast and other tools available several times I was able to bring out more detail.

The results speak for themselves, I still have to work on capturing this with my SLR – I need a few more hours and to push the images through some image processing software but it’s the next step. I’m waiting eagerly for the next dark clear night to see how good an image I can get. I love these as they are though!

Sketching Little Dogs

This latest large sketch work is based on a photo of 2 small dogs laying on a sofa. As you can imagine getting the it to look right is more than just perspective and getting the face look right – there’s loads of fur try and capture the look of. So the line drawing started … Continue reading Sketching Little Dogs →

Time, Space and the Universe as we know it – Part 8 Energy and Matter

With all it’s vastness and complexity it’s taken a long time for humans to reach the understanding that we have of the universe that we have. This is the story of evolving understanding and how simplicity gives way to incredible truth’s that seems to sit at odds with how we think life should be… and … Continue reading Time, Space and the Universe as we know it – Part 8 Energy and Matter →

Simon’s Sketch Work – 3D Ball

I’ve been trying to hone my sketching skills, having a sketching workbook has helped a lot to give me ideas and methods and techniques… I enjoyed this one, for some reason a bit of a pain getting the circle the right size and position but the shading seems to blend well. It’s amazing that a … Continue reading Simon’s Sketch Work – 3D Ball →