Help me Identify this object

Originally posted by crovax619
Looks a lot like a tower light in the distance.

not unless the light is mounted
on an invisible tower.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
If you shorten the exposure, it may be too short for the image to show up.
I would have to read the manual for your camera to see how to change the setting, it's a little different for each camera. But really the better answer is to use a tripod

well I did some research on the net about shutter
speeds and aperture settings. I went in the camera
and set the shutter speed to 1/2500 and aperture to
-1. And then I took a pic while I was moving the camera
and it seemed to take a fairly good shot while it was
moving with very lil blur. So that setting should work
in the future. I think ????? we'll see

I don't have a tripod and probably wouldn't
have the time to set it up under these circumstances.
But yea, ur probably right

so my conclusion right now is that this object
was Venus and my lack of camera skills
made the object appear out of sorts
in the pics. And I would like to thank each of
you for taking the time to help me sort
this out
Happy Thanksgiving

boon

Originally posted by boondock-saint

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
If you shorten the exposure, it may be too short for the image to show up.
I would have to read the manual for your camera to see how to change the setting, it's a little different for each camera. But really the better answer is to use a tripod

well I did some research on the net about shutter
speeds and aperture settings. I went in the camera
and set the shutter speed to 1/2500 and aperture to
-1. And then I took a pic while I was moving the camera
and it seemed to take a fairly good shot while it was
moving with very lil blur. So that setting should work
in the future. I think ????? we'll see

I don't know exactly how sensitive your CCD is, but my guess is that 1/2500 second is short enough to stop blur in sunlight photos, though there are reasons you'd want to use a longer shutter speed, for example if taking a picture of somebody 5 feet away where you also want the background in focus, you might need to use a longer shutter speed to get better depth of field meaning you could then get both the subject and the landscape both in focus.

At night however, I don't think 1/2500 second will work, it's probably too short to allow anything but brightly lit things to show up?

Regarding aperture settings, for night shots you normally want the largest aperture you can get because you don't have the luxury of excess light to do things like increase depth of field. -1 doesn't sound like a real aperture setting, could it be automatic or something? Here are a couple of suggestions if your camera has these options:

www.photoxels.com...

in a digital camera set on Auto mode, you can select Sports scene mode, and the camera will automatically select a fast shutter speed and the appropriate aperture. Likewise, in Shutter-Priority mode, you can choose which shutter speed you want (fast or slow), and the camera will select the appropriate aperture for proper exposure.

I almost wonder if you have the latter option selected since that -1 doesn't sound like a real aperture setting. Real aperture settings look like: F1.8 F2.8 F4 F5.6 F8 F11 F16

You probably don't want to set both shutter speed and aperture manually, because you may end up with over or under exposure if you do this. So the best option is to use the sports mode setting or shutter priority mode (if your camera has them) that will always give the fastest shutter speed possible with the given lighting conditions. But hopefully it will give you an underexposure warning if you try to use 1/2500 sec at night because I suspect that will be underexposed, no matter what the aperture.

Congratulations on identifying the object, you sound more confident about what it is now, I'm pretty sure you're right!

reply to post by boondock-saint

Happy Thanksgiving to you, too.

I think your conclusion that it could be Venus is a good one. The apparent shape of the object in those photos threw a few people off, but it seems that "motion blur" caused by camera movement is the explanation for those shapes..

Twin Foo lights got to be a tip off for the Tesla triangle ship.
Interesting top and bottom illuminations perhaps show the suspension
forces from above.
If you want to go that way.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Thank you so much arbitrageur, I downloaded it, the first time it was corrupt, so I just tried another download in stead, and voila. Haven't quite figured it out yet, still getting used to moving around and getting to know the program, bur very cool. thank you

reply to post by boondock-saint


As already pointed out you need a tripod. They don't have to be big. Do a search for 'gorilla tripod'. If you have a timer on your camera then you can set it up. Some cameras allow for a remote control shutter release so you don't have to touch the camera tripod set up.

Just do a search for 'night sky photography' or 'nite sky photography'

TJ

reply to post by Fenix777
Yes Stellarium is very cool for identifying objects like the subject of this thread!

If you haven't figured it out yet just move the mouse to the lower left to bring up the left menu with all the settings you need to set. I think it defaults to computer date/time so any other date time needs to be set with the clock icon, and be sure to set your location, but otherwise it's pretty straightforward. The satellite option is a little tricky to find, it's in one of the add-on options, and not enabled by default, but you probably want to enable that by checking the checkbox when you find it.

Good luck!

Happy thanksgiving to everyone!

reply to post by Arbitrageur

dude, sports setting is what I need
on this camera. But there isn't a setting
for sports on it, I already looked. So I have
to go in and set the settings manually
for a sports set-up. I have no clue why
Canon took the sports setting off the
new cameras. My old Vivatar i had a couple
years ago had a sports mode on it and it
was great for things like this. But somebody
wanted it more than me, they stole it

Originally posted by TeslaandLyne

Twin Foo lights got to be a tip off for the Tesla triangle ship.
Interesting top and bottom illuminations perhaps show the suspension
forces from above.
If you want to go that way.

if u wanted to go that route,
it almost looks like one of those
old spinning tops with an added
glow, lol. weird though how a camera
shutter speed can cause it to
look like that.

Originally posted by boondock-saint
shutter speed can cause it to
look like that.

Camera shake can get pretty extreme as this image shows:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/dc5e3b3467f7.jpg[/atsimg]

The photographer thinks it's aliens but I'd give a million to one odds it's camera shake of a single round white light, in fact ArMaP duplicated this effect in another thread.

So actually you did a pretty good job of holding the camera steady for a whole second without a tripod, your movement is pretty limited! You must have a steady hand!

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
You must have a steady hand!

lol
well undoubtedly it wasn't steady enough
but hopefully my shutter speed will clear
that up in the future

reply to post by Arbitrageur

so 1/2500 is a good setting for day time,
what is a good setting for night time ???

You cant give one setting for day time that can help in all situations.
1/2500 is a bit extreme. In daytime you can use like 1/250 to 1/500 or similar. 1/2500 is if you are photographing a direct light. For night time it is important to put the camera on a steady position. Do not hold it in your hands or it will have blur. If you have something like fireworks or landscape-night try these. And set the timer to take the picture do not press it with the fingers. And also do not use the digital zoom, never ever . And do not set the iso higher than 800 in your case. Or you will have a lot of noise in your pictures. Shutter speeds lower than 1/80 usually have blur.

Originally posted by boondock-saint
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

so 1/2500 is a good setting for day time,
what is a good setting for night time ???

Yeah defiler is right, I didn't really recommend 1/2500 sec and said while it might be useful to stop blur in bright daylight, it's probably not a good all-around setting. Here's what I said:

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
I don't know exactly how sensitive your CCD is, but my guess is that 1/2500 second is short enough to stop blur in sunlight photos, though there are reasons you'd want to use a longer shutter speed, for example if taking a picture of somebody 5 feet away where you also want the background in focus, you might need to use a longer shutter speed to get better depth of field meaning you could then get both the subject and the landscape both in focus....the best option is to use the sports mode setting or shutter priority mode (if your camera has them) that will always give the fastest shutter speed possible with the given lighting conditions. But hopefully it will give you an underexposure warning if you try to use 1/2500 sec at night because I suspect that will be underexposed, no matter what the aperture.

I really hate to keep saying this but if you want to take good nighttime photos, you will probably need a tripod. Defiler might be right about the 800ISO setting too, however I disagree that you shouldn't at least experiment with the 1600 setting to see how it works. If the exposure is longer than 1.3 seconds your canera automatically processes the image to remove noise, I'm not sure defiler knows that, but it still may be too noisy, however I would go out at 5am and take some more pictures of Venus and try the 800 and try the 1600 ISO settings and compare them.

In fact your camera even has a sensor to tell it if there's a tripod attached and there are some modes it won't even let you use until you attach the tripod, those are the ones you really want for night shots!

At night the best you're going to be able to do is use the widest possible aperture, so if you don't have a tripod to use the special night shot mode only available with the tripod attached, here's what I'd try at night...set your ISO to 800, or 1600, or 3200 (try all three settings) as on page 70.
Then, See page 88 of your manual, set the mode dial to Av (aperture priority) and set it to F2.8. Press the shutter halfway and I think it should show you the shutter speed you will get with that, it's the best you can do with your camera (especially with the ISO3200 setting). As defiler said if it's below 1/80 second you might get some blur, there's really no way around that other than to use a tripod.

Now this may prove defiler right, but I would still try it to see what it looks like. Your camera even has a special setting called ISO3200 (see page 59 of your manual). Defiler might be right and it might look like crap but I'd still try it and see how crappy it looks. You can take more 5am pictures of Venus and if they do turn out crappy you haven't lost anything, just delete them and go back to 1600 or 800. But here's what it says for the ISO3200 setting in your manual: "Lets you set the ISO speed to 3200 and lets you shoot without camera shake or subject blurring even in low light conditions. Recording pixels are set to 1600x1200" So you lose some resolution but that may be a decent tradeoff to get lower megapixels instead of a blurry image at a higher resolution. I would try that for sure but don't yell at me if defiler is correct and it looks terrible. But I'm a "try it and see what it looks like" person so I'd try the IS03200 setting on Venus for sure and see how it does.

Well yes you could try with higher settings, his Canon has small sensor size, therefore the image will have noise. But it wouldn't hurt if you try. And I also recommend you to buy a tripod or even a remote. That way you will have much more options.

Also see this thread it has good tips.

Yeah that's Venus for sure,


See it this morning looked out the window and OH MY GOD!!! how bright is that NOW?


there was another last night that was going mental flashing in the sky like a police car, it was in the middle of Orion, /Orion's Belt & the moon witch is also very very bright, seriously the stars are brighter than they have ever been and my eye sight has seriously degraded over the years, but yeah who can deny they are hundreds of times brighter now.

Originally posted by boondock-saint
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

so 1/2500 is a good setting for day time,
what is a good setting for night time ???

Try photographing the Moon at night? Try it on automatic and then switch to manual to see the results and especially with the high film speed (ISO) setting. It will give you something to practice on and to note the various settings. Obviously the Moon is a lot brighter and produces more light but it will give you a test subject.

home.hiwaay.net...

Unfortunately the big factor in photographing Venus or any similar point of light is that shutter speed is going to come into play. Many of those claiming 'UFO' images at night are simply photographing points of light at a slow shutter speed. That light source will be the subject of camera shake and blur and not represent the true image.

TJ

Originally posted by jennybee35
reply to post by glaucon

 

Realistically, its just a light on a tree

And what, the tree broke loose and followed him down the road, floating in midair invisibly?

Did you look at the last three pics where the light is floating independently in the sky?

Notice that the picture was taken at night, allowing one to easily suspend an object from a tree using fishing line.