Rodney Campbell's Blog

Another night in dark skies country, another chance to shoot the milky way out here in the remote areas of the Mueller Ranges.

Unfortunately the moon was bright this evening which made it difficult to shoot the stars or the milky way. It was already two (2) days after the first quarter and just five (5) days until the full moon so the moon was already quite large and high in the sky and probably too bright for shooting the stars. It did however make for a lovely moonlit landscape on yet another beautiful evening out here in the wilderness.

Ngumban Milk

NIKON D750 + 14.0 mm f/2.8 @ 14 mm, 30 sec at f/3.2, ISO 2000

Still I’m out here in this fantastic location which I’ll probably never see again and which I surely couldn’t waste… so given I only have to walk 50m from the caravan to setup for the shot it’s just got to be attempted…

Ngumban Cliff Lookout - Mueller Ranges

I was only able to push to ISO 2000 this evening when shooting the open skies before it started really washing out the sky with the brightness of the moon. The Milky Way was still clearly visible to the naked eye but you couldn’t push the camera to capture more of the stars without also brightening everything (including the sky and the moonlit foreground).

I had great plans for this lone tree out here on the edge of the lookout – a nice arch of stars over the tree…

To get the arch I had to shoot from behind the tree looking back towards the Ngumban Cliff Rest Area with all the caravans and campers. We were just having dinner over there under the covered tables behind the tree only an hour beforehand.

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