Labor Day Weekend

It's Labor Day weekend and I'm at my dad's place in Missouri.  I just bought my Canon T3i a few weeks ago, and I've been dying to try out the timelapse here in the Midwest where there is less light pollution. All of my accessories arrived this last week, including my intervalometer, an extra camera battery, my camera bag, and the AC adapter for the camera.

After buying the camera, one of my goals was to get a window seat in an empty row on an airplane so that I could shoot a timelapse sequence while flying, but I had a couple of things holding me back on this flight.  First, I realized that I had purchased the wrong intervalometer.  Doh!  (I need to put the Canon TC-80N3 back on Amazon or ebay, and try to recoup some of the cost.)  Without the intervalometer, that meant I would need to load the Canon EOS software on my old PC laptop and bring it, along with my new MacBook Pro.

So, I loaded both computers into my backpack for the trip, placed all the camera equipment in my camera bag, and checked my main piece of luggage.  I heard that the TSW allow 2 pieces of carry-on and a camera bag, but I wasn't willing to gamble my gear on a rumor.

The Milky Way from Missouri.

After finally making it out to my dad's place, I assembled the camera tonight and played around with some of the settings.  I know that there is ISO, shutter speed, and something called an f-stop.  I looked over the instruction manual and also found stuff like locking the mirror up into place and an image stabilizer.  I played around with those settings while trying to take photos of the Milky Way.  I'm including my best shot, as I think my tripod wasn't as stable as needed, with some star movement appearing on most of my limited shots.  I also see that I didn't focus on infinity, as it was hard to focus via the view finder with very little light shining through.


I still have a lot to learn, but I was excited to finally take some long exposure shots, especially in anticipation of finally putting together some time lapse shots.