Devil's Backbone

[JimFox]

The Devil's Backbone is a structure that I have seen what seems like hundreds of times as I drive up into the Rocky Mountain NP on HWY 34 from my Daughters house. Always in too much of hurry I zip by it, but when Alisa had bought some new lenses when I was in Colorado and she needed help in calibrating and checking them, I thought that the Devil's Backbone would be a great place to test out her new Sigma 14mm f1.8 as sunset was fast approaching and we wouldn't have made it into RMNP in time.

It had just snowed, and the temp was about 16 degrees if I remember right, so it definitely got nippy as we were out shooting the backbone structure. In this case the moon was about a quarter and it was heading down to set. It was shot at f13 to get the moon star look. I chose this frame from the group I shot because a meteor was crossing just above and to the left of the moon.

All comments are welcome,

Jim

 

[JimFox]

PS.... I also liked that the Milky Way was faintly making it's presence known.

 

[Sunny Sra]

Jim,
This is freakin cool! you keep tempting me to buy the 14..

 

[AlanLichty]

Really nice scene and your choice for the f/stop scored some neat star effects on the moon. Fun combination of elements with the MW and the meteor as well.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Really cool Jim, f13 for a night shot, must have been a really long shutter speed or very high iso, and to get the moon and the MW in one shot is really a stretch of technique. You are the master.

 

[JimFox]

Jim,
This is freakin cool! you keep tempting me to buy the 14..

Thanks Sunny, I am convinced there is no better night time lens then the Sigma 14mm.

 

[JimFox]

Really cool Jim, f13 for a night shot, must have been a really long shutter speed or very high iso, and to get the moon and the MW in one shot is really a stretch of technique. You are the master.

Thank you Ben.

This lens is so awesome! The shooting setup was a little counter intuitive since the real reason for using the Sigma 14mm f1.8 is to be able to shoot at f1.8 which then allows for shooting at super low ISO's... When I wasn't working the moon to get the moon star, I was shooting the night sky at ISO 400. In all cases I kept the shutter speed at 25 or 30 secs. Oh, with this one when I had closed down to f13 I was at ISO 6400.

 

[Douglas Sherman]

The Devil's Backbone is a structure that I have seen what seems like hundreds of times as I drive up into the Rocky Mountain NP on HWY 34 from my Daughters house. Always in too much of hurry I zip by it, but when Alisa had bought some new lenses when I was in Colorado and she needed help in calibrating and checking them, I thought that the Devil's Backbone would be a great place to test out her new Sigma 14mm f1.8 as sunset was fast approaching and we wouldn't have made it into RMNP in time.

It had just snowed, and the temp was about 16 degrees if I remember right, so it definitely got nippy as we were out shooting the backbone structure. In this case the moon was about a quarter and it was heading down to set. It was shot at f13 to get the moon star look. I chose this frame from the group I shot because a meteor was crossing just above and to the left of the moon.

All comments are welcome,

Jim

View attachment 23569

Great job, Jim. BTW, the Devils Backbone is a volcanic dike.

 

[JimFox]

Great job, Jim. BTW, the Devils Backbone is a volcanic dike.

Thanks for the reminder Doug! I knew what it was but forgot the words...