Hi, I’m Michelle Douglass, assistant podcast producer at the National Trust. And before we start, I wanted to flag up the slightly different format for this episode. In line with the UK’s current social distancing recommendations, our presenters are currently social distancing and weren’t able to record some of the final voiceovers. So from time to time in this episode, you’ll hear my voice instead of the voice of our presenter, Jo Dyson.
So now that’s out of the way. Let’s get back to this week’s episode.
You’re listening to the National Trust Podcast. I’m Jo Dyson from the National Trust in the Southeast. In my last episode, I experienced the majesty of a winter walk through the Lake District. I’m still in the Lake District. And tonight I’m braving the chill once more to discover the wonders of the cosmos in one of the National Trust’s dark sky areas.
After my walk earlier today, I spent a few hours resting in this surprisingly comfortable camping pod at the Wasdale Campsite in the Western Lake District. Generally on a camping trip like this, night-time is for sleeping, but apparently I’ve been missing some of the lake’s most beautiful views, and these can be only experienced after dark. I was told by Lewis, the National Trust ranger, that if I looked out of my camping pod at night, I’d see loads of stars
Looking out of the door I can't see a single star. I think it's a little bit cloudy. Without any stars in the sky, I’m a bit bemused as to what Lewis is going to show me, but I’m sure whatever Lewis has planned will be exciting. Lewis!
Hello.
Great to meet you.
You too.
Where are the stars?!
They may be just hidden by the clouds, unfortunately.
What would we be seeing normally?
Well, every single star that you could possibly see. Wasdale has got so few houses and buildings within it. There’s just so little light that comes off of it. You can see the stars an awful lot better when the skies are clear.
Do you need to come somewhere quite as remote as Wasdale to see stars?
Generally, the more rural you can go, the better, but you don’t necessarily have to go to some place quite as remote as Wasdale to get a good view of the night sky. All you really need is to be just away from lights as much as you can be in and then just look up. I did have a surprise set up for you.
I have an astrophotographer who’s going to show us how to take pictures of the night sky and unfortunately there’s not much night sky, but I’m sure he’ll still be able to teach us a thing or two about taking photographs at night. So if we take a walk down to the car park, we’re going to see what he can teach us.
Earlier on today, we were driving down this road on our way to Wasdale head campsite, and obviously we could see all of Wast Water to our right, all the peaks in the distance. This is quite strange now to think that all we can see is this kind of metre radius with the light that’s being given off from our head torch.
It gives you a completely different perspective of the same place that you’ve enjoyed in the daytime.
Lewis, what first got you interested in photographing the night sky?
I first got interested when I was taking on holidays as a kid up to the Northwest of Scotland with my parents. When you go further North, generally your view of the night sky gets a little bit better just because there’s less light pollution as you go further North, but you can also get a really good view of the aurora borealis sometimes.
The aurora borealis is the northern lights?
The first time I saw that, it’s just, you’re hooked. I’ve only seen it from Northern Scotland, so it’s maybe not as spectacular as perhaps Iceland, but you can still see the sort of towers and spires that you see on those fancy images, but they’re maybe just a little bit duller. So we’re just coming up to one of the car parks now. It’s a really good place to stop and have a look at the stars.
There’s a nice little beach where you can get just onto the edge of Wast Water itself and get a really good view of the night sky. Steven’s actually down by the lake waiting for us.
Great. Hi, you must be Steven?
Yes. Hi, how are you? Nice to meet you.
I’m Jo. Nice to meet you. Not the stars that we were expecting this evening!
No!
So what can we photograph?
We’re going to shoot the actual lake itself, and hopefully get some nice moody images of the clouds rolling over the top of the fells in the distance.
Will we be using a flash to get this kind of photography?
No, we’re not going to use any flash.
No flash?
No. No kind of lighting at all. Just going to let the camera do its magic. The camera can pick up loads of detail which the naked eye can’t. So hopefully once we start to do a few long exposures, you should be able to see the rocks in the foreground and the lake and then the mountains in the distance.
So Steven, could you talk me through the kit that we’ve got here?
What we’re shooting on is a Sony mirrorless camera, and we’re going to be shooting with a really wide angle lens, because ideally we’d want to be filling as much of the sky as possible with stars. Obviously got a tripod. So we’re going to make sure everything’s really secure. When it comes to astrophotography, what you really want to be using is what they call a fast lens. So that means a lens that can go down to something like f/2.8 or f/3.5.
F-stops are one of the three camera settings you’ll need to understand to master night-time photography. F-stops allow you to control how light can pass through the lens and onto the camera sensor. So we set our cameras to an F-stop of 2.8, but some cameras go as low as f/1.4. Now while these lenses allow you to get brighter pictures in dark surroundings, there is a trade-off. Using a low F-stop setting can make it difficult to focus your lens.
So maybe we should start with trying to get some focus first of all.
Yeah.
So what we’re looking for when we’re doing that is we’re looking for what’s called infinity focus. What you’ll find is a lot of lenses will have a mark on it which shows where infinity focus is meant to be. Now that is only a guide. It’s normally most lenses are not a hundred percent accurate. So a good starting point is to put it to infinity, and then using the stars. So you would zoom in on the live view in the camera. Put the star in the very, very centre of the frame, and you would zoom in.
Because obviously we don’t have stars in the sky, we’re actually going to use the lights of the building away across the other side of the lake. Just rotate the manual focus ring on the lens until we can get the lights or the stars to be as small and as pinpoint as possible. Now, the drawback of that is obviously if we’re shooting stars or we’re shooting the fells in the distance here, they
would be in focus, because they’re so far away. But we have to be careful if we have anything in the foreground that’s really close to the camera lens, there’s a chance that it’s going to be slightly soft.
Okay.
So I tend to keep the tripod up quite high and not have anything in the immediate foreground- Just to make sure that we keep everything nice and sharp.
The next setting you’ll need to get to grips with is ISO. This allows you to adjust the sensitivity of your camera sensor. And this time, the higher the setting, the brighter the image. The trade-off with this setting is that higher ISOs can result in grainier images. The third and final parameter you’ll need to set is the shutter speed. This lets you control the amount of time the sensor is exposed to light. This is measured in seconds and the longer the exposure time, the brighter the image.
But again, this setting must be handled with care. Set your shutter speed for too long and your image may have some unwanted characteristics.
Ideally for stars, we’ll be shooting maybe in around about like 20 to 30 seconds. Any more than that and you’re going to start to get those little star trails in the sky that–
So it would look like a shooting star?
It would, yes. There’s a mathematical way of actually working it out, and it’s called the 500 rule.
Okay.
So basically you take 500 and you divide it by the focal length of your lens. This here is an 18mm wide angle lens, so it works out anywhere between 20 and 30 seconds. Normally what happens is cameras will go up to 30 seconds that you can just manually adjust yourself. And then if you want to go longer than 30 seconds, so what you’ll have to do is put your camera into what’s called bulb mode.
Bulb mode?
So you have to have some sort of a self timer or a cable release. I think because we don’t have any stars, we’re not worry too much about limiting our exposure time. So I think what we’ll do is go for a minute.
Shall we give it a go?
Yes, let’s do it.
The three camera settings work in unison and adjusting one may change the others and affect your image. It’s a delicate balance of trial and error which can take a while to get right, but when you do it can produce some spectacular images.
Oh!
So you can see the way it’s actually picked up.
Gosh, you can really see all the mountains in the background.
So you can see some of the low clouds just kind of rolling over the fells and then some of the rocks.
Gosh, it’s quite incredible what it’s picked up when all we can see with the naked eye is pitch black.
Yeah, probably at the minute I’d say it actually looks maybe a little bit dark, so we would probably have to either put the ISO up even further, which is going to make it-
More grainy.
Exactly, yeah. Or else we’ll start to adjust our shutter speed. So if we were to go into maybe a two minute or a four minute long exposure, hopefully we should see a little bit more detail.
How did you get into astrophotography?
One of the first things was Tim Peake, the British astronaut. On Twitter and Instagram he started posting images that he was taking whenever he went up in the space station. That just really piqued up my interest of what was actually capable. And then a guy back in Northern Ireland was running an astrophotography workshop.
We went up to Mussenden Temple, which is one of the National Trust properties back in Northern Ireland, and we had clear skies the whole night and just being able to photograph the Milky Way and the detail the camera was picking up. It just- it just blew my mind. That was two minutes, almost two minutes we did that for. So if I show you the difference.
It’s huge, isn’t it? The mountains almost like it’s just shot in the day.
It’s amazing the detail that the long exposure can pick up. And you’ve also got that little reflection coming across the lake from the house that the other side, the lights.
Yeah. And you can see all the clouds in the sky with the different mountains. Yeah. It just really looks like a sort of overcast day shot really, doesn’t it?
We have another camera set up, and I’ve just messed up all the settings for you. Do you want to have a go at setting that up?
Yes, can I? Okay, first up. That F-stop is now saying f/8. So I’d like to set that to f/2.8.
That’s right. The 2.8 is going to let in much more light.
I need to make that ISO number much higher. So at the moment, that’s saying 2000. We had it on 12,800.
We had. Yeah. Because it is so dark here.
That shutter speed is only showing 13 seconds.
Our last thing is –
Infinity!
Yes, it's focusing. What are we looking for then whenever we’re trying to get our stars into focus?
The brightest point?
Yeah. Well done. Good to go.
How do you compose a shot if you’re an astrophotographer?
If you’re shooting somewhere where there’s maybe not as nice scenery around, you probably maybe want to include much more of the sky, and almost fill the sky with stars. The likes of here at Wast Water, you’ve just got the beautiful lake and the fells, you would want to include that in the image.
Yeah.
Though if you’re in a really beautiful area, you may as well try and incorporate it, so you’re almost shooting a landscape, but just with the night sky.
So I’m ready to shoot.
Ready to go, yeah?
Yeah. Okay. I’ll just take the picture. Great. Steven, these photographs are amazing. Look at these beautiful images, Steven. It’s making me think, what would we see if it wasn’t such a cloudy evening?
Okay, well there’s a few different apps we can use. And this is one called Sky Guide, which I would use quite a bit to actually let you see what is in the sky. We load it up–
So you’re pointing it at the sky?
Yeah. And if you just move around-
Oh yeah. We’re literally just turning around, pointing the phone up at the sky and it’s showing us in real-time what stars would be behind those clouds. Leo.
Here’s part of the Milky Way, just over here and you can see Sirius.
Oh yeah.
There’s the constellation of Orion. You can easily recognise that with the three stars that seem to be in a line.
Yes. Is that Orion’s Belt?
Yeah. Then if we keep going right, there’s the Andromeda Galaxy. This section of the Milky Way is called Deneb. It’s actually the shape of a cross. And then the middle of it, if you can see there, there’s a Nebula. It’s actually in the shape of North America. And it’s called the North American Nebula. So you can see how it’s pink and purple. What you can find is if you’re doing the longer exposures, whenever you have stars, it’ll bring out some of these lovely colours.
Now obviously our naked eyes can’t see, but the longer exposures in the camera can see. And then that is Polaris over here.
The North Star.
We’ve had rain, we’ve had wind, we’ve had a lot of cloud, we’ve had no stars.
Yeah.
There’s this one other thing we can do, which is quite a lot of fun. So we’re going to do a little bit of light painting. So we’re going to still use our long exposure, probably about 30 seconds. But if you and Lewis want to get your torches, we’re going to actually move them about. And what that’ll do is that’ll create some lovely trails of the movement. So whatever shapes you make, the long exposure is going to capture those.
So Lewis, I’ve got my white torch light. You’ve got your red torch light.
Yep!
I reckon we give it a go to make our own stars.
In the absence of some real ones. Let’s make our own.
Okay, right.
Okay, so three, two, one, go!
I don’t know if I did the star shape.
Oh yeah!
That sounds promising.
Hey, that’ll do!
Yours is a good star!
A pretty good effort I think!
We’ve created our own stars in the absence of real ones. That’s fun! Cool! Steven, that’s been so interesting. I didn’t know you could capture some things when it’s so dark.
Yeah. It’s quite amazing that our naked eye sees just black and yet the camera can just make it look almost like daylight.
Thank you. That’s been really, really good.
You’re very welcome. You got your stars at the very end!
Exactly, yeah! Now my previous holidays to the lakes have always been in much warmer months, so yeah, my first visit in the winter, which I wouldn’t have thought to do previously, although it’s cold and I’ve got about 20 layers on, it really does create quite a magical feeling, because it’s so much quieter, you really do beat the crowds and you enjoy this landscape in a much more private, peaceful way. Thanks for listening to this episode of the National Trust
podcast. Until next time from me, Jo Dyson. Goodbye.
This episode was recorded before the government COVID-19 travel restrictions came into place, and since then we’ve sadly taken the decision to close all our gated parks and gardens in addition to our houses, shops, and cafés to help restrict the spread of coronavirus. For now, we’d encourage you not to explore our places in person and instead explore our back catalogue of over 70 podcast episodes from the comfort of your own home. To find more audio from the National Trust, go to
nationaltrust.org.uk/podcasts. And to stay up to date in our response to the COVID-19 pandemic, go to the front page of our website or keep an eye on your inbox and social feeds.