Starry Night

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With the forecast for the Northern Lights over southern Scotland looking promising and with clear skies I decided to walk out to Belhaven Bay to see if I could capture this amazing light show.  However lady luck wasn't with me and the Aurora didn't appear.

 But my efforts weren't a complete 'bust' as the starfield above Belhaven Bay was amazing and so I set the XT1 on the tripod and set about capturing the scene.

 Photographing at night is a challenge in itself, especially with an electronic view finder (EVF) as everything is dark.  I did heed my own advice and took a torch with me to check the settings and to focus I set it to manual and infinity on the 10-24mm.

The other issue is the movement of the earth. Anything above 20 seconds and the stars will blur.  So to capture the stars the ISO had to be set to 3200 and the exposure around 20s @ f4.

 For the 'star trails' I dropped the ISO back to 200 and the aperture to f11 to give me an exposure time of 32 minutes.  This gave me the movement in the stars.  



Battery Life Issue on the X-T1
However this long exposures highlighted, once again, the major issue with the operation of the batteries in the X-T1 vertical grip.  

 The batteries in both the camera and the vertical grip were showing fully charged before I pressed the remote release to begin the 32 minute exposure for the star trails picture.  Despite this, at 22 minutes into the 32 minute exposure the battery in the grip went red and then died, causing the camera to shut off, even though the battery in the camera was fully charged.  This is not the first time this has happened to me while using the X-T1 - it happened while videoing a press conference at Silverstone 10 days ago.  

 It is VERY annoying and something that Fujifilm needs to address in future updates or camera evolution.  Battery life has always been a problem with the X-Series cameras, I carry plenty of spares and with normal exposures it isn't a problem - but for long exposures it is. Surely Fuji can devise a system that allows a seamless switch over of power between the two batteries to stop the camera switching off mid exposure or mid recording?

 Luckily the camera had recorded enough detail in the stars for me to use the shot. I was cold and tired by this time and the thought of standing around for another 32 minutes didn't fill me with joy.  Luckily I had the shot, so I packed up and walked home.  Maybe next time and I will remember to put a fully charged battery in the grip before I start a very long exposure shot in future.
Images taken on a Fujifilm X-T1 with a 10-24mm f4 lens
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