I have to start with a thank you to the incredibly kind Sarah Jones of Cambrian Photography for giving me the opportunity to get out imaging with the medium format FUJI GFX. I had three clear nights of facing the typical trials and tribulations of astrophotography. Three nights out under the stars where I fought through hazy sky, light pollution and then finally the clear skies I needed.
Day 1 I left Cambrian like a pig in mud and with clear sky forecast I could not wait to get home and become acquainted with the GFX. The camera was easy enough to get to grips with and was really intuitive to use. Having prepared the best that I could I was ready to head out. Having found a suitable location and setting up the star adventurer and GFX I started capturing my subs. The conditions were not ideal as there was sea mist / haze in the sky but I continued regardless and perhaps against my own best judgement.
I then rushed home in the middle of the night to start the processing. Which turned out to be a little harder than I thought, the files sizes on the GFX RAW are massive! and I had to convert them all to .tiff. Anyway having finally pulled the data together it turns out the detail was lost with the hazy conditions. Not to be one for giving up this made me even more determined to try and get something as I knew time with the camera was limited.
Day 2: Another clear sky, however this time I was imaging under the skies just outside of Llandudno and whilst on the face of it, it appears that the sky is relatively dark I was battling against light pollution from Llandudno. This was clearly apparent when I started taking the subs and the exposures had to be limited due to the amount of light pollution. I knew I was going to struggle to get the images I wanted and what I knew I could get with the GFX. Again, data is not lost as this will be used to demonstrate to the council how much light pollution is a problem.
Day 3: Starting to feel a bit tired from the lack of sleep but still more than determined not to give up and with another clear night forecast I got home from work and set up immediately. I was polar aligned and ready with the star adventurer just after dusk. I had a good night imaging on this night! Everything came together and I felt I was orchestrating a FUJI concert of the Universe. I had the GFX set up running on Cygnus, the FUJI XT-1 was running on 12mm taking the wide field time-lapse and the XPRO 1 on 35mm running star trails. I was in my element!!
I imaged a 2 mosaic panel of Cygnus using the 64mm lens and then closer using the 120mm lens, grabbing as much data as I could before a tree started to get in the way of the shot.
