Perseid meteor shower is coming, supposed to be very good this year

ideal focal length??

I'll be heading out, but long story short, I don't want to take all my lenses with me. I have a 16-35 f4L IS, a 24-70 F4L IS, and a 50mm f/1.2L. Somehow I feel I'm about to get told to take the 50mm since the other two are ghastly slow at f/4....

Silver-Halide wrote in post #18092416
ideal focal length??

I'll be heading out, but long story short, I don't want to take all my lenses with me. I have a 16-35 f4L IS, a 24-70 F4L IS, and a 50mm f/1.2L. Somehow I feel I'm about to get told to take the 50mm since the other two are ghastly slow at f/4....

Widefield is best for this, so the 16 - 34 f4, the 50 while fast will limit your potential captures too much..

I shoot at 11mm f2.8 ISO 1000 15sec on my 70D.

it's slight light pollution so can't have more ISO or skies get too washed out, the 15sec for individual frame ensures crisp starfields in individual images.

Looks like i'll miss it all unless there is a lucky break in the clouds for any length of time . Got rain and all clouds for half Texas or more , Mexico , New Mexico and probably Colorado and some in Oklahoma . I think the last 4 yrs the Perseids started we have had cloud cover . But www.spaceweather.com has a link where you can listen to the radars and hear the pinging noise when one passes through the radar field . I've done that before , pretty interesting if you never heard it before .

mtbdudex wrote in post #18092490
Widefield is best for this, so the 16 - 34 f4, the 50 while fast will limit your potential captures too much..

I shoot at 11mm f2.8 ISO 1000 15sec on my 70D.

it's slight light pollution so can't have more ISO or skies get too washed out, the 15sec for individual frame ensures crisp starfields in individual images.

Silver-Halide wrote in post #18092416
ideal focal length??

I'll be heading out, but long story short, I don't want to take all my lenses with me. I have a 16-35 f4L IS, a 24-70 F4L IS, and a 50mm f/1.2L. Somehow I feel I'm about to get told to take the 50mm since the other two are ghastly slow at f/4....

I agree about the 50mm , even tho I love it on a FF (old film cameras) I would still use a smaller lens . When I am able to shoot at night I use my 18-55mm f/4 IS and most times keep it at 18mm cause that stills gives me a 28.8mm frame capture . On old film cameras I use to use the 50mm & 28mm lens for meteor showers .

mtbdudex wrote in post #18092218
We've got a break and clear skies predicted here in SE Michigan, so I'm going to bed and thden up around 11:30pm local time

You should get up earlier than that if you want to image this.

I'm looking at the cloud prediction models on Wunderground. It looks like our afternoon clouds (here in SE Michigan) will start to break up a bit in the evening, may even become mostly clear around sunset and remain mostly clear until possibly midnight and... if we're _really_ lucky... maybe even until 1am.

ALSO... the ZHR is likely presented based on Universal Time -- not local time. That would translate to about 8pm for Michigan.

Sunset in SE Michigan (based on Detroit) is 8:38pm. But it won't be "dark" until just after 10pm.

You would want to shoot as early as you possibly can to (a) avoid the clouds and (b) catch the peak activity as much as possible.

Clear Skies!
Tim

Clouds did come out before 3am, I was able to get 380 15 sec frames, will make a thread in the photo sharing section.
Good point on the time, I forgot to subtract the 5 hour difference.

mtbdudex wrote in post #18092681
Clouds did come out before 3am, I was able to get 380 15 sec frames, will make a thread in the photo sharing section.
Good point on the time, I forgot to subtract the 5 hour difference.

Michigan is a 4 hour difference when we are on daylight saving time. 8pm Eastern Daylight Saving Time is midnight Universal Time. It's a 5 hour difference when we return to Standard time for the winter months.