Mt. Pinos Milky Way time-lapse

2005-10-05: Mt. Pinos, Los Padres National Forest, California: The image below is a still-frame from the time-lapse movie showing the Milky Way "traveling" from the south-east to south-west. This is my best Milky Way time-lapse to date. To some extent, the improvements seen in this latest sequence are the result of gaining experience in capturing (and tweaking) images. However, most of the credit for this sequence can be attributed to using a new camera (Canon Digital Rebel XT, aka EOS-350D). I'm going to speculate that the EOS-350D's DIGIC II image processor (versus the EOS-300's more-primitive DIGIC) is the main reason for better picture quality. Improvements in lens quality and other electronics may also be factors. The focal length for the frame below is "25 mm"; this is a bit more "zoomed" than the 18 mm 2005-09-01 Mt Pinos capture (below) or the Joshua Tree capture on 2005-09-04. During the sequence you will note a brief red-white "flash". This was caused by -- arrg!! -- someone's car pulling out of the dark-sky parking lot from which I was photographing. It must be stressed that neither the still below nor the Internet-friendly QuickTime movie can do justice to the image fidelity of (especially) this time-lapse movie. Watching a 15.00 Mbps (21.5 MB) MPEG2 file on a 19-inch ViewSonic LCD monitor is a spectacular experience! I can only imagine how good this sequence may look on a large theater screen.