Lately I’ve taken an interest in astrophotography, but I have never really tried it before. When we decided to go camping in Algonquin last weekend I knew this could be a great opportunity. It’s far away from any big cities, so I knew light pollution wouldn’t be a problem and there was no moon that weekend! It was all coming together *maniacal laugh… maniacal laugh*.

Sorry folks, this post is a little long. I happen to know that some people really want to hear about this trip and see some pictures. So if you’re here for the astrophotography, just scroll down and skip to those parts…

So Off We Went

We packed up the car and headed out to go camping. In the rain. Then we drove all the way to Algonquin. In the rain. But somehow when we got there… NO RAIN! Plus we had an awesome view of the lake from our site (thanks to my lovely, super site booking wife). How’s this for a view to wake up to?

When we weren’t busy biking (which I got no pictures of. D’oh!), swimming or canoeing we got to sit and relax and watch canoers on the lake and we even had some visits from the local wildlife.

It had been a long day of driving and setting up camp, so after getting some grub in our bellies and some mandatory marshmallows around the fire, everyone was off to bed. Everyone except for me that is.

Night One

As everyone else got ready for bed, I grabbed my camera. While my son was getting ready for bed and reading bedtime stories I grabbed a few shots of the tent glowing from the flashlight.

Then the waiting began. You can’t really see the stars clearly until at least an hour after sunset, so we spent some quality time around the fire waiting for the stars to reveal themselves. It was hard to tell how much cloud cover was there at this point, but a few stars were staring to poke through so I was hopeful. Around 11:00, things started looking really good!

After some test shots, I found just the right settings with my 24-70 lens set at f/2.8, 10s and ISO 3200. I knew I was going to get a fair bit of noise at ISO 3200 but had no real choice (that is until I buy a full frame camera… don’t tell my wife. Did I mention how great she is yet?). I had tried lowering the ISO and raising the shutter speed, but that resulted in blurry stars so I have to live with a bit of noise.

After spending a bunch of time taking pictures from our campsite, I headed out to check out the rest of the campground, but by the time I got down to the beach, the stars had somehow disappeared and I was getting this glow over the campground. I’m thinking this was probably due to the light reflecting off the smoke of all the campfires since there were really no other sources of light. There aren’t many stars, but I think it still looks pretty cool!

Canoeing We Will Go

The next day we got up and went for a bike ride along the railway trail. Hayden did awesome on his own bike, but I did end up towing him for a while. After lunch we told him we’d go canoeing so we found ourselves at Canoe Lake renting a canoe for the afternoon. The water was a bit choppy at times, and Hayden almost sent us all in the lake a couple of times while playing with his paddle, but we had a great time.

When we were renting the canoe, the guy tells about a few interesting spots on the lake. Two of them really caught my eye: a small bay where they have seen lots of wildlife, and a memorial totem pole for Tom Thompson. As soon as he mentioned the name, I started singing Three Pistols by the Tragically Hip in my head. I had no idea who he was at the time (turns out it’s a really interesting story) but I knew I had to go check out this totem. It was a little further than we had originally planned to row but well worth it.

After a quick snack on the dock we were off to check out the bay we were told about. We didn’t see any wildlife, but the trip over was made worthwhile when a couple of young chaps that followed us in managed to hit a rock and send themselves into the lake. I know I shouldn’t find that funny, but they were fine and the water was shallow enough that they walked to the shore and got back in their boat. You’d laugh too. If you don’t think that’s funny, you should have seen the group back at the dock tip their boat twice. I’m sorry, it was funny.

It Was A Long Day

After the canoe ride and a quick swim to cool off we settled back into the campsite for the night, and I waited again for the stars to come out. Some of us enjoyed the tranquility, while others found another way to pass the time. The Leappad 2 is the best toy ever. True story.

Although I was pretty tired, I made myself stay up late again the second night. Given that I had the perfect conditions for getting some star pictures I wouldn’t have slept anyway, so I got my gear ready again and grabbed some more shots. The campfires across the lake were barely visible with the naked eye, but with a 10 second exposure things really came alive. My original plan was to use the tree line as a foreground, but the light of the fires was a great surprise!

Then the campsite next to us added a bunch of wood to their fire which really lit up the trees on our site, so I quickly recomposed and got this shot before it died down.

No Wildlife For Us?

Other than the ducks that had wondered on to our site, and the friendliest chipmunk I’d ever seen, we really hadn’t seen any wildlife on our trip. As we were headed down the highway, we were talking about how we hadn’t seen any moose or other significant wildlife (despite hours of padding our canoe – oh yeah we did get to see those guys tip over). Then we saw cars parked on the side of the road, so we pulled over and got a look at this little guy. Being from Newfoundland, seeing a moose is not exactly a big deal but this really was an awesome way to end the trip. Not to mention that just after we left the rain started again!

Camping trip complete.