The Drive Home

Last night on the way home from dropping off my kids, I set up a camera to try to capture the drive home.
so far this is my favorite:



This photo is quite simple, but I think next time, I will try to include less of the dashboard. (I still like the gauges showing though) and I will have to mount the tripod a bit differently so the dash is sharper, less motion blur...

Another one from the series I like is this one:



You can even see a star trail in the center.
I have more in my experiments album.

One of the nice things about digital is that these experiments are very cheap. One of the problems with digital, at least with this camera (Fuji S2) is that it used a dark frame subtraction to get rid of chip noise. This means that for every exposure of say 15 seconds, the camera takes another shot with the shutter closed and then calculates the chip generated noise and removes it from the original shot. While this gives very low noise and smooth night time images, the camera is not ready for the next shot until this second "exposure" is done. In other words a 15 second exposure takes 30 seconds until the camera is ready for the next shot.
For the technically curious, there is no other noise reduction on these images. One has a little sharpening, and they both have a bit of colour tweaking, but the S2 is great for night shots.

On a funny note, (funny - strange coincidence not funny - Ha Ha) I noticed that the odometer is almost at the same spot (53,000 and change) as this shot in my last car:



Now for a trivia question: Both the cars in these shots are the same model, but different years. Any guesses?