ABC Wednesday: S is for Strange Lights over Su-ao Harbor

 

I was making a day trip to Taroko National Park yesterday.  On the way back, arriving at the port city of Su-ao, it was almost dark.  Su-ao is at northeast side of Taiwan facing Pacific Ocean.  It is both a fishing harbor and a navy base.  I stopped by a scenic point by the highway to take a few pictures of the beautiful harbor at night.  Can you see the strange lights over the ocean at the right hand side of the picture.

Here is a better view.  Are they UFOs?

Well, they are not!  They are squid boats out doing squid fishing at night.  They use very strong light to attract squid to the fishing vessels.

Here is some detail for those of you into technical aspect of photography.  With my D700 and the 28-300 VR lens, I could photographed all these images hand-held.  However, ISO would be high and the images may not be as sharp as they could be.  I dutifully set up the tripod, set exposure compensation at -2, aperture at 8, ISO200, turned off the VR and used mirror-up with a remote trigger.  Since Nikon 28-300 VR lens has 9 round blades for the diaphragm, Ken Rockwell claimed that he could not get sunstars out of the Nikon 28-300 VR lens.  If you click on the last images, you can see, even at aperture 8, the perfect sunstars of each light, everyone has 18 rays, a classic for Nikon lens (Canon only has 6 or 8).  May be the lights were just so strong and so concentrated.  

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