Everyone seems to have gotten great images of the comet Neowise, everyone but me. From others images it looked like it was very bright and high in the sky and that anyone with a point and shoot could have gotten a good image of it. Not so much. So the question is how much persistence do you put into getting a shot. I had a number of challenges that I had to overcome to get an image.

You may have to click on the image to see all the stars that are in this shot along with Neowise. When I exposed this image I could not even see Polaris (the Big Dipper). Has a lot to do with the street lamps in my area. That and that due east (this shot was facing northwest) is a sports complex with about 15 baseball fields all lit up for some summer night games.

I shot this on my Fuji X-T2 with the XF 10-24mm F4 R OIS lens open to F4 and an 8 second exposure. ISO was 3200. I used a compass to get to the proper orientation for the shot. The time stamp on the camera was 9:35pm so it was about 45 to 50 minutes after sunset.

It can be really easy to get flustered and miss shots when things are not perfect. If we could only take pictures of the comet in the studio. So it take a focus (pun not intended) to keep after the shot until you get it. I may just go out tonight and see if I can get a better image with a different lens. I could have used my XF 16-55mm F2.8 R lens (above was shot at 17.5mm) and see what the extra stop affords me. Same image would be 4 seconds at 3200 ISO or 8 seconds at 1600 ISO. Of course there is alway the chance that the clouds here in Florida will move in and obscure the sky.

Moral of the story is to be persistent. Use you knowledge of your camera and photography. And learn a thing or two along the way to getting an image.

Note in passing: the XF 10-24mm F4 R OIS is on sale at Amazon (at the time of this article for $300 off which is a really good price. Not sure how long that will last.