Davis Mountains Rainbow - Wide Angle

You can make out the secondary rainbow above the primary.  This is an extremely wide angle view, looking to the northeast from my normal astronomy setup site in the Davis Mountains.  Notice no equipment is out -- due to rain.  Not good for astronomy, but perhaps worth missing a night for the beautiful rainbow that appeared.  Shot shortly before sunset on Sunday 3/11/2007.  Photo Details: Nikon D100 camera (ISO 400), Tokina 12-24 F4 G lens at 12mm, auto-metered at 1/350s at f10, processed in Photoshop using the Neat Image noise reduction filter.

Close-up Rainbow

This caught the rainbow at it's brightest.  Shot from under the porch as it was still raining quite a bit.  Photo Details: Nikon D200 camera (ISO 200), Nikon 18-200 VR lens at 200mm and f8 using auto-metering.  This is a crop of about 1/5th of the original frame.

Double Rainbow

In addition to the "double rainbow," you can make out clouds forming on the mountain behind.  The wind is blowing left to right, and slightly towards me as the storm moves from N to S.  Same equipment as above, lens at 42mm, 1/200 at f7.1.

Shooting notes:  It had occurred to me that there was a good chance for a rainbow on the second day into my "astronomy" trip.  Fortunately I remembered to check about 30 minutes before sunset as a moderate rain came up.  I grabbed my cameras in a panic when I realized an incredible rainbow had formed, having to change out another lens in favor of the 12-24.  As I was trying to find ways to keep the camera and lens dry, the rain let up enough to allow me to venture out onto open ground.  My lenses were still getting wet as I shot, and I did my best to gently dry them with my t-shirt.  I got so cold I had trouble moving my fingers.  Temp was maybe 50 F, with a brisk breeze blowing as well, and I was not properly dressed with shorts and a light gore-tex jacket.  Since astrophotography was obviously "out" for that night, I was very pleased to get a few decent pictures of the rainbow before it rapidly faded.  Checking my photos, the rainbow faded out completely in about 10 minutes.

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