montage -trim -tile 5x8 -geometry 100x80+0+0 *.jpg out_%d.jpg

This command (given that you have ImageMagick installed) will create an image named out_0.jpg with 40 (or less) thumbnails 100 pixels long from your pictures. They will be arranged in eight, 80 pixels high, rows , five thumbnails per row. If you have more than 40 pictures in your directory, further files will be created: out_1.jpg, out_2.jpg, etc. It’s that simple. However, you should create an index-print on the resized images - if you put in files straight from a camera (let say, 6 megapixels) more than hundred pictures will most likely eat all available RAM. Use web versions instead.

I’m perfectly aware that there are easier or more convenient ways of doing the same. But I believe that those of you who live in the terminal will appreciate this method, especially that it can be part of a larger, shell-based workflow (dump pictures, convert to jpgs all RAW files, rename according to Exif data, resize for web, make index-print, make an album, publish).

Below is an index-print created with ImageMagick.

1. Big wow-factor. Your non-photographing friends will praise your 10 minutes star trails exposure and consider a random moving car lights a great photographic idea. Very likely they will ask you for prints or at least to send them the photos.
2. Stories about your alone night walks with a camera will create an adventurous legend surrounding you.
3. You will become a part or world’s elite - night photographers are a very small part of the photo-snapping world.
4. Each properly exposed frame is worth keeping and sharing - most likely there’s no similar taken (see above).
5. Your passion gives you a good reason to (depends on a … seniority?) a.) ask a close friend for a late night walk b.) leave home in the evening.

But most important and most serious reason to photograph at night is that feeling of calm, internal peace and invisible connection with other night-lovers… It’s rare, it’s rewarding, it’s definitely worth these few hours of sleep.

Fog was the reason this shooting session lasted only hour. I didn’t prepare anything to protect camera against humidity (thing to remember next time) and the spot I chose wasn’t the best one (few hundred meters further fog was almost absent) - but I least I made some interesting shots. The white horizontal line near the bottom comes from car passing by during the exposure.

gphoto2 is just an interface - it depends on the library called (surprise, surprise) libgphoto2 and without this library you cannot use it at all. There are two ways of obtaining this library: the first one is to use DarwinPorts and the second - compile everything by yourself.
I really do not recommend compiling libgphoto2 (and libusb, and few other things needed) for many reasons. Probably the most important is, that the newest libgphoto2 (2.2.1) will not compile under Mac OSX. Few people tried, including myself and nobody succeeded at that. Interestingly, the previous version (2.1.6) will compile and install without any problems BUT it will not work anyway.
Now, when I convinced you to use DarwinPorts, here’s the procedure I used to make gphoto2 working under OSX:

1. Install DarwinPorts and then, install libgphoto2 (available from libgphoto2.darwinports.com) with command: sudo port install libgphoto2. It will download all needed libraries for you and install all of them under /opt/.

2. Download gphoto2, unpack, go to it’s directory and configure with: configure –prefix=/opt/local. The script is not smart enough to search for libraries at /opt/local directory unless you’ve added this to global libraries path. Type then, make, and sudo make install. You will most probably need to provide your password. Remember, that it will be installed under /opt/local/bin - you may want to adjust your $PATH variable.
3. Now is the trick I couldn’t find elsewhere. When your camera (set to PTP mode, remember?) is connected to the computer, kill the process named (all in one line):

/System/Library/Image Capture/Devices/PTPCamera.app/Contents/MacOS/PTPCamera

with a kill command. It’s necessary, otherwise gphoto2 will not be able to capture proper usb device.

That’s all.

After connecting my Nikon D70 I was able to trigger capturing - using gphoto2 –capture-image command.

All command line options of gphoto2 you may find on its man page. For features list go to the Gphoto Project home page.

Both of these movies show one important thing I often miss in many other productions: passion and devotion to Art. That’s not very often seen, nor easy to capture.

It’s pretty interesting to see how fast sensor building technology advances. The previous digital SLR from Nikon, D100, is almost unusable during long exposures - even at ISO200, but it’s only two years older than D70.

- it does not eat computer’s resources almost at all

- its features may actually be quite useful in the near future, because I want to jump into astrophotography some day

- it has a nice window called Night-At-Glance - it’s an overview of what is happening on the sky on the particular night

Here’s the mandatory screenshot.

Note on installing: Xephem is available for all major linux/unix systems mainly. Installation under OSX should be performed through Fink - otherwise you may run into trouble while compiling it by yourself. I haven’t tried installation under MS Windows, but Xephem’s homepage states it’s possible.

Why all this you may ask. Here’s the answer - look at this photo by Brian Chapman. It’s one of the most stunning examples of night photography I’ve seen recently.