Michael H Offline Upload & Sell: On
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Klaus Priebe wrote:
Thank you all so very much for you thoughts and comments. They are greatly appreciated.
David,
Thanks and this was shot at f/4. 1 stop down to make sure it covers any lens defocusing due to temperature fluctuations during the long exposures. The Astrotrac is very accurate at tracking. One of the best I have used for widefield and short telephoto work.
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Michael,
Thanks for your comments. If you have ever been to a dark sky site you will see the brilliant star clouds of the milky way. Unfortunately our eye is unable to see each star individually in the massive star clouds. The "star noise" are actually stars. As you look into the night sky in a perfectly dark location the night sky looks dark gray instead of black. Its all that light from the distant stars that actually make it look gray. Agreed the longer exposure captures more of the stars and nebula and perhaps a bit much for many tastes my intent is to capture more of the beauty of the Milky way than we would normally see. Even a 30 second exposure at ISO 3200 or 63400 captures much more than our eye can see. If we shot the sky just as our eye can see it the images would be a bit boring filled with dark void.
For me a 30 second exposure at ISO 6400 just doesn't cut it. Now that is an image with noise. Also in just about every milky way exposure I have seen the color balance is way off. Camera sensors cannot capture the true color of the universe in short exposures and with the filtration on today's DSLR's The Nikon D810 has not filter therefor is not limited to catching the light of the universe as close and an unmodified DSLR can. It does lack in the H-Alpha wavelengths because most of the nebula in the image should be red in color. The D8010 is able to catch some of the red but it does lack a little bit. Perhaps a quick look through some Hubble space telescope images might put some light on my concept here.
Sorry about the rambling and your thoughts are greatly appreciated!...Show more →
Klaus,
Thank you so much for sharing your thought process on this. As I said in my response, I always appreciate your images and insights. This is no exception.
I'm certainly no Astro-photographer, but I've started playing a bit. I enjoy it but do get limited opportunities. I agree with most of what you are saying here and have had the opportunity to be at some great viewing locations. Including arguably one of the best publicly accessible locations on earth; the Mauna Kea visitor center. I've seen some incredible views there including the massive and endless starfields you mention. It is truly a sight to behold. I've also seen the more gray sky but also nights with incredible blacks/darks accentuated by endless stars, clusters, nebulas, etc.
I need to think about how to best describe what I see here with this image. "Noise" is probably a bad choice. I get that it's not noise. Again,I appreciate your intent and obviously many people like it. Maybe it's just too much? I will give this some thought.
Regarding the gear, I will get back to Mauna Kea soon and plan to take my Olympus E-M1 to see how it does with no filter. I will also try to post some of my (not so good) attempts from the visitor center. In the meantime, this is one I took at a lava caldera viewpoint (Kiluea). I need to look, but I think this is about a 15 second exposure. The red is from the lava glow on the steam. I enjoyed seeing the star and clusters in the sky when I got back to review the images. https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1304543/0#12448656
Respectfully,
Mike
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