p.2 #2 · Your Best Nightscapes and how they were made
Doug Otto wrote:
25 minute exposure. I was using my Canon 17-40 f/4L, at f/4, on my 5D at ISO 400. I did have to apply a standard helping of Noiseware and painstakingly removed a jet trail across the top 3rd of the image.
p.2 #4 · Your Best Nightscapes and how they were made
I'll share.
The first image is kinda old. Actually I took it with my rebel xt and kit lens.
We had a very early Spring that year and the leaves all came out way too early. Wouldn't you know it, we had a night that hit about 22 degrees and killed everything. You can see the leaves here are an odd mix of green, bronze, and brown. The trees were lit by some distant baseball fields. I threw a rock into the water to stir up some mud to give a little red color to the water.
But my favorite night photo is actually a portrait.
This was for a friend of mine. I had an idea of doing some senior portraits in odd places and I wanted to mix in night photography as well. Cemetary.
p.2 #11 · Your Best Nightscapes and how they were made
OK....
Don't sleep! I have a young family... If I want to have any ME time, I do it when they are all asleep. Works great except for the fact I don't sleep.
There are a few websites like www.spaceweather.com that display a real-time photo of the active aurora belt in the northern hemisphere. Their forecast section, lower left of the page, is pretty good as a reference. If I see something is headed my way, then I will look into the cloud cover in my area. Find a dark spot at least 50 miles from any city, light pollution bad, dark good! Don't shoot over a city either.
Good tripod, 800-1600iso and f2.8 glass help when activity is lower. f4 glass and the same ISO ranges work great if activity is good. The lower the exposure time you need the more details in the Aurora you will see. 15 sec and as high of an ISO you are willing to go, is a good place to start but you will need active aurora to get good images.
Then drive around in the country in the middle of the night like a crazy fool looking for a suitable backdrop, once you find a lake/trees/building whatever... remember its dark out, sometimes that can be difficult. Then stand around in the dark and wait. I use a combination of GPS/Smartphone/Google maps/laptop to allow me to do all the nav and monitor aurora activity in my vehicle. Aurora chaser, not a storm chaser.
One last thing... This is a fantastic display! Everyone has to see it with their own eye at least once, think “Bucket list”, but it is an act of mother nature, so a little bit of luck always helps! So does an understanding wife, and NO, she won't be reading this!
5D + 70-200 f/4 @ 200mm
The camera was mounted on a tripod with a 3 second exposure @ f/11. The image was shot as a RAW file, and processed in Adobe Photoshop CS4, and edited for exposure, slight color saturation, and sharpness.
p.2 #15 · Your Best Nightscapes and how they were made
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Hugh,
How Does that whole HDR work, can you explain.
WOW all the photos look Amazing can't wait to see more
Thanks
Shane
Hello Shane,
Jason pretty much explained it. The best tutorial I've found is by Ben Willmore - High Dynamic Range (HDR) Mastery. It's available at www.digitalmastery.com an an on-line course.
If you have other questions, you are welcome to eMail me. If you would like to see a selection of extreme HDR images, check out www.hdrgrunge.com .
p.2 #16 · Your Best Nightscapes and how they were made
phil hawkins wrote:
I am completely dumbfounded about the quality of the work on this thread!!! Holy Mackerel!! The work is unbelievable!
Phil... you know that you can piss with the big boys so post some of that Yosemite stuff dude! You are the one that initially inspired me to shoot scapes and I swear one of these days, I'm just going to hop on a plane and take the Yosemite tour with you. Someday. Someday.
p.2 #17 · Your Best Nightscapes and how they were made
I wouldn't say this was my best, but it was fun. I found these three trees above Olmstead Point in Yosemite. It was the night before the full moon, and the moon was over my right shoulder. The moon lit the landscape, but the trees were in shadow. I used colored gels over my flash to light and color the trees, using something like 4-6 pops on each tree. http://images.yuku.com/image/pjpeg/e4e3545f46d75a4d8232c9279dba158f4fa2959.jpg
Canon T1I and Tokina 12-24
f/8 for 217 seconds
Tripod, remote, no filters and minimal post-processing
PLEASE
