p.15 #1 · Your Best Nightscapes and how they were made
Beautiful work in this thread.
Here's my humble contribution, shot with a humble 3mp P&S back in the day, believe it or not.
We were road tripping across the country and stopped by the Grand Canyon around sunset. After the sun had set, we did a little skywriting with my keychain photon light and simply set the camera down on the ground, angling it up a bit with a sandal or something. About halfway through my friend's shot, there was this flash of light. I thought it was a car turning in the parking lot and flashing us with its headlights and I would have stopped writing had I been doing the skywriting, thinking the shot was trashed, but fortunately my friend was in the shot and kept going. (Acidtrux was his online handle.)
In any event, after he finished his writing, we looked at the LCD on the back of the screen and all started screaming at the result. For the rest of the night, we were all totally jazzed and pumped, absolutely ecstatic at what was captured in camera.
This was shot in 2004 and still stands as one of my all-time favorite nighttime images. No Photoshop was done other than flipping it 180 degrees. (He wrote from left to right from his perspective which was right to left from the camera's perspective so we flipped it in post.)
p.15 #6 · Your Best Nightscapes and how they were made
Great photos guys and gals.
Here is mine.
Taken on the Oregon coast. Hit the waves with my 550 a few times and then painted the wreak with my mag light.
Canon 20D sigma 20mm 1.8
98 sec @ f6.3 iso 200 RAW of course.
p.15 #11 · Your Best Nightscapes and how they were made
Some really great work in here guys! I was just thinking last night that I need to figure out how some of these long exposures are handled and I ran across this thread. It was a big help! Here is one of mine, hope you enjoy.
This was taken from a cabin in Pigeon Forge TN, overlooking this valley. I could see the storm rolling in but it wasn't raining yet. I setup on a tripod and with the delay on, just kept snapping until I got lucky. ISO400, F6.3, 10 sec exp It was with my old Rebel XT, it was cleaned up a bit in PS.
p.15 #12 · Your Best Nightscapes and how they were made
Two shots of Geneva (Switzerland) from La Saleve (France). The spot is 1 minute walking from the parking spot. Shot from a tripod + mirror lockup + cable release. PP in Adobe Camera Raw, just some minor tweakings. The picture that was shot using the sigma 15 fisheye was quite saturated/contrasty and colorful compared to the tamron one.. I always have to compensate for that.
p.15 #13 · Your Best Nightscapes and how they were made
may i ask some stupid questions in here? i'm not a bad photographer, but i sure felt like one after my first attempts last week at star photography! my main issues were with NOISE!!! im shooting a 5dii, for a single exposure does the gallery recommend long exposure NR ON or OFF? i had it off...and well...yuk. my exposures were around 1-2 minutes, about 1600 iso. i want to learn both star trails and pinpoint star technique. to deal with noise in either situation what is the best method? foreground will be lit up by me, so i dont think i can use image stacking for pinpoint because wont it move the foreground around to align the moving stars? so gurus please give me some basic direction? i have a 5 million candlepower light for my foreground...so do i need to keep the iso lower for noise issue or is the long exposure noise more iso independant?
p.15 #14 · Your Best Nightscapes and how they were made
I recommend long exposure NR to be turned on. It does make a difference, for sure. Also, ISO 1600 is pretty high - I like to keep it around 400, even if it means extending the exposure time. It's not like we're dealing with reciprocity failure with digital...
p.15 #15 · Your Best Nightscapes and how they were made
drdrew wrote:
may i ask some stupid questions in here? i'm not a bad photographer, but i sure felt like one after my first attempts last week at star photography! my main issues were with NOISE!!! im shooting a 5dii, for a single exposure does the gallery recommend long exposure NR ON or OFF? i had it off...and well...yuk. my exposures were around 1-2 minutes, about 1600 iso. i want to learn both star trails and pinpoint star technique. to deal with noise in either situation what is the best method? foreground will be lit up by me, so i dont think i can use image stacking for pinpoint because wont it move the foreground around to align the moving stars? so gurus please give me some basic direction? i have a 5 million candlepower light for my foreground...so do i need to keep the iso lower for noise issue or is the long exposure noise more iso independant?
I recommend you contact Floris, a user here. He posted a tutorial on star trails a year or two ago that was fantastic. I can't find it on a search now so it may have hit a 12 month limit and been deleted. If he has a copy of the info he might send it along. It motivated, and helped, a lot of us to get out there and do it.
p.15 #17 · Your Best Nightscapes and how they were made
I recommend you contact Floris, a user here. He posted a tutorial on star trails a year or two ago that was fantastic. I can't find it on a search now so it may have hit a 12 month limit and been deleted. If he has a copy of the info he might send it along. It motivated, and helped, a lot of us to get out there and do it.
Ted
It took a few minutes searching. Well worth reading.
