p.1 #1 · The Diving Board - Half Dome Under The Milky Way
Based on some of the great feedback I've gotten lately from my posting here on FM, I've started processing my astro-landscape images much darker, but I don't know if I've got it right just yet. C&C welcome!
Nikon D800e, Rokinon 14mm @ f/2.8
4 frame panorama, each frame exposed for sky and earth separately
30 sec @ ISO 12800 for sky, 5 min @ ISO 3200 for earth.
EDITED TO ADD:
Here is another version, slightly re-edited for a darker sky.
p.1 #2 · The Diving Board - Half Dome Under The Milky Way
Hey Matt,
That is super sweet! I really like the look of this. Good work.
But I don't quite get why such high ISO? Usually for skies even at f4 and 30 secs, I never have to go higher than ISO 6400. And for the ground layer, I would have gone down to ISO 400 for less noise.
p.1 #4 · The Diving Board - Half Dome Under The Milky Way
That's very nice.
The comp seems kind of tight for a four frame 14mm pano.
I wonder about the sky iso too, but the end result shows a nice exposure and the noise is not bad.
p.1 #5 · The Diving Board - Half Dome Under The Milky Way
Very nice Mathew. I like it as well. Sky seems a bit light to me but that is personal preference. Is that someone camping in what looks to be a lit up tent?
p.1 #6 · The Diving Board - Half Dome Under The Milky Way
Hi Matt, I love the composition I have been thinking about taking similar shot myself when I ll go there for the first time this year.
As Jim mentioned not sure why you shot at such high ISO, at 12800 you will get a lot of noise. One of the option here is to take few frame at lower ISO and then stack them so you can get more detail with less noise. Hope that helps
p.1 #9 · The Diving Board - Half Dome Under The Milky Way
JimFox wrote:
Hey Matt,
That is super sweet! I really like the look of this. Good work.
But I don't quite get why such high ISO? Usually for skies even at f4 and 30 secs, I never have to go higher than ISO 6400. And for the ground layer, I would have gone down to ISO 400 for less noise.
Jim
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Derek Weston wrote:
What a composition.
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dgdg wrote:
That's very nice.
The comp seems kind of tight for a four frame 14mm pano.
I wonder about the sky iso too, but the end result shows a nice exposure and the noise is not bad.
David
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Hardcore wrote:
Very nice Mathew. I like it as well. Sky seems a bit light to me but that is personal preference. Is that someone camping in what looks to be a lit up tent?
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Guillaume_8667 wrote:
Hi Matt, I love the composition I have been thinking about taking similar shot myself when I ll go there for the first time this year.
As Jim mentioned not sure why you shot at such high ISO, at 12800 you will get a lot of noise. One of the option here is to take few frame at lower ISO and then stack them so you can get more detail with less noise. Hope that helps
Guillaume
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dgdg wrote:
I'd consider correcting for vignetting, then the resulting (more) even sky values can be brought down without the corners looking very dark.
David
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jeacaj wrote:
I love the composition. Beautiful, a bit bright on the horizon line on the the left but it's a personal choice. Bravo!
Thank you everyone for commenting!
Simply put, yes it was really dark; there was no moonlight whatsoever affecting the scene, and very little light pollution. (If I had been in Joshua Tree for example, with Las Vegas and Palm Springs on the horizons, I'd surely get over-exposed images!)
Plus, the Rokinon 14mm vignettes like you would not believe.
Thus, I opted to try and "properly expose" the scene with those ISOs, and darken the images in post-production. This did help noise appear surprisingly low, actually, even for 12800 on the D800e...
I'll try playing with the sky a little bit more, you're right the vignetting didn't seem very bad at first but the more I look at it the more it is a bit too black...
p.1 #10 · The Diving Board - Half Dome Under The Milky Way
Hardcore wrote:
Very nice Mathew. I like it as well. Sky seems a bit light to me but that is personal preference. Is that someone camping in what looks to be a lit up tent?
Acually, my climbing partner and I set up the tent and put a headlamp inside, but we were both too chicken to sleep inside the tent because it's a bit too exposed to a deadly stumble. (1K+ foot fall) We opted to sleep under the stars in the area where the photos were actually taken, which has a bit more of a "lip" on the edge.
Either way this is NOT a camping area for anyone who sleep walks!
p.1 #11 · The Diving Board - Half Dome Under The Milky Way
Thanks for the follow up camping image. I liked the illuminated tent, with the night sky... It helped the image tell a story. Though i wouldn't want to camp that close to the edge either...
p.1 #12 · The Diving Board - Half Dome Under The Milky Way
Very nice, indeed. The Milky Way following the contour of Half Dome adds to the lovely comp. Like some others have said, the sky seems a little bright on my monitor.
p.1 #13 · The Diving Board - Half Dome Under The Milky Way
wswartzwel wrote:
Thanks for the follow up camping image. I liked the illuminated tent, with the night sky... It helped the image tell a story. Though i wouldn't want to camp that close to the edge either...
The sleeping part, once we decided where to lie, wasn't too bad. The scariest part was mainly the hours we spent at night setting up cameras, shooting different angles / starting up timelapses. Headlamps aren't exactly conducive to such exposures, even in the low-beam red mode...
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Chaz wrote:
Very nice, indeed. The Milky Way following the contour of Half Dome adds to the lovely comp. Like some others have said, the sky seems a little bright on my monitor.
Thanks for the feedback on the sky. I'm still struggling with the notion that my night images "need" to be darker; my previous set of images were all many stops brighter than this. I'll keep working it!
p.1 #15 · The Diving Board - Half Dome Under The Milky Way
Looks really cool, what a unique image. Question for you, from a real n00b at night shooting...you said each frame was exposed twice, did you do the row of images at one exposure and then come back to the set for the land?
p.1 #17 · The Diving Board - Half Dome Under The Milky Way
I always look at my final result regardless of settings. Sometimes presupposed settings don't get the final result as great as yours here so I go with what I view as my best effort for the image that I like!
Yeah suggestions allow me to tweak but usually I stick with my initial result..and thank the repsponders for their comments.
Very fine image and the tent light really adds scale, depth and drama to the image.
Dan
p.1 #20 · The Diving Board - Half Dome Under The Milky Way
Travis Rhoads wrote:
Looks really cool, what a unique image. Question for you, from a real n00b at night shooting...you said each frame was exposed twice, did you do the row of images at one exposure and then come back to the set for the land?
Very good question! The best way to do panoramas like this is to blend the individual composite frames for sky and earth first, and then take each of those PSDs / TIFs into Photoshop for the Panorama. Either way it's a bit CPU-hungry, but it's not too bad on my 2011 Macbook Pro (and considering they're 36 MP images, and I've since down-graded to 24) ...so I'm sure most folks will be okay!
I'll probably try and record a video tutorial on how to do this, either for SLR Lounge or for my own personal site, http://www.astro-landscapes.com
