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A lot of my astro shooting is in the summer time when the MW core is higher in the sky but I've been wanting to do more low-horizon stuff with a mid-tele lens so here's one of my first attempts with a 50mm. I shot the foreground right before the moon set and then the stars on a SkyTracker once the core was in place and right before the morning sky began to get lighter. Overall a fun night in 7-degree temps. Enjoy!
Foreground: 30 seconds, F/5.6, ISO 400 (before the moon fully set)
Sky: 2 min, F/4, ISO 4000 (SkyTracker)
That is quite impressive, and as a tracked MW shooter myself, I highly appreciate the amount of timing, planing, and work that went into getting the image. Very well done.
That's understandable Jake but everything was shot with the same lens and neither the sky nor foreground is cropped or expanded at all to exaggerate the scale. The mountain is a decent distance away so a mid-telephoto will make the stars seem larger large because of lens compression which is exactly why I chose this spot. A 50mm isn't a very common astro focal length either so that may throw some people off. Glad you like the foreground though!
This isn't working for me at all. It's an impressive achievement from a technical perspective, both at the capture and processing dimension. The color toning is also effectively conveying mood and temperature, though there are a few jarring color shifts that are causing me some trouble. However, the image as a whole lacks (IMO) both visual credibility and a clarity of compositional statement. The sky is as bright as the mountain, there are luminous patches of roughly equal value sprinkled throughout the center of the frame in such a way that I find myself visually confused about what I'm looking at, let alone what I should be looking at. I wonder if the image might benefit from a slight dialing back of value in either the foreground mountain or the sky. As of now, the overall value of sky and peak are too close to make any visual sense to me, and the mix of equal values makes the overall composition really bewildering. Just my opinion of course.
Mar 20, 2018 at 01:42 AM
Mark Metternich Offline • • • • • • Upload & Sell: On
rparchen wrote:
That's understandable Jake but everything was shot with the same lens and neither the sky nor foreground is cropped or expanded at all to exaggerate the scale. The mountain is a decent distance away so a mid-telephoto will make the stars seem larger large because of lens compression which is exactly why I chose this spot. A 50mm isn't a very common astro focal length either so that may throw some people off. Glad you like the foreground though!
Sorry to not be giving pure accolades. I think the scene has so much awesome potential I want to just give my feedback, for what it is, or is not worth.
It is certainly amazing in some ways, but the sky for my taste is extremely intense in brightness, contrast, middle-tone brightness and overall saturation. I don't know how others may feel (or their respective preferences) but in the age of super hyped out Milkyway shots, at least my own personal taste has changed over the years and is far more toward dialing down the intensity of star shots. I still think it is a beautiful image, but I think could be a lot better (again for my own personal taste) with a much more realistic sky rendering especially. Just as a quick test I made a copy of it and reduced the contrast, reduced the mid-tones a lot and took down the lights and then desaturated it by about 15-20 points and it was a rough but major improvement to my eye. I, of course, deleted the file immediately. Hope you are ok with that. The land, on the other hand, I do not think needs quite as much subduing, but some.
I hope this does not rub you the wrong way as I know that must have been a seriously laborsome project. I just think it is worth the effort of totally mastering it (but certainly to your taste not ours).
Nah, doesn't rub me the wrong way by any means! I can always appreciate another viewpoint and I completely understand where you're coming from. I'd actually love to see your edit if that wasn't lost to the way of the recycle bin. I just figure that even a basic 30-second exposure allows a camera to capture so much more than what our eye can see anyway so I was probably just having more fun by pushing the limits of what is possible to see how much detail can be brought out with the use of a SkyTracker. I do appreciate the feedback though and I'll play around with the sky a little bit more to back it down a bit.
-Rick
Mark Metternich wrote:
Sorry to not be giving pure accolades. I think the scene has so much awesome potential I want to just give my feedback, for what it is, or is not worth.
It is certainly amazing in some ways, but the sky for my taste is extremely intense in brightness, contrast, middle-tone brightness and overall saturation. I don't know how others may feel (or their respective preferences) but in the age of super hyped out Milkyway shots, at least my own personal taste has changed over the years and is far more toward dialing down the intensity of star shots. I still think it is a beautiful image, but I think could be a lot better (again for my own personal taste) with a much more realistic sky rendering especially. Just as a quick test I made a copy of it and reduced the contrast, reduced the mid-tones a lot and took down the lights and then desaturated it by about 15-20 points and it was a rough but major improvement to my eye. I, of course, deleted the file immediately. Hope you are ok with that. The land, on the other hand, I do not think needs quite as much subduing, but some.
I hope this does not rub you the wrong way as I know that must have been a seriously laborsome project. I just think it is worth the effort of totally mastering it (but certainly to your taste not ours). ...Show more →
Excellent shot and appreciate all the work that went into it. I've gotta agree with Mark though, my feeling on star shots has evolved also. This one is over the top beautiful and evocative, but certainly doesn't feel at all real (although most of the better digital star shots still push the limits of credibility).
