Anyhow, to support your case that it's really dark out there, my brother told me that the area around Capitol Reef is one of the darkest places in the US wrt light pollution.
To answer Steadyhand's question, the time limit before stars begin to blur is the focal length (or equivalent)
divided into 600. 20mm? 30 seconds. Etc. So you can see that wide
FL's offer more latitude. You will also get a better optical result by stopping
down one step from wide open; fewer edge aberrations.
art
Jan 25, 2008 at 04:19 PM
Mark Metternich Offline • • • • • • Upload & Sell: On
Tim ONeill wrote:
Stunner! Very well done with an anchor for the celestial work. Thanks for showing us how to push the envelope on this. Who'da thunk 3200 in the dark. Any in the camera noise reduction? Oh, and wonderful job on the light painting. Care to comment on what and how much time?
I don't think I used in camera noise reduction, but I can't recall. Light painting seemed to be around a couple seconds on the foreground, and probably 15 on the chimney, but it's hard to know, since a flashlight could not light up the entire area on the rock, and you have to paint it all in. We just did trial and error, and counted out loud to keep track of what was best.
RE the comment on the length of exposure vs. star trails, it depends on the focal length of your lens. Wider angle lenses will not show as much star "trailing" as a telephoto lens given the same exposure time.
This makes me want to try out my 12-24 in the same way. Except I have to get to someplace as cool as that one!
Art Rosch wrote:
To answer Steadyhand's question, the time limit before stars begin to blur is the focal length (or equivalent)
divided into 600. 20mm? 30 seconds. Etc. So you can see that wide
FL's offer more latitude. You will also get a better optical result by stopping
down one step from wide open; fewer edge aberrations.
Breathtaking! I gazed at your photo for some time before I just had to show it to my wife. Living in a rainforest for several years sure makes me appreciate a beautifully clear, crisp, starry image. Wow! Okay, I'm going back to look at it some more. -Quent
No problem Art. In fact, if you want, I'll email you a higher resolution version. You might find it interesting to see what the 5D can do? Like I said before, the noise is definitely an issue, but I did make a 12x18 print of it last night, and I think it is really quite nice.
Oh please do that. This image is one of the keepers. [email protected]
For NR, I use Dfine, by Nik. it allows a selective brushing out of noise
in any part of the image (they probably all do, but i quit using NeatImage,
etc). Just like a layer mask, chose brush opacity etc and smooth the nasties
away.
WOW!!!!
Nailed it, great job.... now that low noise is reason for me to want D3 so I can do night work D2x here and is a bit noisy at those higher iso values.
