2014 - Image of the Week #27

[jerrytech1]

Great submissions as usual! You guys didn't make my first time judging easy!

Here we go...

Portrait: Zach "Bucky" Great shot. I am a big fan of animal portraits in black and white. The eyes tell a story. Very soulful. Nice job.

Honorable mention: "Bubbles" Beautiful shot.

Landscape: Tounis "Evening Light" For me this type of shot is definitive of the landscape genre. Clouds, mountains, rolling green hills, right time of day. Great shot.

Honorable mention: conropl "Milky Way" Very well done. Great composition.

Congratulations everyone on great photos and Thanks for allowing me to judge your work!

[Kayaker72]

Great choices....congrats to Zach and Tounis!!

[Jayson]

Congrats winners! Thanks for the honorable mention.

[Joel Eade]

My congrats to the winners as well!!

[Photog82]

Took this last night. I am new to layers and was experimenting a little... hopefully I did not overdo it.

Landscape: Milky Way Over Lake


Milky Way Over Lake 4301 by westmichigan, on Flickr

Very nice, I'd like to read about your process as I want to attempt this summer up to camp.

[conropl]

Congratulations to the winners this week... good choices.

Very nice, I'd like to read about your process as I want to attempt this summer up to camp.

Here is the basics of what I do, but keep in mind I just recently got Photo Shop for the first time (CS6), and this was my first real attempt at using layers (trust me... there are people here who are way better than me at this). I also did it on my laptop which sucks at determining brightness because it depends on the angle of view to the screen. When I got home I see that it is a little to dark and some of the detail was lost. The camera side of things I am comfortable with - the processing side I am a work in progress. So here is my current method (but always open to experimentation):

1. My camera/Lens Combination
   
   • Canon 1D X (any high ISO capable camera would do - such as 6D, 5D II, or 5D III)
   • EF 24mm f/1.4L II (you can get away with a f/2.8 lens if it is wider because you can lengthen the exposure time w/o elongating the stars).
   
   
2. Camera Set-Up/Setting
   
   • Turn on mirror lock up
   • I do not use any of the in-camera NR (all set to - OFF)
   • Cover Eye piece so light does not enter
   • Max shutter speed = 500/(focal length). If you go beyond this shutter speed, then the stars will start to be visibly elongated and they do not look as sharp. In my case my max shutter speed is 20 seconds... sometimes I will cheat and push it to 25 seconds if the ISO is getting to high.
   • I set the aperture to f/2. I cannot go wide open because of the loss of sharpness. If you use something like an f/2.8 lens wide open, then it needs to be much wider to get the same exposure. f/2.8 is a stop smaller than what I use and requires double the exposure time or 40 seconds - so a 12-14mm f/2.8 could work without pushing the ISO higher.
   • I set the ISO to 3200 and it came out a little light and had to darken it a little. 1600 is a little to low. Personally I would stick with 3200 ISO for a good dark night.
   • Set to Bulb
   • Use a remote. I use an Intervolometer so I can accurately set the shutter speed.
   • Shut off A/F and manually focus on a star at 10X magnification. Probably best to put a star in the center of the frame for best results. Take a test shot and magnify the preview to make sure you have it right.
   • Compose and use the electronic level if you have one because composing in the dark is tough. Take a test shot and check the composition. Adjust as needed.
   • Use histogram during review to make sure it is not clipping the darks.
   • Shut off A/F and manually focus on a star at 10X magnification. Take a test shot and magnify the preview to make sure you have it right.
   • Shoot RAW
   • Use a very steady tripod and head - do not extend center column if it has one; remove camera and tripod straps so they do not blow in the wind; I set the tripod in the water so I pushed down in the mud until it hit hard ground.
   
   
3. Processing (RAW Conversion):
   
   • Noise can get out of hand quickly. You need to be careful to not push contrast, exposure adjustments, shadow recovery, etc. to much or it will drive to noise issues further. So adjust sparingly in your favorite RAW converter.
   • Go through luminance adjustments to reduce some of the unwanted colors in the stars (red mostly), and bring the blues up a little to help the look of the sky.
   • In LR and PS you can mask the sharpening (Alt-Mask under the sharpening tool and adjust so all the dark areas are masked and only the starts are sharpened). This probably does more to cut down the noise in the shadows that anything else.
   • NR should be the last thing you do in RAW conversion.
   
   
4. Processing (Photo Shop):
   
   • I made multiple adjustment layers for contrast, color, brightness, etc. Each was masked for either the foreground or the sky and the opacity adjusted to taste. Each of those layers was performed for both the foreground and sky.
   • I finally added a Gaussian blur to a layer to just the foreground because the shadows were getting noisy. This was applied to a layer and masked to apply to the foreground only. The amount was just a little past eliminating noise, and then adjust the opacity to get the balance of sharpness and noise.

[Zach]

thanks guys!

[Tounis]

Thanks all for the kind comments and congrats to Zach.

[Photog82]

Congratulations to the winners this week... good choices.



Here is the basics of what I do, but keep in mind I just recently got Photo Shop for the first time (CS6), and this was my first real attempt at using layers (trust me... there are people here who are way better than me at this). I also did it on my laptop which sucks at determining brightness because it depends on the angle of view to the screen. When I got home I see that it is a little to dark and some of the detail was lost. The camera side of things I am comfortable with - the processing side I am a work in progress. So here is my current method (but always open to experimentation):

1. My camera/Lens Combination
   
   • Canon 1D X (any high ISO capable camera would do - such as 6D, 5D II, or 5D III)
   • EF 24mm f/1.4L II (you can get away with a f/2.8 lens if it is wider because you can lengthen the exposure time w/o elongating the stars).
   
   
2. Camera Set-Up/Setting
   
   • Turn on mirror lock up
   • I do not use any of the in-camera NR (all set to - OFF)
   • Cover Eye piece so light does not enter
   • Max shutter speed = 500/(focal length). If you go beyond this shutter speed, then the stars will start to be visibly elongated and they do not look as sharp. In my case my max shutter speed is 20 seconds... sometimes I will cheat and push it to 25 seconds if the ISO is getting to high.
   • I set the aperture to f/2. I cannot go wide open because of the loss of sharpness. If you use something like an f/2.8 lens wide open, then it needs to be much wider to get the same exposure. f/2.8 is a stop smaller than what I use and requires double the exposure time or 40 seconds - so a 12-14mm f/2.8 could work without pushing the ISO higher.
   • I set the ISO to 3200 and it came out a little light and had to darken it a little. 1600 is a little to low. Personally I would stick with 3200 ISO for a good dark night.
   • Set to Bulb
   • Use a remote. I use an Intervolometer so I can accurately set the shutter speed.
   • Shut off A/F and manually focus on a star at 10X magnification. Probably best to put a star in the center of the frame for best results. Take a test shot and magnify the preview to make sure you have it right.
   • Compose and use the electronic level if you have one because composing in the dark is tough. Take a test shot and check the composition. Adjust as needed.
   • Use histogram during review to make sure it is not clipping the darks.
   • Shut off A/F and manually focus on a star at 10X magnification. Take a test shot and magnify the preview to make sure you have it right.
   • Shoot RAW
   • Use a very steady tripod and head - do not extend center column if it has one; remove camera and tripod straps so they do not blow in the wind; I set the tripod in the water so I pushed down in the mud until it hit hard ground.
   
   
3. Processing (RAW Conversion):
   
   • Noise can get out of hand quickly. You need to be careful to not push contrast, exposure adjustments, shadow recovery, etc. to much or it will drive to noise issues further. So adjust sparingly in your favorite RAW converter.
   • Go through luminance adjustments to reduce some of the unwanted colors in the stars (red mostly), and bring the blues up a little to help the look of the sky.
   • In LR and PS you can mask the sharpening (Alt-Mask under the sharpening tool and adjust so all the dark areas are masked and only the starts are sharpened). This probably does more to cut down the noise in the shadows that anything else.
   • NR should be the last thing you do in RAW conversion.
   
   
4. Processing (Photo Shop):
   
   • I made multiple adjustment layers for contrast, color, brightness, etc. Each was masked for either the foreground or the sky and the opacity adjusted to taste. Each of those layers was performed for both the foreground and sky.
   • I finally added a Gaussian blur to a layer to just the foreground because the shadows were getting noisy. This was applied to a layer and masked to apply to the foreground only. The amount was just a little past eliminating noise, and then adjust the opacity to get the balance of sharpness and noise.
   
   

Thanks for the reply. Did you work with multiple photos and layered them together or just multiple layers of the same image?

[conropl]

Thanks for the reply. Did you work with multiple photos and layered them together or just multiple layers of the same image?

Multiple layers of a single image.

Sometime this summer I hope to try stacking multiple images and subtracting dark and white frames to get rid of the noise. But I have to find time.

I started out the night trying to do a time laps of the milky way moving across the lake from left to right of the frame, but the temperature got down to the low 40's and my battery died around 2:30 AM when the edge of the milky way was just starting to peak out around the left side of the trees. I went inside and charged the batteries and got back out around 4:00 AM to get the shot above with the milky way in the middle of the lake. Worked out for this shot, but my time laps was a bust. On the good side, my wife said I should buy an extra battery... it's always good when it is her idea.