Night/Star + Landscape Article

For quite a while now, I've been working on a detailed article on my night photography. I've finished the first draft, and you can download it here: http://www.texbrick.com/photo/notes/starshots.pdf.

The article is based on my experiences and covers shooting conditions, locations, gear, and post processing. I hope to update this as time goes on and I gain more experience with this type of photography.

click to read article

Feb. '10 Update and Photos from Last Year

January has slipped by, and I haven't used up my camera in anger in a long while. I've been busy with LEGO stuff as well as remodeling our kitchen at home.

I have a bunch of photos taken at the High Lonesome last November and December that I need to edit and process. I've quickly done three of my favorites:

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I also made another time-lapse video of the night sky last December. This time, the exposures were much longer: 25 sec. instead of 8 sec. as the previous time-lapse video.

This video (click thumbnail below) is composed of 100 photos played at 8 frames per second. Each photo was shot at: 25 sec., f/1.8, ISO 3200.

click to see video
(1.5 MB, Windows Media File)

The files were shot as small JPGs on FINE with heavy noise reduction turned on. The long-exposure NR was turned off. Again, this was done using my "low-light" combo: the Canon 5DII and 24mm f/1.4II lens.

Night Sky Time Lapse

And now for something completely different:

6MB .WMV Video - click to watch

This is a short video made from 297 photos taken over a period of nearly 45 minutes. Each photo was 8 seconds long (shot at 24mm, f/1.8, ISO 12.8k), and there was a break of 1 second between frames.

I turned off the long exposure noise reduction, but turned on the high ISO noise reduction. It did help some, but I still applied noise reduction in post processing. The files were shot as small JPGs. I contemplated shooting sRAW, but didn't want to deal with file sizes 4 to 5 times larger than a fine quality JPG.

This was an experiment to see if it could be done, and I think it worked quite well. The movie is a little jerky - probably a resut of 0.125 sec. per frame (i.e. 8 frames per second video). I'd like to redo this in the future with different software and perhaps make it faster (maybe 15 frames per second).

Dark Skies Over the High Lonesome, Part 2

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19.4mm (eff.), 44 minutes, f/4, ISO 200

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24mm, 25 sec., f/2.2, ISO 6400

Dark Skies Over the High Lonesome

I spent last weekend at the High Lonesome Ranch in the Texas hill country. The weather was clear and the moon was new- perfect conditions for...

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24mm, 25 sec., f/1.8, ISO 6400

The greenish light was from an aerial light near our cabin. The yellowish glow on the horizon was a distant small town or maybe another ranch.

The white streak in the upper left could possibly be a plane, but at 100% I cannot see the usual dot-pattern that results from blinking lights typically seen on planes. It might very well be a meteor, but I was not looking at the sky during the exposure, so I really don't know.

The white, fuzzy glow (middle right) looks like a galaxy. I'm not sure which one, perhaps Andromeda (M31)? This shot is looking roughly NNE about 2 hours after sunset.

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24mm, 25 sec., f/1.8, ISO 3200

It's kind of hard to see in this small web-sized pic, but there is a bluish glow on the tree. I inadvertently light-painted it with my LED headlamp.

I set this shot up and hit the shutter, then turned my back to the camera and paced around a bit (while talking to my wife on the cell). All the while I had my headlamp on. I was careful not to look in the direction of the shot, but the light reflected off the ground, then off the tree, and was recorded by the camera. It's just that sensitive!

Dark Skies Over Pine Springs

During our recent trip to Guadalupe Mountains National Park, I had an opportunity to photograph dark and clear skies. It is not very often that I get to visit a location that is mostly free of light pollution and have dark, clear skies at the same time.

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The moon was new during our visit to the park, and I was fortunate that on both nights during our trip, the skies cleared from evening thunderstorms after sunset.

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Both shots were taken at 24mm, 30 seconds, f/2.2, and ISO 3200.

Dark Skies

Self portrait with the summer Milky Way (near the Sabinal River in Utopia, TX, July 2009).

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Canon 5DII with Canon 24mm f/1.4 II
25 sec.
f/2.5
ISO 3200

Big Bend at Night

Before I post more on the badlands series, I thought I'd share a few night scenes.

Rattlesnake Badlands
(click for larger version)

Study Butte
(click for larger version)

Tent and Stars
(click for larger version)

All of these were shot at about the same settings as the tent, stars, and meteor shot I posted last week.

Camping Under the Stars

I spent three nights camping in the backcountry of Big Bend National Park last week. The weather was nice and the nights were mostly clear and definitely dark. It was a great trip.

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Canon 5D II with 24mm f/1.4L II
f/1.8, 25 sec., ISO 1600

I had a very specific photographic mission this trip. Well, two missions, acutally. One was the night skies, and the other? just stay tuned... :-)

I have just begun the post-processing process, and I'm chewing my way through 16 GB worth of files. I will post more photos from the trip in the coming weeks. I'll also write up a field report describing my techniques and experiences in shooting star scenes like the one above.

Comet Lulin and More

I tried hard last weekend to see and photograph Comet Lulin. Unfortunately, the high amounts of light pollution here in Houston prevented me from seeing the comet with the naked eye (the comet is now bright enough to see, but only in very dark skies). It did, however, show up faintly in a long exposure:

Comet Lulin - Wide Angle (Feb-22)
Canon 40D with 24mm f/1.4L II
f/1.8, 6 sec., ISO 800

Comet Lulin - Telephoto (Feb-22)
Canon 40D with 400mm f/5.6L
f/5.6, 4 sec., ISO 1600

Since it was not visible to the naked eye (or even my 10x42 binoculars), I resorted to taking 6 second exposures with my 24mm lens and then scanning the LCD screen to look for it.

The first night I tried it (two days prior to the photos above), I couldn't find it. I gave up and photographed other things in the sky.

Crescent Moon (Feb-20)
Canon 40D with 400mm f/5.6L + two 1.4x teleconverters
f/16 (eff.), 1/4 sec., ISO 800

Saturn (viewed at 100%) (Feb-20)
Canon 40D with 400mm f/5.6L + two 1.4x teleconverters
f/16 (eff.), 1/90 sec., ISO 1600

One note on using stacked 1.4x teleconverters: when used on the f/5.6 lens, the maximum aperture increases two stops to f/11. I stopped down one to increase sharpness a bit, so the above photos were effectively at f/16.

And just for fun, while I'm posting astrophotography stuff, here's a shot of a nice moon halo we had in early January. Again, this is from my backyard here in Houston.

Moon Halo (Jan-7)
Canon 5D with 24mm f/1.4L II
f/2.0, 6 sec., ISO 800

Christmas at the Gazebo

During our Christmas holiday in Del Rio, we spent part of Christmas Eve wondering around downtown and adjacent areas photographing the lights. This is the gazebo in the little park near downtown.

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Canon 5D w/ 17-40mm f/4L
15 sec., f/8, 17mm, ISO 100 & 200 (two shot composite)

That's my wife, our older son (Henry), and myself sitting on the steps. I light-painted our faces with my LED flashlight during the exposure, however they're blurred because of the long shutter speed. This looks more like a trio of ghosts than a Christmas portrait :-)

The final photo is a blend of two exposures. The brighter exposure (ISO 200) better captured the warm light on the trees above the gazebo, and the darker exposure (ISO 100) captured the gazebo and colored lights. I blended the two shots in Photoshop using layer masks.

I'm not sure why I varied the ISO. Typically, I'd vary the shutter speed to make multiple exposures. But this worked just as well since ISO 100 and 200 are both very clean with the 5D.

Having us in the scene was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Tanya and Henry wandered up on the steps just as I was finishing the first exposure. I just set the timer and then grabbed them for a shot. It was only for fun.

I know I'm a little late in posting this, but I'm still working on a back-log of photos I took in December. There's more to come...

Post Christmas Decompression

I'm back from a nearly week-long trip to see my in-laws in Del Rio. We had a fantastic time. It was our first big outing since Michael was born, and the time away from home was much needed and beneficial.

I shot nearly 700 photos during the trip! :-) And nearly all of that was just family. I did manage to get just a little "serious" shooting in.

We ventured downtown on Christmas Eve after sunset to photograph the lights. My mother-in-law is getting into photography now and I thought she'd enjoy some night shooting. This shot is of the courthouse in Del Rio.

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Hope you all had a great Christmas (or what ever holiday you celebrate this season)!

The Night Sky - Long Exposures

So while I was busy making my 30 second shots with the 5D (see previous blog entry), I put the 40D to work :-)

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Canon 40D, 17-40mm f/4L
40 minutes, f/5.6, 17mm, ISO 200 (and then pushed 1/3 stop in RAW processing)

40 minutes later (actually 80 due to the NR cycle), this magnificent spinning sky spun up on my LCD. Damn, I was happy. A little disappointed too. The dark skies that we have at the High Lonesome Ranch aren't that dark after all. There's light over the north horizon polluting the sky. I could just barely see it with my naked eye, but I'm surprized how brightly it showed up in these long exposures.

Here are two more:

Shots made with same settings as above.
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The Night Sky - Test Shots Take 2

Over the Thanksgiving weekend I got another opportunity to shoot the night sky under clear and dark conditions. Again, I tried more of the same with my f/2.8 zoom. Look for Venus and Jupiter near the horizon on the left side of the frame:

Click for larger image.

Canon 5D, 24-70mm f/2.8L
30 sec., f/2.8, 24mm, ISO 1600 (and then pushed 1.3 stops in RAW processing)

This next shot was taken just inside a tree line. I took my first steps towards designing a real landscape/starscape shot. The break in the trees frames the "cloudy" band of the Milky Way. I love the look of leafless trees silhouetted against the starry sky. This is the sort of shot I ultimately want to produce, having components of the land with a sky full of bright stars.

Shot with same settings as above.
Click for larger image.

It's difficult to compose shots because of the darkness. Even an f/2.8 lens on a full frame camera does not transmit enough light to see and compose the scene through the viewfinder. Keep in mind this is under a moonless sky.

I also get frustrated because I have to alternate between using a flashlight to move around and manage gear and then getting my eyes to adjust to the dark to compose shots. I've more than once flashed my eyes while fumbling with gear thus having to sit there for a minute or two waiting for the light spots to go away :-)

I also borked up a few shots 'cause I had to flip on the flashlight during an exposure to check and see what was lurking in the dark. I'm not alone out there. Most noises turned out to be birds or raccoons. I definitely do not want to have a close encounter with a large boar in the pitch black.

Regarding composing the shots, I tried shining a flashlight on the trees while looking through the viewfinder, but that only helped to compose the near to mid-positioned landscape elements. Anything far away, and also the sky, was still dark. Plus it was a little difficult to hold the light and reposition the camera sitting on a ballhead. I need three hands.

Trial and error shots still work best. But at several minutes per shot (30 sec. exposure + 30 sec. noise reduction + time to evaluate the LCD and reposition the camera + time for eyes to adjust to the dark), it takes a while to make a few test shots to fine-tune the composition. I suppose I could shut off the long-exposure noise reduction and bump the ISO to 3200 and take 15 seconds shots, but that requires changing settings and diving into the custom menus, and that takes time too even in broad daylight.

Plus I was shooting in the cold, so operating the camera and managing gear with gloves on adds an extra level of frustration and difficulty.

On this last outing, I brought along my fast 50. I really wanted to see what the view was like through an f/1.4 lens, and it's a very nice, noticeable difference over an f/2.8 lens. Composing scenes is just possible through the viewfinder if your eyes adjust to the dark.

However, 50mm is a little too long for what I want to do, and the DOF at f/1.4 to f/2.0 apertures is too shallow to make the fore/mid-ground objects acceptably sharp. Anyway, I had some fun with it.

Here's a shot looking up at the sky only. I was blown away by how bright the photo was and how many more stars appeared as compared to my shots with the f/2.8 lens.

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Canon 5D, 50mm f/1.4
15 sec., f/1.8, ISO 1600

Here's another with the 50. A little bit of reddish/purplish color showed up in the middle of the frame. I hope that's natural, and not some weird noise pattern/amp glow crud from the sensor.

Shot with same settings as above.
Click for larger image.

The Night Sky - Test Shots

I love night photography, especially astrophotography. A goal I've had for a long while is to get a nice, clean shot of a dark sky (i.e. no moon) that shows off the Milky Way and also has a bit of landscape in the scene to give a visual sea level.

Two weekends ago, I was hunting in the Texas Hill Country in a location that has little light pollution. I took several shots one evening about 2 hours after sunset and about 30 minutes before moonrise (the moon was waning and about 90% full, so if I tried shooting after moonrise, the sky would have been too light).

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Canon 5D + 24-70mm f/2.8L
30 sec., 24mm, f/2.8, ISO 1600 (and then pushed +1 stop in RAW processing)

And here are two more shots taken at about the same settings as stated above:

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The greenish light on the trees is from a sodium vapor light on a nearby cabin. The light streak in the photo just above (left) is from a couple of guys on 4-wheelers passing by.

Getting a shot like this is difficult given the limitations of the equipment. Exposure times are limited to 15 to 30 seconds because the goal is to NOT have star trails. With a reasonably wide focal length (24mm in this case), star trails will just start to become noticeable around 25 - 30 seconds exposure time (actually, it depends on the final output of the photo; for web-sized images you could probably go 60 seconds, but my ultimate goal is a nice, largish print: 8x10 or even 11x17).

I shot wide open (f/2.8) at ISO 1600. I found that the resulting exposure is still a little too dark. I pushed the exposure +1 stop during RAW processing, but that increased the digital noise in the file to a point where it greatly degraded image quality. ISO 1600 looked pretty good, but ISO 3200 (effectively) did not. Post-processing noise reduction works well, but it also kills the fine detail (there's an amazing amount of tiny stars visible in the sky, and that's the fine detail I want to see in the final print).

The exposure that worked out best (providing the best-looking sky) from my series of test shots was this: 30 sec., ISO 3200, f/2.8. However, ISO 3200 is not really usable and 30 seconds is just a little too long (star trails).

So, I'm going to have to get a faster lens or a camera that is better at very high ISO :-)

Terlingua Ghost Town

I'm very slowly processing my photos from our recent trip to Big Bend National Park. My progress is hampered by the cleaning up needed after Hurricane Ike. I can't complain, at least we have power and Internet! As I write (5 days after the storm hit), about 60% of people in the Houston area still don't have power. A good chunk of them won't have power until possibly next week.

Church in the Terlingua Ghost Town

Canon 5D, 17-40mm f/4L, tripod
13 seconds at 27mm, f/8, ISO 200

This was taken about 30 minutes after sunset, September 5th. My wife and I love this little church. We've stopped by several times over the years since our first visit four years ago. The church appears active and is slowly being restored. We considered renewing our vows there (the 5th was our 10-year anniversary), but didn't want to make firm plans because she's 8 months pregnant and we weren't sure the trip out there would even happen.

The Ghost Town is a neat place to wonder around after dark. It's a great place for night photography.