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GAF Photography Q2 - 2014

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D

Damaged

Member
John Kowalski said:
I would take the exposure of the ground in the bw one down a tiny tiny bit, just to get the texture back a little bit, but not enough to blacken it. The ceiling in both of the pictures is kinda heh, in the bw one it looks a bit too busy but in the color one it's half cropped, which, well, i just don't enjoy a lot. Nice colors, too, though i wish it had some green to up the winterish feeling of it.

But holy god, that cropped umbrella... it irks me so.
Click to expand...

Haha I totally agree about the umbrella but sadly someone walked into the frame, tried with and without but this was the lesser of two evils, thanks for the feedback though :D

Been in a rut since getting home from holiday, reduced to messing about with manual lenses in my sisters garden

 
T

teh_pwn

"Saturated fat causes heart disease as much as Brawndo is what plants crave."
jchap said:
Nice shots! Such a great dark site.
Click to expand...

I highly recommend Star Party to novices like me. You know those lame planetariums? Yeah, they staright up use the fucking sky with super awesome laser pointers and precisely show you where things are.



I learned a basic technique of locating Polaris from the big dipper that helped me do the star trails shot.

You can see the milky way disk in faint detail albeit with naked eyes. It's great.
 
I

itsinmyveins

Gets to pilot the crappy patrol labors
I was dog sitting a few days ago for my parents.

14332379969_bfff550993_z.jpg

A place in the sun by jayco1983, on Flickr
 
T

teh_pwn

"Saturated fat causes heart disease as much as Brawndo is what plants crave."
Davis Mountains State Park @ Fort Davis, TX:



 
T

teh_pwn

"Saturated fat causes heart disease as much as Brawndo is what plants crave."
jchap said:
Being from a similar part of Texas, the region loses all its charm when you can actually see the terrain :p
Click to expand...

Yeah, I sort of agree; I'm a sucker for the temperate rainforest climate. Though I was surprised by the beauty and green the landscape had - like I thought everything west of Fredericksburg quickly went to flat deserts. You could see a dramatic difference in vegetation - like desert to grassy - between ranches and neighboring areas. See below (area towards right and not seen goes towards McDonald Observatory is quite green and vegetated, area seen in picture in far distance is quite dry and lame)



I suspect the dramatic difference in vegetation is due to recent spotty storms, livestock (which improve the water retention of soil through fertilization and trimming dead grasses), and mountains catching the little rain there is.

Then on the way back to I-10, I took several pictures while my gf drove and randomly I got this which I'm oddly very proud of:



Also this was cool:


On the way back to Austin, my gf and I joked about CA transplants to Austin. I swear 1/5 of the cars were CA license plates with U-Hauls or loaded up with lots of stuff indicating they were moving.

I feel like I'm still a novice at post-processing. Mostly my method for most landscape photos today was this in lightroom:
1. Adjust for lens distortion
2. Adjust for lens chromatic aberration
3. Crop photo to interesting stuff
4. Photoshop Camera Landscape profile
5. Auto
6. Reduce Highlights to reveal background/clouds/blue sky.
7. Reduce whites if Lightroom Auto gets too crazy about jacking up exposure
8. Adjust Blacks if there's interesting stones that are not detailed
 
H

Herr K

Banned
You can try with graduated filters, maybe saturation in some channels and watch the lens flares, you have a pretty big one right in the middle of this shot. I only corrected a couple dots in the middle, but you should watch those little details.

0Tvsb20.png


My edit sucks, anyway lol
 
T

teh_pwn

"Saturated fat causes heart disease as much as Brawndo is what plants crave."
Herr K said:
You can try with graduated filters, maybe saturation in some channels and watch the lens flares, you have a pretty big one right in the middle of this shot. I only corrected a couple dots in the middle, but you should watch those little details.

0Tvsb20.png


My edit sucks, anyway lol
Click to expand...

Nice!

How do you handle lens flare? I had a ton of photos with lens flare and I'm not JJ Abrams, so I looked on how to remove briefly and it didn't look simple (like copy paste healing section). Is there some built in algorithm that focuses on it? Or is that how you're doing it?
 
H

Herr K

Banned
teh_pwn said:
Nice!

How do you handle lens flare? I had a ton of photos with lens flare and I'm not JJ Abrams, so I looked on how to remove briefly and it didn't look simple (like copy paste healing section). Is there some built in algorithm that focuses on it? Or is that how you're doing it?
Click to expand...

I use the healing brush on Lightroom, look it up on youtube. There are fancier ways to do it, but you'll need photoshop and a lot of time. I was actually surprised with how good Lr does the job.
 
G

Grums

Neo Member
dr3upmushroom said:
That's pretty fucking cool grums, what did you shoot that with?
Click to expand...

Thanks. Used a Canon 650d and Tokina 11-16mm lens. Might be my last pic with it, just got a Fuji X100 as I wanted a smaller camera so the canon may have to go now. Will give the Fuji a test first though.

Also, big fan of the American muscle cars. Never get to see them here.
 
D

dr3upmushroom

Banned
Grums said:
Thanks. Used a Canon 650d and Tokina 11-16mm lens. Might be my last pic with it, just got a Fuji X100 as I wanted a smaller camera so the canon may have to go now. Will give the Fuji a test first though.

Also, big fan of the American muscle cars. Never get to see them here.
Click to expand...

Cool, I have yet to play with a really wide lens. About the cars, I live by Modesto (Where George Lucas is from and based the movie American Graffiti on), and a lot of people get into the restoration of classic cars around here. Every summer a bunch of car clubs do car shows and parades with their cars.
 
G

Grums

Neo Member
dr3upmushroom said:
Cool, I have yet to play with a really wide lens. About the cars, I live by Modesto (Where George Lucas is from and based the movie American Graffiti on), and a lot of people get into the restoration of classic cars around here. Every summer a bunch of car clubs do car shows and parades with their cars.
Click to expand...

Awesome, must be great seeing alot of the classics about. Unfortunatley you only see them once in a blue moon in Ireland.

Also, nice 40k pics Fëanor.

Yellow Rose by Lee3D, on Flickr
 
R

Red

Member
I did some photos for a company event today and feel kind of discouraged. I was hired by who you might call a friend of a friend to do work for her bosses, and afterwards one of those guys asked to take a peek at the pics. I thought they were all fine. They were taken outside and some of them had contrast issues with sunlight and shadows, but the large majority were at least workable. That's the kind of thing I consider: light, color, composition, etc. But I was criticized by the boss man for "making his partner's stomach stick out." I hadn't even thought about that and wouldn't think it was an issue... that's just how the guy looks, classic beer gut. I don't know how you would even deal with that without only shooting chest-up. But he walked away clearly unsatisfied and I left remembering why I really hate doing events.

/rant
 
S

Seth C

Member
A couple of my favorite photos from when I was in Sibiu, Romania in April. Hopefully just linking Facebook URLs works.


10497932_10100943476263283_8130070910574360192_o.jpg

10477418_10100943478473853_4344845715490769879_o.jpg

10497504_10100943479421953_8421483172864143080_o.jpg

10356223_10100943476343123_5740185629126457654_n.jpg
 
T

teh_pwn

"Saturated fat causes heart disease as much as Brawndo is what plants crave."
I'm thinking of doing a trip to Big Bend (TX) and maybe Davis Mountains again in early 2015. I want to get a decent capture of Andromeda. Basically parity with this:
http://www.mikesastrophotos.com/galaxies/andromeda/

I'm very oblivious to the setup required. It seems that I need:
1. DSLR (Nikon D800)
2. Autoguider
3. Laptop to configure Autoguider
4. Telescope lens

I have #1 & #3, so it seems like the other components make it a $2-4k project. But I figure I could reuse this for many things.

Anyone familiar with this and willing to bestow unto me advice? :)

Also what other subjects would be interesting in the winter sky? Keep in mind this is a camping trip so ideally less than 1 hour per object of total exposures.
 
R

Red

Member
teh_pwn said:
I'm thinking of doing a trip to Big Bend (TX) and maybe Davis Mountains again in early 2015. I want to get a decent capture of Andromeda. Basically parity with this:
http://www.mikesastrophotos.com/galaxies/andromeda/

I'm very oblivious to the setup required. It seems that I need:
1. DSLR (Nikon D800)
2. Autoguider
3. Laptop to configure Autoguider
4. Telescope lens

I have #1 & #3, so it seems like the other components make it a $2-4k project. But I figure I could reuse this for many things.

Anyone familiar with this and willing to bestow unto me advice? :)

Also what other subjects would be interesting in the winter sky? Keep in mind this is a camping trip so ideally less than 1 hour per object of total exposures.
Click to expand...
I can't help you but I am also interested in advice.
 
T

teh_pwn

"Saturated fat causes heart disease as much as Brawndo is what plants crave."
And in the spirit of open source photography, here is my entire Cosmic Ocean album.

Lessons Learned:
1. Photoshop doesn't correct star streaking of individual captures, only stacks. I had both my D3200 and D800 there. The D800 typically had 30 second exposures and the D3200 had 20s. The D800 still looked much better, but star trailing is more noticeable.
2. I forgot to reduce ISO for Star Trails. So there's lots of stars trailing which is kind of cool, but I didn't get the crisper, fewer star trailing experience I was aiming for. Still cool.

Something I have noticed but I have not understood is that my colors were way off. Blue stars were purple. Yellow/Orange stars were red. I adjusted for this in the last 4 photos I uploaded today by comparing to hubble/ISS captures of the constellations I was cropping, but I'm unsure of the cause. Camera setting wrong? Atmosphere from earth?

Anyway, astrophotography is pretty cool. Expensive hobby but huge conversation starter and something to fuse with trips with others.
 
jchap

jchap

Member
You can get gear to get a shot like that of Andromeda for pretty cheap if you already have a camera. I would recommend an Orion 80ED refractor for several reasons. First, it is a quality instrument (apochromatic) and is inexpensive (499). Second it is a great guide scope if you ever step up to a longer focal length telescope down the road. It has a 600 mm focal length which with your full frame camera would frame Andromeda like this:

4C61JrKl.png


If are serious about getting into Astrophotography then spend your money on the mount and not the telescope. The quality of the work you do will be mostly dependent on the quality of the mount. I would go with a mount without goto function and use EQMOD if you are on a budget. If you are going to just stick with the 80ED for a while I would recomend a CG-4 mount. It is a starter mount without goto function but can handle the weight of your camera and scope and will allow you to get started. Most importantly it is inexpensive (300). You could also use it with your other lenses for even wider field shots. Mounts can get very expensive but they are the most important piece of gear for astrophotography.

At 600 mm focal length you don't absolutely need an autoguider if you can get a near perfect polar alignment (which is a learning experience). A guider will help however. Typically you want your autoguiding scope to be at least 1/3 of your main scope's focal length. For the 80ED a cheap 50 mm finder scope would be more than adequate. They run about 50-75 bucks and are simple to mount to your larger scope. An easy to use guide camera is the starshoot autoguider. The software to guide is free.

Just the scope and the mount would run about 800 bucks new and if you throw in the auto-guider it would be about another 300. Probably another 100 in various adapters to make everything play together.

Finally: You absolutely don't have to be in big bend to do good astrophotography (Although its tons easier as you don't need nearly the exposure length). Practice wherever you live (or just outside of town).
 
T

teh_pwn

"Saturated fat causes heart disease as much as Brawndo is what plants crave."
jchap said:
You can get gear to get a shot like that of Andromeda for pretty cheap if you already have a camera. I would recommend an Orion 80ED refractor for several reasons. First, it is a quality instrument (apochromatic) and is inexpensive (499). Second it is a great guide scope if you ever step up to a longer focal length telescope down the road. It has a 600 mm focal length which with your full frame camera would frame Andromeda like this:

4C61JrKl.png


If are serious about getting into Astrophotography then spend your money on the mount and not the telescope. The quality of the work you do will be mostly dependent on the quality of the mount. I would go with a mount without goto function and use EQMOD if you are on a budget. If you are going to just stick with the 80ED for a while I would recomend a CG-4 mount. It is a starter mount without goto function but can handle the weight of your camera and scope and will allow you to get started. Most importantly it is inexpensive (300). You could also use it with your other lenses for even wider field shots. Mounts can get very expensive but they are the most important piece of gear for astrophotography.

At 600 mm focal length you don't absolutely need an autoguider if you can get a near perfect polar alignment (which is a learning experience). A guider will help however. Typically you want your autoguiding scope to be at least 1/3 of your main scope's focal length. For the 80ED a cheap 50 mm finder scope would be more than adequate. They run about 50-75 bucks and are simple to mount to your larger scope. An easy to use guide camera is the starshoot autoguider. The software to guide is free.

Just the scope and the mount would run about 800 bucks new and if you throw in the auto-guider it would be about another 300. Probably another 100 in various adapters to make everything play together.

Finally: You absolutely don't have to be in big bend to do good astrophotography (Although its tons easier as you don't need nearly the exposure length). Practice wherever you live (or just outside of town).
Click to expand...

Thank you kind sir!

This looks exciting. I shall review details later.
 
T

teh_pwn

"Saturated fat causes heart disease as much as Brawndo is what plants crave."
jchap said:
At 600 mm focal length you don't absolutely need an autoguider if you can get a near perfect polar alignment (which is a learning experience). A guider will help however. Typically you want your autoguiding scope to be at least 1/3 of your main scope's focal length. For the 80ED a cheap 50 mm finder scope would be more than adequate.
Click to expand...

This part confuses me. If the main refactor scope is 600mm and you say 1/3 the focal length is more than enough, why do you recommend 50mm which is 1/6?

Just to remind you I'm only abstractly familiar with these parts you're describing:
1. Refactor scope.
2. Mount.
3. Autoguide.
 
jchap

jchap

Member
teh_pwn said:
This part confuses me. If the main refactor scope is 600mm and you say 1/3 the focal length is more than enough, why do you recommend 50mm which is 1/6?

Just to remind you I'm only abstractly familiar with these parts you're describing:
1. Refactor scope.
2. Mount.
3. Autoguide.
Click to expand...

50mm is the aperture and they are usually f/3.2 (160mm fl) which isn't quite a third but its good enough. At 600mm you will need very little guiding. The synced motion of the mount will be good enough for all but very long exposures. When you get to long focal lengths the guiding precision becomes more and more important as tiny motion even vibrations can create star trails.

I also should have mentioned that you would have to buy the controller motors for the CG-4 and use EQMOD to guide through the hand controller. It is still less expensive than an EQ-G, Losmandy GM8, or CGEM mount (next step up with integrated motors, more weight capacity, and better gearing) but its a bit more complicated to get setup.

I might as well post a thumbnail of my final take on the Trifid shooting from last Saturday. I'm going to do it over next chance I get as I didn't get enough exposure time to really average all the noise out and my guiding was terrible.

XMv4ERCl.jpg
 
T

teh_pwn

"Saturated fat causes heart disease as much as Brawndo is what plants crave."
jchap said:
50mm is the aperture and they are usually f/3.2 (160mm fl) which isn't quite a third but its good enough. At 600mm you will need very little guiding. The synced motion of the mount will be good enough for all but very long exposures. When you get to long focal lengths the guiding precision becomes more and more important as tiny motion even vibrations can create star trails.

I also should have mentioned that you would have to buy the controller motors for the CG-4 and use EQMOD to guide through the hand controller. It is still less expensive than an EQ-G or CGEM mount (next step up with integrated motors, more weight capacity, and better gearing).

I might as well post a thumbnail of my final take on the Trifid shooting from last Saturday. I'm going to do it over next chance I get as I didn't get enough exposure time to really average all the noise out and my guiding was terrible.

XMv4ERCl.jpg
Click to expand...

Nice capture! Exactly what I'm looking to do.

But you're a level above me. So this combination is something you're recommending?

Orion 9895 ED80
Celestron CG-4
Orion 52064 StarShoot AutoGuider

What's this motor controller you speak of? This? Niche markets are confusing.

Perhaps I should practice in Fredericksburg to be agreeable with Celestron CG-4's German-ness.
 
jchap

jchap

Member
teh_pwn said:
Nice capture! Exactly what I'm looking to do.

But you're a level above me. So this combination is something you're recommending?

Orion 9895 ED80
Celestron CG-4
Orion 52064 StarShoot AutoGuider

What's this motor controller you speak of? This? Niche markets are confusing.

Perhaps I should practice in Fredericksburg to be agreeable with Celestron CG-4's German-ness.
Click to expand...

It has been a while since I looked at Celestron's offerings. It appears they also offer a VX version of the CGEM that I guess replaced the CG-5. It has integrated motors and an autoguider port but costs 719 bucks. Through connecting a PC you can use a function called all star polar alignment which makes aligning much easier. You can also use a PC to turn it into a goto mount. If you can afford it, this would be a much more beginner friendly option.

These are the drive motors for the CG-4 I was referring to. I've seen people use this setup but its going to be more of a headache than the integrated solution above. It appears the differential is about 280 dollars. Before the VX existed the next jump was about 600 dollars. It may be worth going with the cheaper option and fighting through the growing pains because if you decide to go to a bigger scope in the future both mounts will be inadequate.

Also you should check for used sales online. Lots of people like you buy a starter mount, get hooked, then ebay it and move up to a better one. http://www.astromart.com/classifieds/ http://www.cloudynights.com/classifieds/showcat.php?cat=21
 
T

teh_pwn

"Saturated fat causes heart disease as much as Brawndo is what plants crave."
I'm not familiar with the acroymns you're talking about. Could you link to the replacement $719 piece?

Also I would need this to mount a Nikon?

I feel like a Macbook Air user in the New PC thread.

This disturbs be greatly, I must learn
 
H

Horseticuffs

Full werewolf off the buckle
Not sure if this is entirely the right place since I just noticed this thread. I've really gotten into phone photography this year. I'd kind of like to take it to the next level.

I don't have tons of money to throw at it, but I'd love to get into Astrophotography specifically but not exclusively. If I had $200-250 to throw at that is there anything in that budget range worth considering? I do a lot of nature photography with my phone and that works alright, but I can't capture the night sky for shit on my Nexus 4.
 
D

Damaged

Member
F

Fëanor

Member
Fëanor;119548409 said:
Some images I took last night:
darkness coming by abrahamsahuayo, on Flickr
drive through by abrahamsahuayo, on Flickr
barns and stars by abrahamsahuayo, on Flickr

quickhyjj6.jpg
Click to expand...
The way it looks before Lightroom 5 works its magic.

There was far too much light coming from just about every direction, I normally can't photograph this building since it is closed off to people after sunset most days. 4th of July yeah!!!
Click to expand...

Adding to the 4th of July pictures, fireworks are tricky to photograph.

fireworks 4 by abrahamsahuayo, on Flickr

fireworks 5 by abrahamsahuayo, on Flickr

fireworks 1 by abrahamsahuayo, on Flickr

fireworks 7 by abrahamsahuayo, on Flickr
 
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