OT - A little night photography fun

[BlueCorn]

Taken last night in the foothills up above Sacramento. I have a photographer friend who was teaching a moonlight photo class at the Learning Exchange. He ended up with a larger group than planned so he called me yesterday afternoon and asked me to come help out. It was a nice group of folks and I even managed to come home with some pictures of my own.

Cheers

 

[dendronepthya]

Very nice. What is the key? Really long exposures?

 

[BlueCorn]

Thanks.

Exposure and processing. These were both 30 second exposures. Your camera doesn't expect you to be shooting by moonlight so it really tries to warm up the white balance. I shoot RAW and crank the color temperature back down to ~3800K to achieve that cold night time feel. Focusing can be an issue on scenes like this but I have a few tricks up my sleeve for that too.

 

[ccampo]

big sleeve I'd say, 'cause it looks really nice.
green grass on the mountain and blue sky with stars all in the same picture.

 

[64Ivy]

What was your ISO? I'd expect you to get a little blur on the stars at 30 seconds.

 

[BlueCorn]

ISO was 400. There is some blurring but because I'm at 17mm (on a full frame camera) it's really slight. It would be far more pronounced at 200mm.

 

[Reef Bass]

Beautiful! RAW mode comes through again.

I like the balancing of Orion the the left and the trees on the right in the vertical shot

Was the glow on the horizon from Sacramento or a post processing gradient effect?

 

[BlueCorn]

I've done very little with the exposure in processing on this one so it would have been fine as a JPG.

The glow is from a business park a couple of miles away.

 

[crab0000]

How do you keep from getting hot pixels on shots like that? I've tried long exposures with my Olympus, but it looked horrible.

 

[BlueCorn]

The camera that you're using makes a big difference. My 5D is pretty low noise.

 

[crab0000]

That's kind of what I thought, but wanted to be sure. Oh well, I guess it's just one more reason to upgrade! Thanks!

 

[xtm]

very nice composition. Love the placement of the horizon, it gives emphasis to the sky!

 

[kilroy217]

I don't think you could see that many stars on the clearest night of the year around here, let alone one the one night you got a call from a buddy... great shots! I miss seeing starts living here on LI now.

 

[kilroy217]

I don't think you could see that many stars on the clearest night of the year around here, let alone one the one night you got a call from a buddy... great shots! I miss seeing stars living here on LI now.

 

[waxy]

Wow... that's amazing.

Someone's got talent!

Now take one with a Meteor!

 

[maroun.c]

Very nice shots.
Like your Avatar.

 

[IslandCrow]

Very nice pictures. The landscape composition is my favorite of the two.

 

[Kreeger1]

Beautiful picture beerguy. I could see myself buying a picture like that.

 

[Hookup]

I didn't comment the first time I saw these two photos. They are very nice to look at, and definitely art in my humble opinion, something that cannot be said for many photos...

Though my digital opinion means little, well done. Great keepers from an unexpected night out.

 

[melev]

Can you tell us mere mortals more about how you got those shots? That's just amazing, Doug. We, seriously, are not worthy.