Astrophotography on the Farm (Edition II)

Equipment Used: Nikon D90 with 12-24mm f4 lense, Nikon SB-700 Speedlight, Slik Pro 500DX & Joby Gorillapod tripods, Viltrox Remote & an led flashlight.

In the middle of July, the phase of the moon was new and the sky was clear one night so I headed out to a cut oat field to try to capture some more astrophotography images. On this night, the Milky Way was slightly visible so I was excited sitting up my camera equipment.

The above equipment was used with the lense set at 12mm, f4 and manual focus. The camera was in RAW, ISO 1600 and manual mode. I set the shutter speed to bulb so I could use my remote to hold down the shutter for a desired time length. The lengths of time for these images were 30 or 90 seconds. The SB-700 Speedlights were used to light the row of oats and the pitch fork and they were in manual mode and I trigged them via the flash ready indicator button.

In Capture NX-D, I changed the exposure compensation, picture control and shadow slider. The exposure compensation was increased by 1/3 or ½, picture control to either sport or vivid setting and shadow slider increased to 25. NX-D underneath the noise reduction settings has an Astro Noise Reduction so I clicked on that to apply that to the RAW files. Using the D90 and its older sensor, noise can be a problem on these types of images.

In PSE 11, I first straightened the images if needed followed by a curves layer masks to help with the visibility of the stars or foreground. I also discovered that using the lighten blending mode can help when merging files together that are exposed differently. The final step was using the high pass filter to sharpen the tiff files.

I also created two star trail images by combining 11 or 17 images into one stacked image by using the program StarStaX. I had that number of images by using the Viltrox remote and taking 90 second exposures every 5 seconds which allowed StarStaX to stack them all together.

Looking forward to the next clear night without a bright moon, one thing I’ve learned this summer is if the conditions are right for astrophotography, you better be out because it sure doesn’t happen very often.

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Lake Panorama - Fire in the Sky 2015 (D750)

Equipment Used: Nikon D750 with a 24-120mm f4 lense, Viltrox Remote & Slik Pro 500DX tripod.

With a rented D750, I was excited for the 4^th of July weekend and Lake Panorama’s Fire in the Sky firework show. I wanted to see what a full frame camera could do compared to my D90 so I had them set up side by side. I had a new location to shoot from which resulted in capturing not only the fireworks, but the many boats on the water.

Just like the D90, I had the D750 shooting in RAW and in manual mode after turning the autofocus and VR off on the lense. The shutter speed was set to bulb and aperture at f9. ISO was at 200. Exposure time ranged from 6 to 27 seconds. During the firework show, I started out wider with the lense and then kept zooming in along with changing to a portrait orientation. I had a remote in each hand for the two cameras so tried to capture different series of fireworks but ended up getting many that were similar.

One feature of the D750 that I didn’t expect to use or like that much was the tilted screen but after using the camera on a tripod and in different situations, the tilted screen is very useful.

In order to process the D750’s RAW files, I had to download Capture NX-D. Just like on the D90 files, I adjusted the exposure compensation, picture control, saturation slider and highlight/shadow slider. With the much newer sensor technology and being full frame, I was able to lift the shadows with a much cleaner look on the D750 compared to the D90. A couple of the images were turned into HDR’s so I adjusted the exposure compensation on them from -0.5 to +3. I choice the Natural setting in Easy HDR for the processing that program does to create HDR images.

In PSE 11, I did the same steps to finalize the images as I did for the D90 firework shots. In doing so during periods that I was zooming in, the quality of the files as far as noise was visible between the two cameras.

Using a two camera set up for the first time, was a joy to use as it allowed me to get different angles of the fireworks and have more images to share.  I’m looking forward to having the set up again in the future.

 

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Lake Panorama - Fire in the Sky 2015 (D90)

Equipment Used: Nikon D90 with 30mm f1.8 lense, Hahnel remote control & a tripod.

Over the 4^th of July weekend, Lake Panorama held its annual Fire in the Sky fireworks show and like I’ve done over the past few years, I head out with my camera and try to capture the bright bursts of color in the sky. This year I went to a new location to get closer to the action and had two cameras set up, the D90 and D750.

To capture the fireworks, I shot in RAW and in manual mode after turning the autofocus off on the lense. The shutter speed was set to bulb and aperture at f9. ISO was at 400 which is low considering I’m shooting in the dark but the fireworks put out a ton of light. Exposure time ranged from 5 to 25 seconds. I let the D90 capture all landscape orientation images because the tripod I used for it is not near as stable as the Slik tripod.

Using Nikon’s Capture NX-D for the first time, I adjusted the exposure compensation, picture control, saturation slider and highlight/shadow slider. Depending on how bright I wanted the image, I either increased or decreased the exposure compensation. Picture control was changed to sport and saturation slider was set to +5. To increase the visibility of the boats on the water, I increased the shadow slider to around 50 while changing the highlight slider to 20. Only a few images were turned into HDR’s but I followed the same steps that I always do: change exposure compensation on multiple files and work on them using Easy HDR.

In PSE 11, the Tiff files from NX-D were finalized by cloning out unwanted items such as a pop bottle floating on the water or a cell phone towers red lights in the distance. If the brightness of the boats or fireworks needed further tweaking, I used layer masks and gradients to do that work. Finally, I rotated the image to make it was straight and sharpened the fireworks using the sharpen tool or a high pass filter.

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