Perpetual Photography Thread

Enough · Post by **Enough** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 2:22 pm

wire wrote: I tried some star trail pictures while on vacation and discovered that keeping your shutter open for a set amount of time also meant it was going to take the same amount of time to process it once your close the shutter. Learned something new.

Well it only does that if you have longtime NR turned on. The cam is taking a black frame equal in length to the exposure which it will use to subtract the noise from your actual shot. If you don't want this to happen every time you can switch it off in the menu & manually yourself do one black frame for NR later (or multiples over a time period, the sensor will get hot if you are ripping a lot of shots and NR characteristics will change). Then just do your own dark frame subtraction NR when you get home. Or turn it off and stay down to exposure times where it's not needed (30 sec-1 min good place to start experimenting) and stack. At least one of the programs I linked will do dark frames or you can google tuts online.

wire · Post by **wire** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 4:21 pm

Enough wrote:
wire wrote: I tried some star trail pictures while on vacation and discovered that keeping your shutter open for a set amount of time also meant it was going to take the same amount of time to process it once your close the shutter. Learned something new.
Well it only does that if you have longtime NR turned on. The cam is taking a black frame equal in length to the exposure which it will use to subtract the noise from your actual shot. If you don't want this to happen every time you can switch it off in the menu & manually yourself do one black frame for NR later (or multiples over a time period, the sensor will get hot if you are ripping a lot of shots and NR characteristics will change). Then just do your own dark frame subtraction NR when you get home. Or turn it off and stay down to exposure times where it's not needed (30 sec-1 min good place to start experimenting) and stack. At least one of the programs I linked will do dark frames or you can google tuts online.

Oh...yeah I had noise reduction on. That would explain why it took so long. Man I have so much to learn...thanks for your help once again

Two Sheds · Post by **Two Sheds** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 11:35 pm

National Cathedral, a few months ago.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Wed Aug 06, 2008 3:01 pm

A pic of the night sky at my house from the backyard.

A pic from Benton TN in Polk County of their only red light

A pic from polk again with one of the mountains in the background.

Another Polk pic. This is Ye Olde Pharmacy Shoppe where my wife had a book signing back when she was like 18.

wire · Post by **wire** » Wed Aug 06, 2008 11:48 pm

Enough · Post by **Enough** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 12:23 pm

That Ruby Beach shot makes my psyched for returning to the Olympic Peninsula on our roadtrip we are just getting ready to take off on. Driving from CO through Yellowstone to Spokane then on to Grand C. Dam and from there across the N. Cascades/Skaggit River to the Puget Sound. On to a ferry next to Orcas Island/San Juans to visit with a friend (and game, heh). Then back to the ferry over to the Olympic Peninsula for a few days working down to my old digs in Olympia (I can just about taste the Batdorf and Bronson's coffee). Down to PDX hopefully with time for a Powell's stop and finally on to Bend for the family reunion. The first time I've taken two weeks off from any job, woot!

Here's a couple from Rocky Mountain National Park this summer:

wire · Post by **wire** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 12:34 pm

Have fun on your road trip. We just did got back from two weeks up there as well. Most of the trip was spent visiting family and friends but as you see we did get out to the peninsula and camped at Kalaloch before heading down the coast and on our way back to CA.

Can't wait to see the pictures you take

zinckiwi · Post by **zinckiwi** » Fri Aug 08, 2008 6:34 pm

zinckiwi · Post by **zinckiwi** » Wed Oct 29, 2008 5:44 am

A few from our trip to Paris last week:

wonderpug · Post by **wonderpug** » Wed Oct 29, 2008 9:03 am

Really like the shot of the Eiffel Tower view; the lighting turned out really well.

Thanks for bumping the thread. I took some shots of the Head of the Charles regatta earlier this month and I think with some tweaking some of them might be worth posting here.

RunningMn9 · Post by **RunningMn9** » Wed Oct 29, 2008 9:38 am

Based on some of the earlier photos, I did some photoshopping of one of my favorites.

The Original:

Modified:

I like the way it makes her stand out of the photo a little more.

wire · Post by **wire** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 12:41 pm

I finally got around to trying my hand at taking sunset pictures at the local beach. Not sure if they work or not...could use some constructive criticism.

Caught a surfer out riding the waves. Wish I could have gotten closer and could have figured out what f/stop and shutter speed to use in low light to get better action shots but it was a good learning experience.

Sectoid · Post by **Sectoid** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 12:53 pm

What I do on weekends:

I took the shot, Veronica (my GF) Photoshopped it. She took way more than I did (she is the photographer between us two).

Carpet_pissr · Post by **Carpet_pissr** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 1:43 pm

Enough wrote:Wire, I really like those rock stacking images, great depth of field! The pano obviously took bunches of work and
the extra clarity of view from the observation station is appreciated.

I thought I would feature a couple of night shots from two weekends ago showing off Jupiter's position the night sky right now:

Orbital Motion

Jupiter in Sagittarius

Both images were taken from essentially the same location, with the still stars first. The foreground
is showing up on the trails due to stacking methods and the foreground on the second is from light
painting with an LED headlamp. The star trails shot is one of my first stacked star trail images, usually
in the past I used slide film or used 15-30 min exposures on a dslr. For this image, 62 1 min 11 sec exposures
1 sec apart were combined with this free Photoshop action. Others you might want to try, especially if you
need a stand alone if you don't have PS are here and here. I would think even a point and shoot digicam
could pull off stacking if you used maybe only 30 sec exposures to keep down noise, anyone want to try?

Enough:

Please tell me what your settings were on that second one. I tried to duplicate something similar last night using a D90 +70-300 + tripod but still am learning the various settings of the camera since I just got it. It's darn hard monkeying around in menus and seeing hard buttons at night! Maybe I should have used a prime lens instead? 50mm?

wire · Post by **wire** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 1:51 pm

Enough:

Please tell me what your settings were on that second one. I tried to duplicate something similar last night using a D90 +70-300 + tripod but still am learning the various settings of the camera since I just got it. It's darn hard monkeying around in menus and seeing hard buttons at night! Maybe I should have used a prime lens instead? 50mm?

This is where Flickr is really cool.

Jupiter in Sagittarius
Camera: Nikon D300
Exposure: 30 sec (30)
Aperture: f/4.5
Focal Length: 17 mm
ISO Speed: 1600
Exposure Bias: -7/3 EV

Enough · Post by **Enough** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 5:24 pm

wire wrote:
Enough:

Please tell me what your settings were on that second one. I tried to duplicate something similar last night using a D90 +70-300 + tripod but still am learning the various settings of the camera since I just got it. It's darn hard monkeying around in menus and seeing hard buttons at night! Maybe I should have used a prime lens instead? 50mm?
This is where Flickr is really cool.

Jupiter in Sagittarius
Camera: Nikon D300
Exposure: 30 sec (30)
Aperture: f/4.5
Focal Length: 17 mm
ISO Speed: 1600
Exposure Bias: -7/3 EV

Indeed. You might want to try using your fastest lens and a more wide one than 70-300 to ensure the most light hits the sensor. For the buttons you will memorize them with enough practice, but I highly recommend picking up an inexpensive Energizer LED headlamp for around $20 at Target that comes with a red LED to preserve your night vision. I use mine to see the level on my tripod at night and it's always fun to light paint with.

Some basic settings to try:

Exposure: Try 15 and 30 second exposures at high ISO or longer ones at lower ISOs for star trails. Another way to go is to shoot two frames: one for the foreground (longer, say minutes+) and one for the sky (shorter 15-45 secs). Star trails actually start to be apparent at 30 seconds, but it's quite minor.

Aperture: I often shoot wide open or just a bit above wide open to get a bit more clarity. One more advantage of using a faster lens (f/2.8 and below) is that they tend to be sharper at wide open (2.8 for e.g.) than a variable aperture at wide open (f5.6). Additionally, you often only have to stop a fast lens down a stop or two to get superb clarity, even if the wide open is a bit mushy. I tend to usually shoot around f 3.2 to f.5.6 for most night work.

ISO Speed: The D90 should have at least as good of high ISO performance as the D300. Thus I would bracket out a few: one at ISO 640, 800, 1250 and 1600. I occasionally even pump it up to as high as 3200, but usually it's just to test exposure and then I duplicate the same amount of exposure with a longer shutter speed and lower ISO. You will likely want to make sure high-ISO NR is set to off or low and long exposure NR set to on. Shoot RAW and you can change these settings in post. I even leave d-lighting on and then turn off in Capture NX2 if needed, others would say for night work don't but I find it useful at times and a post processing time-saver. If you ever find long exposure NR is annoying since you have to wait the same amount of time as the shutter speed for the exposure you can switch it off and then just make sure you take at least one dark frame at the same exposure in the beginning, middle and end of shooting (heat/noise will vary as the cam heats up, in general the colder it is the less noise). Then with your dark frames you can manually do long exposure dark frame subtraction NR to all the frames in a batch (there are free resources via google search that explain how to do this, but let me know if more help is desired).

Focal Length: as mentioned I tend to shoot on the wider end for night work, but use telephotos from time to time (esp for the moon). I think your 50 would work great for night work. But one word to the wise, at night take off filters! Often weird bits of stray light can reflect on the filter and create some really weird artifacts. Even a high quality UV filter for protection I will remove for night shots after many bad experiences. I find on telephotos this problem is magnified.

Exposure Bias: actually irrelevant for the shot you are asking about since it was manual. That EXIF note is likely a relic of shooting earlier in the day. For night work I should have switched it back to 0 but no biggee.

wonderpug · Post by **wonderpug** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 5:46 pm

Enough, can you remind me what noise reducing program you use? I seem to remember you saying you did not use Noise Ninja, but that was a long time ago.

Carpet_pissr · Post by **Carpet_pissr** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 5:46 pm

Enough:

Thanks so much! I will try your settings tonight.

I forgot about using my LED flashlight that switches from white to red led light at the push of a button (I use it with my telescope) That should help out.

I notice your shot was at 17mm, but unfortunately I don't have any fast glass in that range, just the 18-105 kit lens that came with the camera, and it's relatively slow. So I guess the 50mm is my only option at this point. What lens did you use to make that shot?

Enough · Post by **Enough** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 6:39 pm

wonderpug wrote:Enough, can you remind me what noise reducing program you use? I seem to remember you saying you did not use Noise Ninja, but that was a long time ago.

Here's my NR workflow for highest quality/most detail/more time-intensive, ie for those shots you want as good as can be:

1. Bring the image out of RAW with minimal NR: maybe only color NR and no luminance. Or no NR at all. I am not talking long exposure NR here, I am only meaning high ISO NR. It ruins detail and the method I'm going to share will preserve much of the detail. You also may want to for particularly noisy images to pick the most neutral color/contrast settings in RAW in terms of picture control type of stuff.

2. Run an edge mask or surface mask on the image in your editor of choice. For photoshop I really like the free TLR Professional Mask Toolkit. If you use this one set it to create both surface and edge and make sure you click the enhanced masks setting on. This is a script so you run it a bit different than an action, look under the automate menu.

3. After you have an edge mask invert it or just use a true surface mask as made above. Make the selection active by ctrl clicking on the mask on the channels palette. If you used the TLR script you probably don't need to refine the edge, otherwise feather it a bit for a more natural smooth edge.

4. Now with the surface mask marching ants active you can run the NR engine of your choice (Noiseware Pro is my weapon of choice at the moment, but I like Noise Ninja and Neat Image too, and Topaz seems to be getting good). Doing it this way will keep the NR detail softening impacts off your edges and will preserve far more detail than if you ran NR over the whole image.

Sometimes I will hand paint my own surface mask if the ones I get via the script are not protecting detail I want protected.

Enough · Post by **Enough** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 6:45 pm

Carpet_pissr wrote:Enough:

Thanks so much! I will try your settings tonight.

I forgot about using my LED flashlight that switches from white to red led light at the push of a button (I use it with my telescope) That should help out.

I notice your shot was at 17mm, but unfortunately I don't have any fast glass in that range, just the 18-105 kit lens that came with the camera, and it's relatively slow. So I guess the 50mm is my only option at this point. What lens did you use to make that shot?

Heck, if you have the time I would try both the kit lens and the 50. For the kit lens just stop up 1.5-3 stops up from wide open and it should sharpen up any mushiness quite nicely. For most kit lenses the aperture sweet spot is around f5.6 to f11, usually on the wider open end. So for the 18-105 you could try a 30 second exposure at 1600 ISO at f5.6, and f8 and see if the f8 is delivering enough light. I would expect you should still be able to do some fun night stuff. But yeah, the 50 1.8 will give you a lot more latitude and is probably more useful overall for night work in my experience.

I shot that image with the Nikon 17-35 f/2.8 AFS. One of the best wide angle zooms ever made in my opinion. Prior to DX I would have been happy with it for pretty much anything except fisheye stuff, but the crop factor kills the wide end. Thus I am in the market for the Tokina 11-16 f/2.8 or maybe the Sigma 10-20 in the nearish future.

Enough · Post by **Enough** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 7:05 pm

Some people might already know, but I might as well share this here as well.... The November 2008 issue of What Digital Camera (it's a British one) has a four pager featuring me and a bunch of my photos. I found a copy at Barnes and Noble and but I am not so sure Borders carries it.

Darth Homer · Post by **Darth Homer** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 7:29 pm

I'm new to the world of digital photography. My wife bought me a Nikon D40x last Christmas, and it hooked me. The love I had for photography in my high school photography class came roaring back. This is a picture of my wife and our 4 year old Trakehner mare at her very first horse show. I believe this is one of the training level Dressage tests (taken with the D40x):

This next shot was taken with my brand new Nikon D300. This was the first time I had a chance to see the F-22 Raptor demo....amazing airplane. This was taken this past weekend (Nov. 2) at the Lackland AFB Air Show:

I know I have a long way to go before I can match the stunning images already posted in this thread, but hopefully these are not too bad.

Brian

zinckiwi · Post by **zinckiwi** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 9:22 pm

That jet is fantastic, Brian.

Waiting outside a certain event last week:

At the end of a certain event last week:

geezer · Post by **geezer** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 10:25 pm

While everyone is here -- can someone recommend to me a good telephoto lens for high-speed (motorsports, specifically) photography?

I shoot with a Canon D20...

Thanks!!

Carpet_pissr · Post by **Carpet_pissr** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 11:29 pm

Enough wrote:Some people might already know, but I might as well share this here as well.... The November 2008 issue of What Digital Camera (it's a British one) has a four pager featuring me and a bunch of my photos. I found a copy at Barnes and Noble and but I am not so sure Borders carries it.

Hey, congratulations! Care to post the "winning" pics here for us? Or a link if they have the shots online?

Thanks

Enough · Post by **Enough** » Sat Nov 08, 2008 12:32 am

geezer wrote:While everyone is here -- can someone recommend to me a good telephoto lens for high-speed (motorsports, specifically) photography?

I shoot with a Canon D20...

Thanks!!

Hmm, motorsports would to me at least mean vibration reduction (IS in Canon) wouldn't be as key since the cars are going so fast and you will want fast shutter speeds to match. You can pan without IS and get good results. So if you thought you could live without it I would focus more on getting a fast lens (low f-stop). I wonder how far away from the action are you at the furthest? Budget range?

One somewhat affordable option without IS/VR is the Sigma 100-300 f/4 EX HSM. It has the focus motor which would be key for quick AF at the races. It also pairs well with a Sigma 1.4x converter. On your DX crop camera that would give you some pretty wicked good range and this lens is known for being sharp. But if you are willing to spend more there are even better choices out there. A 70-200 f/2.8 would be great for the low f-stop, but for some races I've been at it would be too short on the long end. A 300 f/2.8 or 400 f/2.8 might be a dream lens for what you want to do, but you might have to sell a car or two to get one heh. If the Sigma is too spendy you could try for a more affordable 70-300 zoom.

Enough · Post by **Enough** » Sat Nov 08, 2008 12:41 am

Carpet_pissr wrote:
Enough wrote:Some people might already know, but I might as well share this here as well.... The November 2008 issue of What Digital Camera (it's a British one) has a four pager featuring me and a bunch of my photos. I found a copy at Barnes and Noble and but I am not so sure Borders carries it.
Hey, congratulations! Care to post the "winning" pics here for us? Or a link if they have the shots online?

Thanks

Sure, thanks for the interest. I don't have a PDF of the article yet, but am hoping to have one I can share.

Here's the photos they picked:

Enough · Post by **Enough** » Sat Nov 08, 2008 12:54 am

Wire, I really like how you caught the motion on the second beach sunset image with just long enough of an exposure to get the waves crashing. I think the surfer one has an almost vintage feel to it. Did you add the vignetting?

Oh and I agree, sweet jet capture Brian!

wire · Post by **wire** » Sat Nov 08, 2008 1:35 am

Enough wrote:Wire, I really like how you caught the motion on the second beach sunset image with just long enough of an exposure to get the waves crashing. I think the surfer one has an almost vintage feel to it. Did you add the vignetting?

Oh and I agree, sweet jet capture Brian!

Thanks and yeah I added the vignetting...not sure if I like it or not and can always be removed.

wonderpug · Post by **wonderpug** » Sat Nov 08, 2008 1:40 am

Enough wrote:
wonderpug wrote:Enough, can you remind me what noise reducing program you use? I seem to remember you saying you did not use Noise Ninja, but that was a long time ago.
Here's my NR workflow for highest quality/most detail/more time-intensive, ie for those shots you want as good as can be:

Thanks so much for the detailed explanation. If I'm understanding you right on first glance, the short version is that you use a standard noise-reduction program but by using the surface mask you limit the damage it can do to your sharp edges?

zinckiwi · Post by **zinckiwi** » Sat Nov 08, 2008 7:46 am

Nice shots, Enough! What Digital Camera is one of my regular reads so I'll certainly come across them in print.

Malificent · Post by **Malificent** » Sat Nov 08, 2008 1:57 pm

I'm just getting started in photography, so I'm mostly taking simple closeup shots and working my way towards more complex stuff. Using one of the so-called bridge cameras, the Panasonic DMC-FZ28. Be easy on me.

Sectoid · Post by **Sectoid** » Sat Nov 08, 2008 2:10 pm

Enough wrote:
wonderpug wrote:Enough, can you remind me what noise reducing program you use? I seem to remember you saying you did not use Noise Ninja, but that was a long time ago.
Here's my NR workflow for highest quality/most detail/more time-intensive, ie for those shots you want as good as can be:

1. Bring the image out of RAW with minimal NR: maybe only color NR and no luminance. Or no NR at all. I am not talking long exposure NR here, I am only meaning high ISO NR. It ruins detail and the method I'm going to share will preserve much of the detail. You also may want to for particularly noisy images to pick the most neutral color/contrast settings in RAW in terms of picture control type of stuff.

2. Run an edge mask or surface mask on the image in your editor of choice. For photoshop I really like the free TLR Professional Mask Toolkit. If you use this one set it to create both surface and edge and make sure you click the enhanced masks setting on. This is a script so you run it a bit different than an action, look under the automate menu.

3. After you have an edge mask invert it or just use a true surface mask as made above. Make the selection active by ctrl clicking on the mask on the channels palette. If you used the TLR script you probably don't need to refine the edge, otherwise feather it a bit for a more natural smooth edge.

4. Now with the surface mask marching ants active you can run the NR engine of your choice (Noiseware Pro is my weapon of choice at the moment, but I like Noise Ninja and Neat Image too, and Topaz seems to be getting good). Doing it this way will keep the NR detail softening impacts off your edges and will preserve far more detail than if you ran NR over the whole image.

Sometimes I will hand paint my own surface mask if the ones I get via the script are not protecting detail I want protected.

Thanks alot for this. Normally, I use Noise Ninja last on my work, but I usually use the masking built into it. This might work out a lot better. I downloaded TLR Professional Mask Toolkit already so I'll see how this works out.

Enough · Post by **Enough** » Sat Nov 08, 2008 4:54 pm

Sectoid wrote:
Enough wrote:
wonderpug wrote:Enough, can you remind me what noise reducing program you use? I seem to remember you saying you did not use Noise Ninja, but that was a long time ago.
Here's my NR workflow for highest quality/most detail/more time-intensive, ie for those shots you want as good as can be:

Thanks alot for this. Normally, I use Noise Ninja last on my work, but I usually use the masking built into it. This might work out a lot better. I downloaded TLR Professional Mask Toolkit already so I'll see how this works out.

Also try using the TLR edge mask for sharpening in addition to NR on the surface mask, it's fantastic especially once you learn the settings.

Enough · Post by **Enough** » Sat Nov 08, 2008 4:58 pm

wonderpug wrote:
Enough wrote:
wonderpug wrote:Enough, can you remind me what noise reducing program you use? I seem to remember you saying you did not use Noise Ninja, but that was a long time ago.
Here's my NR workflow for highest quality/most detail/more time-intensive, ie for those shots you want as good as can be:
Thanks so much for the detailed explanation. If I'm understanding you right on first glance, the short version is that you use a standard noise-reduction program but by using the surface mask you limit the damage it can do to your sharp edges?

You've got the concept, yup. And the reason why I suggested using TLR to generate both a surface and edge mask, is that you can use the edge mask for targeting your sharpening. It helps avoid adding noise/halos where you don't need sharpening anyways.

zinckiwi · Post by **zinckiwi** » Sat Nov 08, 2008 5:56 pm

It's funny, I can be pretty obsessive about noise reduction (though the Lightroom standard NR suits me 98% of the time). But I'm usually more keen these days on finding ways to dirty up my photography. Digital is just so clean! In high school I shot with a Minolta rangefinder and purposefully used ISO400+ black and white film, even on bright sunny days, because I liked the grain. I spent many happy hours in that darkroom

Same with the fervent religious dedication most DSLR shooters have to their histogram. I love blowing highlights and losing whole parts of a picture to black.

Of course, high ISO on DSLRs can still basically get you there -- I love the feel of this:

It's just hard to resist the temptation to chase clean and pristine sometimes.

cheeba · Post by **cheeba** » Sun Nov 09, 2008 12:35 am

zinckiwi wrote:I spent many happy hours in that darkroom

It's just hard to resist the temptation to chase clean and pristine sometimes.

Oh man if I close my eyes I can still smell those darkroom chemicals, lol. I loved playing around with over/under developing pics. Of course it was all in black and white, because the school couldn't afford color, heh. But you're right I love the contrast and dare I say drama of a good black and white photo. Now you got me missing my old 35mm again!

wonderpug · Post by **wonderpug** » Sun Nov 09, 2008 12:43 am

The darkroom is what I miss the most about film photography; at times I felt like playing with the enlarger and the chemicals was more fun than actually doing the shooting.

zinckiwi · Post by **zinckiwi** » Sun Nov 09, 2008 7:37 am

wonderpug wrote:The darkroom is what I miss the most about film photography; at times I felt like playing with the enlarger and the chemicals was more fun than actually doing the shooting.

That was absolutely true for me. I mean, I liked shooting, but I lived in that darkroom. After school, every day, for a good couple of years. The photography teacher was cool and had a stereo system, so I'd bring in my mix tapes of music that I'd imported back to HK from the US radio over the summer. I miss the chemicals and the enlargers too... I even miss the little film grain loupe you used to check your enlarger focus

I was often impatient and never let my prints fix enough, but one print to this day still sits in its frame on my wall and doesn't have a hint of yellow.

Sectoid · Post by **Sectoid** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 2:46 am

Here's a pic of my GF's hermit crab. I shot it with the new D700 and a Sigma 105mm F2.8 Macro lens I just got. Testing the lens out I've come to the conclusion that I need to use flash when I shoot with it. I'm gonna try again some other time with one of the SB600s in Commander mode.
Maybe I'll pickup a macro flash in the future. Any suggestions on a good one?