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Moar


Kamov Ka-31 IN725 INAS 339 "Falcons" by Angad Singh | Zone 5 Aviation, on Flickr


HAL ALH Dhruv IN704 by Angad Singh | Zone 5 Aviation, on Flickr


Phantom Bird by Angad Singh | Zone 5 Aviation, on Flickr

 

few shots on the 60d.. i am pretty happy with teh results

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The Great Gathering by samkiller42, on Flickr

Sam

 

Been to Andover by any chance thai?

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Haha yes.. Had a good groupon deal so thought I would go down.. Not been there for a while..
Haven't had the chance to edit other photos yet

 

I recognise those birds anywhere

 

From the other night at an abandoned quarry


Pathway to the Stars

Please excuse the noisy image, i forgot LR 5 has a bug with it not applying NR to images that are less than 1/3 the original size

 

My New Lego Case by Lance Welch, on Flickr

Trying this out tonight. I took apart my helicopter to get some parts and I will rebuild it over the christmas holidays to the hovercraft it can be.

 

Love it! Mind sharing your settings and processing steps?

Planning on doing some star photography soon myself but I need to find somewhere dark enough!!

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Generally ISO 1600 - 3200, Aperture f/2.8 - f/1.8, 15-30s shutter time for taking the photo. Use a flashlight to light up foreground objects

For post processing, white balance the orange glow on the milky way to pull out the best colors, up clarity and up contrast as high as you can go without blowing out the foreground detail. Adjust colors as needed, adjust highlights/whites and shadows/black for the amount of stars you want to see. Never push exposure more than +1.5, and use NR to filter out some of the smaller stars and noise.

I would recommend using a DarkSky map to find the best viewing areas. I knew about this old quarry but didn't think to check the DS map until this past week when getting the astrophotography itch, and discovered that although not a great darksky area; it was better than the city.

Other samples here:


Galaxy by J Ryan Waters, on Flickr


Tip of the Cosmos by J Ryan Waters, on Flickr

 

Great photos and thanks for the tips as well!

 

Great stuff! Very nice shots. Thanks for the advice. Ive avoided going as high on 1600 iso because it can be very noisy on a 7d

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This reminds me how fast the world changes. When the 7D came out, a lot of the photographers I knew who shot with the 40D or 50D were excited because they were finally going to be able to push their handheld shots with clean results at 1600 or 2000 ISO.

FWIW, I pixel peep and lust after high end gear as much as the next fellow, but when push comes to shove, I don't hesitate to shoot at 1600 with the 7D. A little NR and maybe a slight downsize is all it takes for great images from that camera, even at high ISO. There's a lot more wrong with the 7D (AA filter) than ISO performance.

 

Its just my experience from my motorsport stuff. I suppose im reluctant to apply any sort of post processing heavily, NR included. I try to get as much right on camera as possible (although I except il need to compromise for the astrophotography).

Cant wait to get out there and try this soon!

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Don't get me wrong, things get noisy (I'm on a Nikon D7000) but thankfully we live in a world of noise reduction and, unless you are full frame, these images are expected to be on the noisy side.

Speaking of which, generally i don't push NR past 15 on color images but I will push it as high as 60 on B+W

And as a final note on shutter time, if you want to keep the stars looking sharp and like they are not moving, use a shutter speed of 15s or less. Any more and you will start to get star movement. If you want star trails I generally image stack with about 300 shots at a shutter speed of 20s or 30s set up on the intervalometer

 

Shot from last week. Gotta love late afternoon light!

 

Screw the afternoon light... gotta love whatever her name is...

DAAAAMN

 

Natalie! It says so in the bottom left corner

Sam

 

An easier way to remember ideal shutter speed for sharp stars is the "Rule of 600" - shutter speed should be 600/focal length (in 35mm equivalent).

So if you're shooting, say, a 50mm lens on full frame, you shutter speed should be no slower than 600/50 = 12 sec. On most Canon cameras, this would mean an in-camera setting of 10 sec for minimal blur, or 13 sec if you don't mind a hint of motion.

If it's 50mm on a Canon APS-C body, then you divide by 80 (because that's the full-frame focal length equivalent), giving you a shutter speed of only 7.5 sec, which translates to an in-camera setting of 6 or 8 sec.

 

Haha yes, and she's one of my most shot models too. Always fun to work with and has become a friend too. As a side note, she turns 21 tomorrow, haha