A Night Star Mountain Landscape

[Tucson T4R]

This is my first attempt at a star mountain night landscape following Ron Coscorrosa's excellent tutorial. http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/13098771_t6ehR

Please feel free to help me learn more with your CC.

Obviously I did not trek into the wilderness for this first attempt. I captured this off my back porch last night of the Catalina Mountains North of Tucson. The lazy man's classroom.

Did I get the concept close?

 

[goodtimes]

Your back porch has a nicer view than my back porch (neighbors house blocks most of my view of the Tucson Mountains) . . .

 

[Sexy6Chick]

I would kill for a view like that. And I would say you nailed it on the head for your first attempt!! Well done!

 

[Tucson T4R]

Your back porch has a nicer view than my back porch (neighbors house blocks most of my view of the Tucson Mountains) . . .

I had to cut down three trees last weekend to get this view. Luckily they were infested with mistletoe so it was justified. :sombrero:

I'm actuality amazed at what the camera can capture in such low light. You can't see diddly in the view finder but with long exposures the camera picks up an amazing amount of light. It took several tries to get the focus correct since you can't see anything in either view finder or Live view.

 

[Tucson T4R]

I would kill for a view like that. And I would say you nailed it on the head for your first attempt!! Well done!

Thanks Natalie. As I mentioned in my last response I had to remove a few mistletoe infested trees to get the open view. Now I'm waiting for a good lighting storm to focus on the mountains so I can capture that. :elkgrin:

 

[Sexy6Chick]

Now I'm waiting for a good lighting storm to focus on the mountains so I can capture that. :elkgrin:

Now we're talking!

 

[Desert Dan]

Looks great how long was the exposure? 30 seconds?

 

[matthewp]

Very nice, my new desktop background!

 

[Tucson T4R]

Very nice, my new desktop background!

That's always a good accolade. :elkgrin:

 

[Tucson T4R]

Looks great how long was the exposure? 30 seconds?

Check out Ron's excellent tutorial on star shots.

http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/13098771_t6ehR

It's basically a composition of two shots. The first is about 20 seconds at ISO 3200 that results in high noise for the sky shot but keeps the stars almost stationary. Noise reduction software can easily clean up the sky with no loss of detail but the mountains loose all the detail and turn into just a bla painting.

The second shot is about 6 minutes at low ISO to capture the mountain details with minimal noise which results in significant star movement and trails.

Then you use Photoshop layers to mask off the sky and merge the clean noise reduced sky into the second image of the low ISO detailed mountains.

The tutorial that Ron put together is excellent. It just takes a little practice to pull it together.

 

[nwoods]

It's basically a composition of two shots.

Ah, that explains it. I dug into your exif and could not understand why these two shots below had all the same parameters, yet remarkably different results!

F/4 - ISO 400, Shutter 324 seconds

F/4 - ISO 400, Shutter 324 seconds

 

[Tucson T4R]

Ah, that explains it. I dug into your exif and could not understand why these two shots below had all the same parameters, yet remarkably different results!

F/4 - ISO 400, Shutter 324 seconds

F/4 - ISO 400, Shutter 324 seconds

Right. I took the mountains from that long exposure shot.

This is the shot I used for the sky. I stole just the shooting star from another earlier shot.

Notice the exposure was 20 seconds at ISO 3200. After noise reduction you have a nice sky but lost details in the mountains.

Actually from feedback on the DGRIN photo forum my mountains are too hot for a realistic night shot. I plan to go back and tone down the mountain exposure in Lightroom and redo the composite. It's all such an ongoing learning process.

 

[Wander]

I was about to ask about the shooting star.

So that's the view from your back yard???dang!

Nice shot! I think bringing down the mountains would fit the feel of the shot a little better, make them more moody. There is also a little fuzziness along the line where the two shot where merged along the left side, it's slight but it kind of draws the eye. Very nice job!

 

[Tucson T4R]

I was about to ask about the shooting star.

So that's the view from your back yard???dang!

Nice shot! I think bringing down the mountains would fit the feel of the shot a little better, make them more moody. There is also a little fuzziness along the line where the two shot where merged along the left side, it's slight but it kind of draws the eye. Very nice job!

Thanks Matt. Yeah, you gotta love Tucson views. :wings:

That fuzziness on the left came from a small cloud line in the sky shot. It would take some pixel poking to clean it up. I re-shot these last night but haven't had time yet to work on them. It was a cloudless night last night so I should have something better to work with.

 

[Wander]

looking forward to the next round!