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How They Took That Image Part 2

moon go, I sewed earlier, and this is a longer one. This is 15 seconds on. So I was driving down the road and in the rental car here and saw the moon booth. It's a rare thing balancing the angle of light, and they all happened at this angle above something to do with, like the full moon. And then the water vapor is like an degree something other don't know, large arc up in the sky. It's usually elicited arising. This is over on Molokai and the number of time even people who live in the Hawaiian Islands that have seen a true moon. Bo is slight, but keep your eye out for a grave band arc. It just looks like gray scale. So, you know, I grabbed a shot of just it and okay, it's still here. What can I do next? Can I tried putting the tree into it. It was too dark, wasn't really working for me, and I kept having this problem of people's headlights shining into my viewfinder and ruining my exposure. You can cover over it because light going into your view finder at night will actually affect ...

the cameras. Meter so some cameras come with a little on my one DX. There's a little slider next to the viewfinder that most people don't even notice that will close it off. And the five D comes with something on the strap that you can slide over the viewfinder if you take off the soft I cup. But you can also hold it over your hand. But you know, somebody has a light behind you that's gonna bounce off that mirror and go into the meeting system. And it might say, 016 of a second. You know, I know this is like a 32nd shot. It was not one thing when you get all black image, if you're using the auto meeting, that something to look out for. So I have Nepalis headlights, Jack says Somehow feature not about, you know, try and put some of these headlights in the image. Add another element to the image mawr interest beyond just the moon boot. It wasn't Islamic. My favorite is not, you know, like I would have loved to have mawr elements and the tree going up larger through the moon bow and things, but you take what you can get with it. It was only there for a couple of minutes, I think, before the water vapor had moved on and it was gone. So I think this was fantastic. I have never even heard thing is cool. Think of a moon Bo. The term is out, but it's usually it's the moon halo. It's around when you have either ice crystals, the water crystals around moon. You'll see that circular, you know, sphere around the moon but that, you know, that's getting in the ring Rainbow colors. But it's not a true the same sort of thing that happens with a regular rainbow. So it is amazing experience toe feel, Uh, so I sort of talked about how I shot this earlier, but just in review, Um, I set up my camera in front of this cliff and the moon was behind me. So it was, uh, being lower angle and the sky was illuminating the cliff face. And I, um, instead, it up with a two minute exposure as sort of roughly. You know what I told you? I don't think because this is a stacked image. Well, it shows the X if information for just one of the images. So the individual frames were 120 seconds. Two minutes F four with my 17 millimeter lens. That's the 17 to and F four is as wide open as it goes. And I put it on I s 0 400 Um, because I was really wanting toe get the cliff like a lot of the detail in the cliff in the the case, which were totally dark until it made the sky maybe more brighter than I necessarily wanted. But the story for me was the cliff in the mummy cave and then getting this guy above it As an added bonus, people ask me, why haven't you cloned out this tent? You know, with the red led down there. But I like I kind of like it. I did try it after somebody suggested that, cause I don't know. I never thought of it, But, um, it gives the human element of a small little tent in the massive cliff in our relationship and modern Oh, I don't know. I just like to justify it afterwards, but also it adds a little bit of the more of the night. Since it is looks almost like a pure date. It does the moonlight. Yeah, that's a good point. With modern cameras, the sensors are good enough that you can really The center will try and expose it for 18% gray generally, and they're now capable of doing that and turning night into day and convince people at the Nite Photograph Look at these really long shadow see and or the street life. But you can then come back and intentionally dark in it as well. But in this case, the other moonlight was really strong. And I'll show you individual frames. Um, a little bit later, I want to go through how to stack the star trails interesting about that one in terms of the dimensionality because the clouds air moving for all those exposures, you actually have the clouds behind the stars that are obviously a little bit further out in the clouds. And and yet that layering makes it look like you've got this. You know, Cliff face, Cloud Star, Star Cloud, Cliff Face. And I think that actually is a another unique aspects about this shot using the lightened mode, the lightest pixel in the depth of your stack of layers. I think it looks down through the stack of layers and says, What's in all these images? What's the lightest pixel? I'm going to use that one for the final composited image. So in this case, the clouds are lighter than the sky, and the stars are brighter than the clouds. So in general, sometimes the clouds will cause gaps in your star trails. So, generally for star trails you were trying to find a cloud last night, but these college weren't there. In the beginning, I thought I was getting a coat of clear sky what they blew in. So you can If you wanting Teoh spend extra effort, you can go mask out the cloud so that they're not blocking Star Gap funding that take a lot of work and push ups on time. So I memory says this was I have 87 frames of two minutes each, so little math for slightly under three hours two hours, 56 minutes for these long article that this may be a subset of those images. I may not have used all of them and stacking this image, so I left an 80 year stating you might ask why 87 bus when my battery ran out? Yeah. And also to get light into the cave areas That was with a 1,000,000 candlepower lights. Like painting, which actually quite affordable. Those They're usually 99 like a fishing supply store. Kind of literally, they are 1,000,000. Big though it is hard, not a pocket flashlight, and the beam is really bright. So you have to keep moving it or you get the beam in your photos. Okay. So, Meteors there's another one meteor shower coming up very soon. Next few days, right. I think that the person who did this started already. Okay, So, like, I don't really nice night. You might see, like, really busy what, 40 to 60 in an hour that, like a would be like a really nice meteor shower So you could do start trail, set it up like a star trail image and have those longer exposures. And then you'll have the star trails in there and you'll get some lines going through it for that long exposure. And so will you lighten the stack. All the media trails will be the brightest thing in this guy, and they'll come through just like the stars air coming through. In this case, this image I had set up for a time lapse. So I was doing probably 30 seconds, 30 seconds and f for I s 0 not as wide as before, but so having the rotating sky come through and so and I left my camera there for the time left and one going back and looking through the time last night, I mean it accidentally. It wasn't thinking about media. Shara's catch one coming through the frame and I thought it might a nice image. Um so photographing eclipses even more rare than meteor showers and moon both UK and look on the Internet to find out when the next eclipses in your area. Um, maybe 678 years from now or could be next year. This is an annular eclipse where the moon doesn't fully block out the sun getting that ring of the sun around it, and you're looking at a cloud that blew in front of it. But it was still bright. It was a sort of a wispy little thin like like a serious thin cirrus cloud was blocking it out and I was grumbling about it. But then later, when I I actually kind of like my cloud images more than the ones without bond. So I decided to keep it so you can find the path of these eclipses and drive to fly. Some people that are really into eclipse photography, like a whole group of them, charter the 7 37 to fly out over the Pacific Ocean in order to shoot from the middle of the ocean and follow the eclipse. As you know, it's moving along to get more time. Andi scientists, of course, they're doing this to study the Coronas and everything. So it's a wonderful opportunity to gather data on the sun when it's not totally bright, shiny with a full of clips. I think you can see the actual Corona with, certainly with telescopes. I'm not sure. With cameras, I haven't seen one myself, so the photograph one. It's still pretty bright. You don't want to do long exposures pointing at the sun. You can burn out the photo sites and your sensor, and you don't want you can burn out your retinas well, looking at him, so you either need to get it's filter like this big made for a telescope with these thumbscrews. I didn't bring one, unfortunately, and so you put it in front of your camera lens on git. Screw it all down and it's one Time is made out of mile. Are you Can Google Solar filter and the Mylar ones give you this black and white look because they're so protective that it'll just all the color goes away on bears. Also, full spectrum ones that are made out of really dark glass that will let you see the reds and the oranges. But theoretically, you could also maybe come in and colorize Jack. Good color eyes is when I got a white balance. But on the cheap, you can get a welding helmet or a piece of welding glass protective on, but it's very, very, very dark green, and that'll protect your eyes on the camera, at least, and then you can color balance to remove that green color caste. So if you just want toe the or any minute wanting to photograph it, you can use the Mylar. The green wielding toe look at an eclipse or a fund trick is punch a little pin hole in a piece of paper and then hold it up. And then you can watch the eclipse projected through that pinhole on the ground or another piece of paper. Snap that with your IPhone. Get that projection. Maybe they make my life so you could certainly hold your IPhone up Teoh piece of the welding glass. But again, it's this is, ah, 700 millimeter shots, I think. Yeah, that's full frame. So needing Zoom and there's lots of complications with eclipses. But since they're so rare and move on other topics, this is Venus crossing the sun, and again you can hit astronomical sites to know when these sorts of events were happening. You can get the space station crossing in front of the sun and actually see a little. But the solar panels could have so much closer than Venus, obviously, but this is pretty small, but again, that may be one way you want to do a sequence of a time lapse Venus moving across unless the clouds coming obscure your vision if you live in the northwest or anywhere that enjoys clouds. So we talked about a little bit of light painting, and then this I, um What did I use for the light in there? Oh, my flesh. It was just I just locked my flashlight on through it in the bathtub and then took the image of the bath tub on by the tree exposed for the light in the bathtub and then left my camera doing star trails without the light in the bathtub influence. And then you can just draw a great in Photoshopped composite together by using this portion from the still image, mask it out and then all the lightened blend modes for getting the stars in the top. So we have some people in the chat room Baron and Smee and some others talking about They want to do a pre recorded workshop of you guys actually shooting. They want us to fly to Hawaii, and then you guys can shoot, and we can actually watch you in action. Me and others, I like the way. How will these video cameras working pitch Black Way did the light painting class with Ben Wilmore? And that turned out which, by the way, we've been got back to me and I've got some wonderful samples will share after the next break of his amazing stuff he's got for Photoshopped Week, which I'm sure you mentioned again. He's actually got a short class on light painting coming up for a photo shop week as well as his full time class that he's already done, plus an e book on like painting. So, yes, you can get your light painting fix through Ben. Yeah, the in the field is definitely another elementary. It in the first challenging Doing It in the Dark, and you didn't get that right fumbling around. And there's often mistakes that happen, like people walk through your frame, in this case with a red flashlight. So that may have been me walking through the frame, that going off and leaving it, the camera car headlights coming through and washing out one entire frame of your star trails so you can recover from that in a time. Laughter star trails rather than like an old film days where you left it open for four hours. Your your frame was just done and gone because the brightest thing just washes all the film. But you can just delete that one frame or mask out the part that has the the glare of the headlight in it and not use that in the stack. So there is recovery from those sorts of things. There's a single frame from that stack to show you what amount of detail you're getting in the stars. That contributes to that amount of star trails close enough together. How many images do you think makes up that Get the streak from a point into a streak? Um, I can tell you, I don't remember. Um, I have here, I think the guts alone for our first class. Ben has over Ben. Bren has over 1.2 million photographs in one single light room cattle. So I knew that he could answer that question because he has, ah, 1.2 million photographs on the product manager for a light room was, like, really waken do that much weight. In this case, I let it. I don't think I use all those 390 because you see, the last 390th image here is, you know, Risen. Yeah. So in this case, my battery lasted longer. It was warmer. And this may have been on the the one d syriza bigger batteries. That's an advantage on a lot more money. Unfortunately, So the cheaper option is the batter gift. As Jack was mentioning, double your battery capacity so you let it run, and then after. If you let it run much longer than that, you're just gonna have white frames because you set up the exposure for night time. This is still pretty early in the morning. When it stopped, I stopped it. So that's and you don't have to. The other Nice thing is you don't have to use all of them. You can choose. I go and it's like this amount and stack them and see is that giving me what I'm looking for aesthetically in terms of the business of the trails in the sky and then go home or go left If you shoot more, you can always use less harder to go back and use more than you shot. Um uh, all right, a couple more way of sort of talked about this earlier with using just a very quick pulse of light from a flashlight on that palm tree and again 30 seconds I said 3200 F 2.8. And in this case fish I 15 millimetre, which is why you're seeing this curved horizon. If you put that horizon directly in the middle, you don't get any. Distortion will be flat. You get distortion, but it still it's flat. Um, but the whole point of using the fish I is to get as much of the sky as possible. It's having this band of Milky Way versus, you know, the dark of this other sky that sets up some of that drama and the tension playing off of each other. If you have ah, telephoto lens one, it's harder toe, not have them turn into trails. And you also don't have that contract, so it doesn't have much punch. That's one point I forgot to mention earlier is the wider you have the longer amount of time you have before a star transitions from a point to a line. So for your specific lens if you Google stars fo V for field of view calculator, there's websites that you put in like OK, I have a 24 millimeter lens on. It will tell you the maximum amount of time before the stars move more than one pixel. So in general for a wide angle lenses like 15 millimeters fisheye. 30 seconds is fine. You can still see that thes when it loads. These stars are points, but depending on how well you focused horse. But I have a 24 millimeter lens. You need to be down like maybe 15 seconds or 20 seconds and 500 millimeter land. They're gonna be trails even at one second. So that blue and red on those points of light like the red shift on the blue shift, I think, though. Yeah. Wow, I can't believe the camera. You mean exaggerated for interest, You know, you're seeing Yeah, different. You get chromatic aberration off the stars, even that little point. But from what I'm my understanding is that those actually the different colors of the stars themselves. We'll be the color the star. That's whether it's whether it's going away from your coming. Oh, no, I don't think that's astronomy. Not easy to dio your kids t o stop. So I don't like it that colorful. So that's out of the camera. Honestly, I just reset everything back toe the raw file. So, um, that's the image without that flashlight lighting up the palm tree on the beach. So you know again it's aesthetics. You will want it to theme darker. You're living in a dark space, looking up at the night sky, or do you want it more context? So fireworks here is 0.6 seconds is a longer one. You can see the palm fronds aren't all sharp. The wind will blow them in a long time period, and F four probably should have done a little bit more in order to get these fireworks more in focus on that leave without I have 280 millimeters. I'm tryingto fill that frame with the palm trees and just have the streaks of light behind it. Um, find in Hawaii. They celebrate New Year's with big firework shows like the mainland celebrates Fourth of July. So twice a year, you can do fireworks if you can schedule your trip to a way for the right time Period escaped the grey winter's of Portland, Oregon. Oh, I wanted Osho. What? Um, the initially stacked, enlightened image of his baobab tree looked like if we can talking about the noise reduction earlier, crank up the exposure and and see what I was talking about with those 15 minute exposures in there. Um, when you're doing bold mode in order to have those longer than 32nd exposures, your camera isn't I don't least believe my camera. I can. And I was using record How long it waas So you know, if you want and keep track, you know you need toe Got a little note down on what your settings were. So these hot pixels are easier for the noise reduction al groom to identify as noise relative to the tree. But still, you know, they soften the imminent even with removing those actual static that's building up on the the, uh, the sensor itself, electricity flowing through it. That's making the image that much electricity can like. Static in a radio signal just builds up and you get crackly in this case, visual as opposed to audio genetic. Yeah, All right, so that's some of the tips and tricks of shooting. Some of these different videos are still images, which we do next to actually take a question. I see that end we can take to question from Kyle aims. Is it better? Is it? Does it matter? Does weather matter. The question was, what is a better time to shoot a warm night or colder night? Does the weather cause more or less noise? And are there any tricks that could help control the noise in any weather? Do you know who knows whether you guys are always in Hawaii and Greenland? Portland, Oregon, Their banks Warm, tropical, exotic places all the time. But most of the years, I mean, I know how you old Jack. So what do you think about whether Yeah, it was important. Cold weather, less water vapour in the air and less. I'm really hot. Like, You know, if you're in Death Valley and you're looking down the road, you can see the air shimmering off the hot asphalt. That movement in the air is gonna make the stars less sharp. Which is why Theus, Tron a me big telescopes are 13,000 feet in Hawaii. So 13,000 feet, it's cold, even in Hawaii. And you have a massive amount of ocean around it to keep the air's still, we don't have to go to quite those lengths, But a cool, dry place is best our time of year to do it and as faras tiptoe Reduce noise. Um, you can buy cameras that have I wear like the five Do you Mercury. They take the back off and they put a cooling plate inside. So the astronomers and the scientists that are really trying to get the best possible shots of the Milky Way for doing scientific measurements will do that actually cooling, actively cooling their centers, trying to put your don't recommend trying to put your camera in a cooler. Anything a little pointless, I'll just heat right back up instantaneously. It's the center that gets heated and static electricity build up anyway. So other than buying a bigger sensor and the more modern sensors, ah, more modern full frame center will be mawr less noise more sensitive than an older full frame centers are. Unfortunately, it's a throw money at the problem, sort of a situation I don't other than after the fact post processing. Just shooting, keeping your shots in that a couple minute time frame or, you know, have a shooting at lower I esos obviously lesson ways. It's a constant battle. You're never gonna get away from it, so you start after just learn to accept it a bit in this. I think your tripod is your best friend, obviously for that. And then, uh um, that the bigger your sensor size that you can do and then understanding, you know, like room and a CR and its capabilities to do noise reduction for when you can't alleviate it.