____twoism

Nothing fancy, some fireworks for the St-Jean Baptiste

WeHadNormality wrote:This is where I went and listened to TH after it arrived today. Sat right on the top in the glorious sunshine.

Where was this pic taken? I swear I've been there before.

zeitgeist wrote:Where was this pic taken? I swear I've been there before.

It's called Jacob's Ladder and it's in Habberley Valley, just outside Bewdley in Worcestershire.

^ haha, thanks for the reply, that's definitely not where i thought it was. still a cool looking place though!

anyway, i finally put together a few shots of my first Tomorrow's Harvest listening location. i drove out to the salt flats in Nevada and camped out in the back of my truck. the sunset was intense, as were the stars that night. i got a timelapse vid of the milky way, but grabbed some stills from it. i put together my first attempt at a "star stack" as well...

my TH listening location:

SynthesizerPatell wrote:One of my less crappy efforts of late.

PS--really love this shot. rosebush?

zeitgeist wrote:

Woah, these are great. Can I ask how long an exposure, what aperture, iso etc. the bottom one was?

Hmm, I think something is wrong with my imgur account by the looks of it. Where have all my pictures gone?

Thanks! The star trail shot is actually a composition of about 300 exposures, but you could probably get a similar effect with half that. I was surprised how easy it was to do. You can do it manually with Photoshop, but it takes an eternity.

I downloaded some star trail software at http://www.startrails.de. I just converted all my RAWs to TIFFs using batch in PS, then opened all the shots in that star trail app, and hit go. It did take about 3 hours on my shitty i3 laptop.

I was actually shooting a timelapse of the milky way rising behind the mountains while I was listening to the album on repeat. I took about 300 shots over 2.5 hours. The resulting shots played successively form a video, but if you stack all the shots on top of each other, it'll give you the trails.

Each shot was:
Canon t2i/550D
Tokina 11-16mm, set to 11mm @ f/2.8
ISO 1600
20 sec exposure, focus @ infinity

Getting clear night shots is always a really delicate balance in my experience, depending on what you're trying to achieve. You want to keep the ISO as low as possible to eliminate noise, but that of course requires a longer exposure. However, anything on any camera longer than about 20-25 seconds is going to give you pill shaped stars since the planet rotates enough during the shot. I tested a few times and found in this particular area, 20 seconds gave me the sharpest "pinpoint" stars in each frame, and adjusted all the other settings accordingly. Typically though, you're going to shoot with the lens aperture wide open, and you're going to need to shoot around ISO800 or above to capture anything at all at 20 seconds. If your lens doesn't have an infinity focus mark, you can always use the digital zoom on the LCD "live view" and manually focus on a star that way. Make sure to set at least a 2 second timer, and mirror lock-up, to eliminate any camera shake. Good luck!

zeitgeist wrote:Thanks! The star trail shot is actually a composition of about 300 exposures, but you could probably get a similar effect with half that. I was surprised how easy it was to do. You can do it manually with Photoshop, but it takes an eternity.

I downloaded some star trail software at http://www.startrails.de/html/software.html. I just converted all my RAWs to TIFFs using batch in PS, then opened all the shots in that star trail app, and hit go. It did take about 3 hours on my shitty i3 laptop.

I was actually shooting a timelapse of the milky way rising behind the mountains while I was listening to the album on repeat. I took about 300 shots over 2.5 hours. The resulting shots played successively form a video, but if you stack all the shots on top of each other, it'll give you the trails.

Each shot was:
Canon t2i/550D
Tokina 11-16mm, set to 11mm @ f/2.8
ISO 1600
20 sec exposure, focus @ infinity

Getting clear night shots is always a really delicate balance in my experience, depending on what you're trying to achieve. You want to keep the ISO as low as possible to eliminate noise, but that of course requires a longer exposure. However, anything on any camera longer than about 20-25 seconds is going to give you pill shaped stars since the planet rotates enough during the shot. I tested a few times and found in this particular area, 20 seconds gave me the sharpest "pinpoint" stars in each frame, and adjusted all the other settings accordingly. Typically though, you're going to shoot with the lens aperture wide open, and you're going to need to shoot around ISO800 or above to capture anything at all at 20 seconds. If your lens doesn't have an infinity focus mark, you can always use the digital zoom on the LCD "live view" and manually focus on a star that way. Make sure to set at least a 2 second timer, and mirror lock-up, to eliminate any camera shake. Good luck!

Thanks for taking the time to answer zeitgeist. Very much appreciated.


This link doesn't work btw.

No problem. I know when I first started out with night photography that it was super frustrating. If you have any more questions, feel free to PM me. I'm no expert, but I've been out a lot. Also, I don't know why that link didn't work, but just try stripping it down to http://www.startrails.de

Another cat picture, because sometimes there's just nothing that works according to plan

This one is not so much about the photo but its my sculpture. I didn't see a sculpture thread so this will have to do.

[/img]

herxagernsurn wrote:This one is not so much about the photo but its my sculpture. I didn't see a sculpture thread so this will have to do.

[/img]

Wow, what's that made of? Iron with cut outs melted by blowtorch or something?

Gorgeous!

Magrathea wrote:

herxagernsurn wrote:This one is not so much about the photo but its my sculpture. I didn't see a sculpture thread so this will have to do.

[/img]

Wow, what's that made of? Iron with cut outs melted by blowtorch or something?

Gorgeous!

Hey thanks Magrathea! It was my first piece and was entitled "The Pyrobelisk". It was all 1/8th steel with plasma cut runes in it. It used to have a pointy top, making it more obeliskish but it got pushed over at one point when I had it on wheels. It was mistaken for something more interactive. Oops.

I will post more pics of the other pieces soon. I have a new piece this year as well entitled 'Micasahedron es Sucasahedron'.

herxagernsurn wrote:

Magrathea wrote:

herxagernsurn wrote:This one is not so much about the photo but its my sculpture. I didn't see a sculpture thread so this will have to do.

[/img]

Wow, what's that made of? Iron with cut outs melted by blowtorch or something?

Gorgeous!

Hey thanks Magrathea! It was my first piece and was entitled "The Pyrobelisk". It was all 1/8th steel with plasma cut runes in it. It used to have a pointy top, making it more obeliskish but it got pushed over at one point when I had it on wheels. It was mistaken for something more interactive. Oops.

I will post more pics of the other pieces soon. I have a new piece this year as well entitled 'Micasahedron es Sucasahedron'.

This piece is outstanding! My GF was a sculpture major and I had to show her too--we both dig it big time. Nice work

hike on sunday afternoon:

I am a rubbish photographer, but I took this photo on a disposable camera, dipped the film in some chemicals and this happened. Thought it was pretty cool, some of the trees and stuff remind me of Geogaddi..

The Reaping






I found that I liked it better as 3 vertical sections than a full landscape photo

fujee wrote:I am a rubbish photographer, but I took this photo on a disposable camera, dipped the film in some chemicals and this happened. Thought it was pretty cool, some of the trees and stuff remind me of Geogaddi..

This is beautiful. Would you mind if I used an edit/cropping of it for a cassette j-card?

Go for it man. Make sure you post the result up on here though