Night Rain

[lionking]

Hey guys!

Finally found enough strength to tackle this one, i think this is like 5th attempt, its an 105 stack for the MW, 6 exposures for the trails, and 2 for the FG, i am glad i finally did it, but i need some perspective on how doe it look, so please feel free to C&C.

View media item 2265
Thank you for viewing.

Cheers!

 

[AlanLichty]

A 105 shot blend????? Wow! The resulting image is absolutely jaw dropping on my screen - this is one of the better MW renditions I have seen.

How long did it take to shoot the layers and did you move the camera at all while you were shooting? What kind of exposures were you taking? The effort to make this sounds somewhat monumental.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Short of a telescope shot, I have never seen such a well defined and colorful MW. How on earth did you get 105 shots to align, what program did you use?

The foreground looks a lot like Utah"s factory butte, even with the rolling ground. The horizon has a green tint that is slightly off putting.

 

[Dave Dillemuth]

Fantastic! Great execution and PP.

 

[TimMc]

The only improvement: remove the paragraph above the picture and replace it with an emoji of a referee with his hands up and declare “TOUCHDOWN “

Great job

 

[JimFox]

Very nice work with this Andrey! The final result is great.

A couple of questions.

Why did you feel that you needed 105 shots to blend though? It would have seem that 5 or 6 would have been enough if the point was to remove noise.

The meteors are looking jagged with gaps, is that just on my screen? Is that the result of downsizing for the web?

 

[Zeph]

I think it's great Andrey, must have been one helluva file, sharing your process would be interesting, especially for us non-MV shooters...

 

[Jim Dockery]

Very cool, like others I'd like to hear more about your work flow and reason for the 105 shots.

 

[lionking]

A 105 shot blend????? Wow! The resulting image is absolutely jaw dropping on my screen - this is one of the better MW renditions I have seen.

How long did it take to shoot the layers and did you move the camera at all while you were shooting? What kind of exposures were you taking? The effort to make this sounds somewhat monumental.

Thank you very much Alan for your kind words.
I'll share the whole process below...

Short of a telescope shot, I have never seen such a well defined and colorful MW. How on earth did you get 105 shots to align, what program did you use?

The foreground looks a lot like Utah"s factory butte, even with the rolling ground. The horizon has a green tint that is slightly off putting.

Thank you Ben, i thought about removing that polluted portion, but than it will kinda look took clinical...

Fantastic! Great execution and PP.

Thank you very much Dave!

The only improvement: remove the paragraph above the picture and replace it with an emoji of a referee with his hands up and declare “TOUCHDOWN “

Great job

Thank you very much Tim!
lol

Very nice work with this Andrey! The final result is great.

A couple of questions.

Why did you feel that you needed 105 shots to blend though? It would have seem that 5 or 6 would have been enough if the point was to remove noise.

The meteors are looking jagged with gaps, is that just on my screen? Is that the result of downsizing for the web?

Thank you very much Jim!
I definitely did not need, i wanted to capture the most meteors possible, so when i volunteered to get the coffee kit from @Levy Davish "s 's car, left the camera running, luckily i got 5.
I assume the jagging is the result of them uneven burning with combination of my exposure, cause at closer inspection i saw they change color as well during the short trail.

I think it's great Andrey, must have been one helluva file, sharing your process would be interesting, especially for us non-MV shooters...

Thank you very much Zeph!
Sure,

The shots for MW were captured at F2.8/10s/ISO 8000, exported to lossless 16bit tiff, after minor adjustments in Camera Raw, then loaded into the Sequator (free PC software) that does pretty decent job with the sky, but totally meses the FG, and looses the trails, so i had to manually add those from the 6 exposures, that had them.
The biggest challenge for me was blending that with the FG, since it was shot from different angle, after sunset, we moved constantly to get the MW in the center of the peak, the combined MW had messed up FG that did no align with the FG i wanted to use, and i did not want to loose too much of that core, i feel like i need therapy after this PP, it took so much mental energy, and so many failures...
I hope to never redo this...

 

[Douglas Sherman]

Stunning image, Andrey.

 

[JimFox]

Hey Andrey, I will have to check out Sequator. I have been jealous of the Starry Night Stacker for a while, but it's only available on the Mac. So having a better PC option is something I want to see.

 

[alatoo]

That's fantastic!

 

[MonikaC]

Thank you very much Alan for your kind words.
I'll share the whole process below...



Thank you Ben, i thought about removing that polluted portion, but than it will kinda look took clinical...



Thank you very much Dave!



Thank you very much Tim!
lol



Thank you very much Jim!
I definitely did not need, i wanted to capture the most meteors possible, so when i volunteered to get the coffee kit from @Levy Davish "s 's car, left the camera running, luckily i got 5.
I assume the jagging is the result of them uneven burning with combination of my exposure, cause at closer inspection i saw they change color as well during the short trail.




Thank you very much Zeph!
Sure,

The shots for MW were captured at F2.8/10s/ISO 8000, exported to lossless 16bit tiff, after minor adjustments in Camera Raw, then loaded into the Sequator (free PC software) that does pretty decent job with the sky, but totally meses the FG, and looses the trails, so i had to manually add those from the 6 exposures, that had them.
The biggest challenge for me was blending that with the FG, since it was shot from different angle, after sunset, we moved constantly to get the MW in the center of the peak, the combined MW had messed up FG that did no align with the FG i wanted to use, and i did not want to loose too much of that core, i feel like i need therapy after this PP, it took so much mental energy, and so many failures...
I hope to never redo this...

Quite the adventure in PP, Andrey! Maybe a tracker is in your future?

 

[Levy Davish]

I was to apologize about sending you to get the coffee but now I feel part of the result . Very impressive mf. well done.

 

[Kyle Jones]

Stunning image, well done. MW rendering is always a matter of personal taste. I think the saturation may be a little strong in the sky, but that's just me.

 

[lionking]

Very cool, like others I'd like to hear more about your work flow and reason for the 105 shots.

Thank you very much Jim!
Pls see below your original reply...

Stunning image, Andrey.

Thank you very much Douglas!

Hey Andrey, I will have to check out Sequator. I have been jealous of the Starry Night Stacker for a while, but it's only available on the Mac. So having a better PC option is something I want to see.

I was pleased too to discover a proper PC soft for this kinda thing.

That's fantastic!

Thank you very much Sasha!

Quite the adventure in PP, Andrey! Maybe a tracker is in your future?

Thank you very much Monica!
I was seriously considering that for some time, but since, i will probably shoot this, maybe twice a year(MW is properly visible in Israel mostly during August, and its a 3 hour drive each way) and the work around technique does the job even better, i would probably spend that amount on something more useful and versatile, like a nodal plate, head leveler or glass...

I was to apologize about sending you to get the coffee but now I feel part of the result . Very impressive mf. well done.

Thank you very much Levy!
I hope mf means "my friend/fellow" and not the other popular thing...

Stunning image, well done. MW rendering is always a matter of personal taste. I think the saturation may be a little strong in the sky, but that's just me.

Thank you very much Kyle!
I guess you are right, i just got too excited with all the Christmas Lights and everything...

 

[Vieri]

Fantastic job and a lot of work! Personally, I would take the trails off, they just look out of place and not consistent with the rest of the image to me - but of course this is personal, so take it for what is worth