Stovepipe Stars

[JimFox]

This is from the location of the original Stovepipe Wells in Death Valley National Park. This is from about a week ago and I had to deal with the same issue Ben had with no moon to light up the ground layer. The light pollution you will see comes Furnace Creek. Part of the reason I picked this location to shoot from was in the almost 90 degree weather, no one was out at that location, and also there was minimal light pollution from vehicles, though you will see a headlight or three in the beginning.

This is the result of almost 3 days of work, stacking images, editing, rendering the videos, going back and doing more edits to the videos, rendering the videos again. It's very helpful having multiple computers going, because my desktop has been totally tied up with this timelapse since Monday.

All comments are welcome,

Jim

PS. Replaced with updated version with the MW fading better. Not perfect, but hopefully better.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Hey Jim, this is neat, and looks like a lot of work. Did you blend a foreground into each of the images? I would not know how to blend in a foreground in batch mode.

I see what you mean by lighter sky, I actually used your technique to brighten the star and darken the sky pushing the sky to black, although it was never as bright as yours is.

What iso did you use.

 

[AlanLichty]

Seems like a lot of light pollution off beyond the horizon - is that from Las Vegas? Nice sequence.

 

[JimFox]

Hey Jim, this is neat, and looks like a lot of work. Did you blend a foreground into each of the images? I would not know how to blend in a foreground in batch mode.

I see what you mean by lighter sky, I actually used your technique to brighten the star and darken the sky pushing the sky to black, although it was never as bright as yours is.

What iso did you use.

Hey Ben, thanks so much!

The main part of this was shot at ISO 3200, f2 and 25 secs.

No blending of the foreground, you couldn't. Because if you look the light changes on the ground throughout the video. I don't even know how you would do it.

How did you use my technique to darken the sky and brighten the stars on your video? That isn't possible that I know of. You could do it on your single image, but not the video.

 

[Ben Egbert]

I used your technique on the still I posted earlier, not the video. The video came out different. I will post it later.

 

[JimFox]

Seems like a lot of light pollution off beyond the horizon - is that from Las Vegas? Nice sequence.

Thanks Alan. I was thinking the bright lighted area was coming from Furnace Creek, but I need to pull my map back out, because as I think about this more, I don't think that's right. Las Vegas is just too far away I would think. Hmmm.... looking at the map, I think that light is from Furnace Creek. That's a pretty massive area there.

 

[JimFox]

I used your technique on the still I posted earlier, not the video. The video came out different. I will post it later.

You confused me, because this is a video I posted, so I figured you were commenting and comparing on videos.

My still image of the Milky Way won't look like these from the video, since I can process it individually and with layer masks.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Nice sequence Jim. The dark skies really brings out the stars. Too bad about the light pollution. I wonder if filters that purport to cut out ground light pollution help. The end seems rather abrupt when the milky way gives way to dawn.

 

[JimFox]

Nice sequence Jim. The dark skies really brings out the stars. Too bad about the light pollution. I wonder if filters that purport to cut out ground light pollution help. The end seems rather abrupt when the milky way gives way to dawn.

Thanks Jameel. I actually liked the light pollution, if you are referring to the gold area along the horizon. I have dealt with tons of light pollution through the years, and light pollution like that is cool since it ends up being under the arch of the Milky Way.

I think all light pollution filters filter the same bandwidth, at least the ones I know. All of the Astro ones though come in only 1.5 or 2" sizes to fit in scopes. So those wouldn't work.

Yeah, I thought that transition at the end was smoother, but when I saw it again after uploading it to YouTube I saw it was too abrupt of a transition, so I will go back and touch that up.

 

[Amy Nelson]

Awesome video clip, looks like a long night and a lot of work....but well worth it.

 

[JimFox]

Awesome video clip, looks like a long night and a lot of work....but well worth it.

Thank you so much Amy! It was worth it!

Staying up all night wasn't hard, the hard part was the 3 days it took to process back at home.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Sent you comnments via text, but basically, this is a killer video - love it. Did not see original version, but the editing seems to have produced an awesome result.

ML

 

[JimFox]

Sent you comnments via text, but basically, this is a killer video - love it. Did not see original version, but the editing seems to have produced an awesome result.

ML

Thanks Mike, The original was no different at all. This update only changed the final 3 seconds of the video so the transition was smoother at the end as suggested by Jameel.

 

[chuckp]

Awesome video Jim!

 

[Jim Dockery]

Nice work, lots of shooting stars/satellites to start the night, but I really loved it when the MW came into view. If you shot this RAW and processed them large enough you could also do a bit of a zoom to vary the view a little. Was it 90 at night?

 

[JimFox]

Awesome video Jim!

Thanks Chuck! It was fun to watch and capture.

 

[JimFox]

Nice work, lots of shooting stars/satellites to start the night, but I really loved it when the MW came into view. If you shot this RAW and processed them large enough you could also do a bit of a zoom to vary the view a little. Was it 90 at night?

Thanks Jim. I noticed watching it again last night, that once the Milky Way rises and moves across the scene there are some stars that seem to move just a little faster and so to seem them as they move across the MW as the MW moves, it almost gives it a 3D feel to me.

This is in Raw, so that is an option for sure to crop. I haven't explored that too much yet, though obviously it's not hard to do. I am guess I will start doing that and changing things up a bit more as I capture more of these.

Ha ha, it was 86 during the day. It had been almost 100 the days prior, but the temps dropped just as I got there. At night it got down into the 60's, and it still felt really warm. At about 3 am or so I finally put on a thin jacket for some warmth.

 

[Alisa]

This is my favorite that you have made so far!