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Verdier is actually a Frenchman.

But yeah, Takatori didn't even make the Top 32. I think he was disqualified for some reason...

Zero260 wrote:Verdier is actually a Frenchman.

But yeah, Takatori didn't even make the Top 32. I think he was disqualified for some reason...

WOOPS! I missed that one out.. But in my own defense, I haven't heard of him before. So it's only natural for me to have accidentally missed his name.

Oh, that's rather disappointing. If anyone else should be disqualified, it shouldn't have been Takatori. I thought he'd breeze through easily.

This is around Red Rock, New Mexico, about 50 miles East of the Arizona/New Mexico border on I-40. The entire mesa, itself, is roughly 15 miles wide.


1.3 MB

I took these over 2 months ago, and I only just now got around to messing with them. Vignetting turned out to be a pretty major problem in the final stitched image (18 separate photos altogether), and I wasn't getting anywhere trying to fix it through trial and error. I ended taking a photo of a white card using the same camera settings and using that as a workbench to correct the vignetting, then applied the same corrections to the 18 photos to be stitched. The end result, a nice, big panorama that can be printed almost 5 feet wide at 300 DPI - just under 80 megapixels.

Hurpdurp HDR attempts. :B

Awesome shot, with the tree. HDR is a tad too strong - see banding in the low sky - but that's just effects. Subject, composition and technique are spot on. Print material.

I'm a bit sad because my K20D had to be sent in for repair. Sometimes it wouldn't turn on, which pished me off a bit because there was an opportunity and I missed it. Hopefully it'll be coming back soon.

But those shots are print material Haz.

Well, while that's happening, I've decided to put up some photos on dA as I haven't done that in ages.

Hot damn, those are pretty damn epic. O: Coconut and Curvature are very nice. Very vibrant - fits perfectly with the tropical theme.

If you don't mind me asking, what do you have your camera settings set to, as far as sharpening, colour, contrast, etc. go and what sort of post-processing do you do? My pictures never seem to be very striking in any regard straight from the camera and I end up spending a lot of time on PP.

I do all my shots in RAW so there is no processing. I process them in lightroom. These were deviantART entries so obviously there was some fooling with settings involved, but thanks for the comments.

I've only recently discovered that RAW images do not include noise reduction, sharpening, etc. Kind of dissapointing as I like to change up the white balance and such on my photos, but some of them turn out to be too noisy (ISO 1600 in RAW is pretty noisy). I'd gladly shoot in JPEG with sharpening because the in-camera sharpening is excellent, but the flaw of less PP options keeps me from doing so.

EDIT: Holy hell, 37 favorites O_O

EDIT2: The coconut photo wasn't altered much from the original shot. I just turned up the contrast and fooled with curves a little. The second photo (rays of sun) is also very similar to the stock.

Good to know. I've actually just recently started messing with Canon's Digital Photo Professional (RAW processing software that came with the camera) - I'd been using Adobe Camera RAW, before, and while that did a pretty good job and has a much wider variety of settings to change, DPP seems to be much better with noise reduction and sharpening. I haven't been out taking photos, since then, though, so results are still pending. o:

Anywho, does Pentax not have any RAW processing software?

No, there's a Pentax image processing software. It's called Pentax Photo Lab I think, I've never used it. Been with Lightroom forever and it's satisfied me. I want to give it a try, though. I've heard it's really good with noise, etc.

Stereo wrote: ..... but some of them turn out to be too noisy (ISO 1600 in RAW is pretty noisy)

That is rather logical eh? such high ISO numbers are basicly a guaranty for noisy pictures, the light sensitivity is very high, and that makes a picture noisy, only useble in the dark, and even then with the wrong light it can be very noisy.

But great pictures btw.

TheStig wrote:

Stereo wrote: ..... but some of them turn out to be too noisy (ISO 1600 in RAW is pretty noisy)

That is rather logical eh? such high ISO numbers are basicly a guaranty for noisy pictures, the light sensitivity is very high, and that makes a picture noisy, only useble in the dark, and even then with the wrong light it can be very noisy.

But great pictures btw.

What I meant was that in RAW mode, there is no in-camera noise reduction. So what you see is what you get. With JPEG, the camera can make use of noise reduction because it is processing the photo and compressing it into a JPEG format. RAW is data taken straight out of the sensor. No processing or anything.

Damn, you two are getting some great shots. Good work.

I went to Laguna Seca on Saturday for the ALMS finale. Some of the most epic racing I've ever seen. Anyway, here's a few shots from the weekend:


Feel free to flip through that album for a handful of others.

Ah yeah I saw the Speedhunters coverage of this. Some nice shots in here. I think I liked 18 best.

Stereo wrote:What I meant was that in RAW mode, there is no in-camera noise reduction. So what you see is what you get. With JPEG, the camera can make use of noise reduction because it is processing the photo and compressing it into a JPEG format. RAW is data taken straight out of the sensor. No processing or anything.

If you do shoot in RAW, though, you have the ability to change every aspect of the image that you can change in the camera and then some. If you shoot only in .JPG, you're stuck with what you've got. You can change certain things (though not as freely), but with others, such as noise reduction and sharpness settings, you're stuck; you can't turn it off, after the fact. Plus, if you do get a hold of Pentax Photo Lab, any changes you make in that should duplicate any changes able to be made in the camera exactly.

In other news, I just recently figured out that I could set custom white balances on my camera (duhr :B), and I've purchased a white balance card kit off of B&H Photo; three 2x3.5" cards (white, neutral grey and black) that I can carry around with me without any hassle.

xHaZxMaTx wrote:

Stereo wrote:What I meant was that in RAW mode, there is no in-camera noise reduction. So what you see is what you get. With JPEG, the camera can make use of noise reduction because it is processing the photo and compressing it into a JPEG format. RAW is data taken straight out of the sensor. No processing or anything.

If you do shoot in RAW, though, you have the ability to change every aspect of the image that you can change in the camera and then some. If you shoot only in .JPG, you're stuck with what you've got. You can change certain things (though not as freely), but with others, such as noise reduction and sharpness settings, you're stuck; you can't turn it off, after the fact. Plus, if you do get a hold of Pentax Photo Lab, any changes you make in that should duplicate any changes able to be made in the camera exactly.

Not necessarily. ISO speed for example, can't be changed.
Otherwise, yeah. It's just that the in-camera sharpening is so good and I haven't been able to recreate it in photoshop..

Minus exposure controls.

So get the Pentax Photo Lab and you should be able to recreate the sharpening available in the camera. o:

Edit:

55mm f/2.8 ISO100 15'00"

Nicely composed! Shame about the jolt it got at the start (or end?) of the exposure tho..

How do you get it to 15 minutes? Bulb mode?

Yeah, set it to BULB and have a locking wired shutter release (which, incidentally, was the cause of the camera moving during the first bit of the exposure, as I dropped it when going to place it on the hanging camera strap).

I actually took a 30-minute exposure centered on the North Star, but something (I have absolutely no idea what) totally effed up the final image.


(The brightness and mottled streaks of stars was caused by passing clouds.)

I asked a guy at work who's also into photography and he suggested 'lens leak', but later retracted that theory, seeing as the abnormal colouration is actually darker in some of the photos (this happened in about 4 photos, all of which being at least 30 seconds). My first thought was electromagnetic interference, but that's just a wild guess, seeing as I have almost no knowledge of how a camera sensor actually works or how it may be affected by external forces.

You're simply asking too much of your sensor. Long exposures with very little light mean the sensor must be very sensitive. This is done by applying more voltage, which makes the whole sensor more reactive to incoming light and therefore to record a brighter image. This is exactly how different 'ISO speeds' are actually implemented in digital cameras.

In doing this, you've pushed your sensor to the upper end of its operating range and beyond. In places, the sensor has been unable to remain stable and is now recording it's own high voltage inputs overlaid with the incoming light data. This generally happens most along the edges of the sensor, as you're seeing here. It's also exactly why you sometimes get noise and even brightly coloured 'pixels' in otherwise dark images when using very high 'ISO' settings.

The remedy for your astronomical imagery? Longer exposures again, but with a lower ISO setting to ensure the sensor stays 'cool'.

The ISO was set to 100. :s

Ah. Then it looks like you need a better sensor than your current cam provides.. unless it's actually faulty.

The same thing happened to three other photos and while those were, in fact, ISO 1600, they all had exposure times of only 30 seconds. I also had taken two other longer exposures (5+ minutes) at ISO 100 without any problems. In addition to all of that, the photos that do have the discolouration aren't sequential, though they are grouped fairly close together (IMG_0028, IMG_0032, IMG_0036, IMG_0037).


30" @ ISO 1600

30" @ ISO 1600

30" @ ISO 1600


8' @ ISO 100

15' @ ISO 100

The photos listed above with ISOs of 1600 and the 30-minute exposure at ISO 100 are the only photos to have this discolouration. I took plenty more photos with 30-second exposures at ISO 1600 without any such problems.