LEARNING TO PHOTOGRAPH THE SEA OF STARS - ASTRO PHOTOGRAPHY WITH A TWIST
For most of our short summer we spend our free weekend time as a family sailing on Georgian Bay to quiet overnight anchorages. Away from the city lights, we are able to see the stars very clearly. I have been trying to capture our experience of the beautiful night sky for a few years now. It is a tricky thing. When you are on a boat - there is so much movement. Wind and waves make it difficult to get a solid platform on which to shoot. The conditions are usually anything but ideal.
Occasionally we get a windless, waveless & moonless, clear night - as we did this past weekend. You could say the “stars aligned.” I waited until everyone had gone to bed (people moving rocks the boat too) and then set up to experiment.
The last time I tried this I missed the focus completely in the dark and the images came out soft. But I noticed in those first images that if I shot directly up the mast, the stars appeared to rotate around it. I guessed that it had something to do with our rotation on the anchor line… but that didn’t quiet make sense… so I thought I would try it out again to see if the same thing would happen. It did. And I still don’t know why. If you have any ideas or explanations (physics was never my thing) please let me know.
I usually only share images I consider to be portfolio pieces. This one is not one. But I'm hoping that by sharing it you might be able to help me.
My main complaint is the noise. I don't like the noise which came as a result of using a high ISO and long shutter speed. As you can see from the processing notes below I used both Lightroom and Noiseware Pro filter in Photoshop to try and reduce it. I am not a fan of the way noise reduction makes the mast look “plastic.” I'd rather not have to do any noise reduction work. Not sure how to solve that problem - better camera? different settings? Maybe I could take a series of images and stack them instead of doing a long exposure to get the star trails. If anyone has suggestions I am all ears - leave me a comment below
So while it's not technically well done, I think the subject matter resonates. One step closer on the journey to getting an image that captures the real beauty we feel so lucky to witness on our family sailing trips.
TECH DETAILS:
Nikon D700
14-24mm Nikon Lens
ISO 1600
14mm
f/2.8
25.0 sec
PROCESSING:
Lightroom:
- exposure adjusted
- white balance set to Fluorescent
- Dehaze tool used to get rid of some of the haze (it was a humid and hazy night)
- Luminance smoothing, detail and contrast adjusted
- Highlights, shadows, white and black clipping & clarity adjusted
- Colour noise reduction and smoothing
- Vignetting added
Photoshop:
- Color Efex Pro - pro contrast (dynamic) added & lighten/darken center added
- Noiseware Pro - nightscene noise reduction filter added