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Forum: Lens Clubs
16 Hours Ago
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Apps are available for your smartphone to convert shady sundials to actual time, corrected for daylight saving
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
16 Hours Ago
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Great work @ruben06081!
Apparently it will be at it's brightest around Anzac Day, low (about 10 degrees) above the western horizon, just on dark....may be a break in the clouds by then?
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Forum: Pentax K-3 III Monochrome
5 Days Ago
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There's a bit of a Mapplethorpe-esque lillies vibe in this thread lately.....
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
04-07-2024, 12:37 AM
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With a little.....desaturation
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
03-31-2024, 10:49 PM
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Not 100% sure on the minimum however the interval needs to be long enough to write the file. The interval is the time between the shutter being tripped on the K-3 and the next trip of the shutter (assuming the K-3 II is similar - with the Kp you get to choose "minimum" which means it will trip the shutter as soon as it finishes writing an image file). Things to be aware of and worth testing....a 15 second shutter speed is actually 16 seconds and a 30 second shutter speed is actually 32 seconds. You need to set the "interval" to give the camera time to record the image and write the file - practically, speaking this means setting 1 to 2 seconds longer than the shutter speed. Pretty sure I have set 33 seconds for a "30" second (32 seconds in reality) shutter duration on the K-3 and it has been OK. If you don't leave a long enough time to write the file, the intervalometer will try to trip the shutter and fail and then wait a full "interval" until it trips again - cue gappy star trails - you can guess how I found this out :).
Other than that, yes, the intervalometer in the camera is a one push of the shutter button operation - set it going and it will keep taking images for the number you set at the interval you set, up to 2000 IIRC. You get a little message to tell you when "Interval shooting is complete" on the LCD.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
03-31-2024, 02:19 PM
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Note that the intervalometer won't work with astrotracer because camera has to be in B mode so you'll have to just be content with similar functionality to the socanikon users and be limited to 30 second shutter, which is too long for sharp stars anyway, but good for trails. Remote will be handy to trigger the camera if you use AT and want multiple exposures.
Fumbling in the dark........night photography possibly shouldn't be a group activity?
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
03-30-2024, 02:15 PM
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This is interesting and not something I have come across before in my research. I would have thought all the stitched panoramas would be slightly different as the software made decisions about what to correct/stretch/distort and the result might be 3 panoramas of slightly different widths with the features distorted slightly differently and they would therefore be problematic to blend. I don't use photoshop but understand this has an "align layers" command or similar so perhaps this takes care of it? And to probe slightly deeper, when you get the foreground and sky sorted, you still need to mask the sky from the foreground presumably? I would assume that the LENR twilight photos would have considerably lighter sky tones than the later star/sky shots?
Claro thanks! Raid on supplies at nearby photo store completed for indexing panorama head and a levelling base.........someone mentioned this night stuff was a rabbit hole ;). Just as well I don't have a boat too!
I sort of once had a wild, random and completely unsuccessful trip down a path similar to what you do. The question was not so much about where the stars are going to be but as you work through a panorama capture, the stars move. So when the software stitches the stars, it is overlaying stars that have moved so again presuming, the software distorts the sky to make the stars line up. In one of my spectacularly unsuccessful efforts, with the time taken to move across one row and back, the sky stitch then had a gap to the horizon - sort of ruined the image :(. Obviously I need to have a much larger overlap, but then the question above about masking is probably relevant too.
That article on Lonely Speck was super useful. And John Rutter does fabulous stuff and actually lives nearby somewhere in the Hunter Valley on the east coast of Oz. I am familiar with a lot of the places he shoots - the Superman Barn is about a 3 hour drive from here, Catherine Hill bay 30 minutes. In one of his videos, he mentions shooting the rows upwards if the milky way is setting and downwards when it is rising - which makes sense as in effect it is sort of compressing the star movement.
Thanks again for sharing all this. It has helped galvanise my thinking and given me a clear direction on things to sort out before June new moon! Cheers!
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
03-28-2024, 03:55 PM
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Phew! Thanks so much for taking the time to put all this down in print!
On the planning front I'm pretty comfortable and also use Stellarium, google earth and a compass, dropping pins and calendar reminders for when the milky way core is rising/setting through the season. Single shots are OK too, I usually opt to stack 15 to 30 images in Sequator to take the chicken dance with AT out of the equation - I've noticed sometimes that Starstax does a better job of averaging the foreground FWIW - not consistently, sometimes. The DA*11-18 is wide enough and fast enough for this on APS-C - but it'll be the Sigma 18-35 for any pano action.
Something I have seen in videos and your methods include is the shooting the foreground in the twilight so I will need to get this into my routine. For me, foregrounds are often murky, noisy and not particularly sharp irrespective of the exposure unless doing a bit of light painting to blend this in. At the moment, the Milky way core is rising at about midnight, sunset is just before 7 pm, that's a long wait....but in June and July it will be a much smaller gap, and a relatively small gap also between milky way core setting and dawn.
2nd takeaway is the indexing panoramic head - I have been chewing this over for a while, along with taking the time to get the tripod head level (more patience needed by this grasshopper). I have probably been giving stitching software a major challenge as I send it another batch of wobbly and skewed images to put together, resulting in curved and misaligned horizons - too much faith in the software engineers perhaps (;) - present correspondent excluded of course)? Also guilty of not providing enough around the edges so I need to address this as the losses are substantial with the rectilinear stitching corrections so another good tip on the extra frames.
Interesting on the use of AT up to 40 seconds - never considered this before, but I am surmising that in the context of a large panorama, the smearing of the foreground is reduced by the multitude of frames and ultimate downscaling. Possibly exposure times would need to be reduced slightly for APS-C for "tolerable" smearing? The other advantage I guess is the lower ISO and improved DR - typically I would be at ISO1600 or higher for stacking. Worthy of experiment along with the AT 2 half tracking mode on the K3-3 - more T&E to come I guess :).
So a couple of follow up questions?
1. You are just using the tripod head to elevate the shooting angle? So your set up is the tripod head on top of the panoramic head - level the tripod, indexed pano for the foreground L to R, elevate camera and reset at left edge, shoot the sky first row left to right, repeat for 3rd row if required....yes? Or is there a tilting plate or some such in the setup?
2. You are shooting the foreground 3 times with LENR if I understand correctly? Do you blend them all, or make a couple of pano's for the foreground and select the best based on colour balance, other factors? Can you clarify what's behind this?
3. Do you have any issues with the movement of the stars impacting the width/height of the sky pano part or does using an indexing panoramic head essentially keep the horizontal scales relatively consistent after stitching each row?
Thanks again for the information and taking the time to share all this experience. Much appreciated!
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
03-27-2024, 12:46 PM
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Interested to hear your approach to the panoramas and stitching in postpro. I am planning a trip to central australia (a bit like yours, a long drive) and have a couple of targets (Chambers Pillar and Rainbow Valley) in mind. In June and July downunder we get the rising Milky way core early in the night and setting milkyway core and arch early morning for the new moon in June and July giving east and west options for framing a nightscape.
If you could share, be very interested in a quick outline of your capture and postpro approach to the stitched panos?
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Forum: Pentax KP
03-22-2024, 10:12 PM
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The planes spend most of their time at relatively low altitude over the ocean and the steep hills along the Newcastle coast means you are often about level with the aircraft. All taken with the DA*300 on the Kp (with a bit of cropping). The F-35A was doing it's thing while I was trying to find a carpark :(
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Forum: Lens Clubs
03-22-2024, 04:13 AM
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
03-22-2024, 04:09 AM
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e) All of the above. Get a couple more bodies and tripods and get real busy when you are out there :D
Or, get 3) in the bag and then follow up with the more adventurous but risky (from the same location), 1) or 2)? (says I with an every increasing list of nightscape panorama stitching fails :()
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
03-06-2024, 12:44 PM
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I would like to nominate this photo
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Forum: Winners' Showcase
03-06-2024, 12:43 PM
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I would like to nominate this photo
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
03-06-2024, 12:43 PM
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I would like to nominate this photo
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
03-06-2024, 12:42 PM
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I would like to nominate this photo
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
03-06-2024, 12:42 PM
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I would like to nominate this photo
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Forum: General Talk
02-16-2024, 12:57 PM
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:lol: I don't qualify as a Novacastrian, only been here about 8 years. Pretty sure you need to be a lifer?
Always made me laugh when Melbourne was voted "most liveable city" by it's own residents. Presumbably the voters had never lived anywhere else?
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Forum: General Talk
02-13-2024, 04:31 AM
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This thread needs a coffee to get it started again.......and we found one!
It's the imaginitively named "Italian Espresso" (Hey oh, Galileo - whatever that means) from Sprocket Roasters in Australia's coffee capital, Newcastle (sorry Melbourne, you're so yesterday). Very pleasant!
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
02-10-2024, 01:57 PM
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Not that interesting but I wanted to see what happens when the image composition adjustment with the sensor was used to the maximum in all 4 directions. This is 4 images stitched, all maximum sensor shifted by +/-24 on a K-3, up/left, up/right, down/right, down/left then stitched. The image ends up at 6741x4722 pixels (31.8 mp) and of course stitches nicely (moving scenery excepted) as there is no camera or lens movement. For comparison, the edge of the unshifted 0,0 image ends up just including the red light on the right hand side.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
01-27-2024, 02:20 AM
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3 x landscape stitched with the DA*55 on the K-3
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Forum: General Talk
01-26-2024, 11:17 PM
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Roughly, $4 K of fuel per year for the camry and "free" electricity to recharge the Tesla then ..... if all the other running costs are the same for the 6 years? Probably in the ball park? With the Tesla, you're probably up for a new battery within 2 to 4 years (after the 6 break even) depending on your tolerance for dropping range? So there's a bill of $20 k plus on the horizon. Be iinterested to know what the Youtuber said about market value of the Camry vs the Tesla at 8 years?
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