Alkali Lake

byoshi

Last set from my recent trip to Mammoth lakes. Never been to the Alkali lake/Benton crossing area but it so close so I decided to check it out. Makes for some great 360 degree views.















Thats all for now, hope you enjoyed them.

kdog

Some really excellent star photography here, Brandon. I also really like those first two sunset shots of the mountains. Looks like a great location. Really nice work.

David_S85

Whoa! Those are all nice. The third posted shot just rocks! Living around Chicago, I can only dream of dark skies like those.

I. Must. Do. More. Road. Trips.

joe-bob

Wow! Your night sky photographs are stunning. The Milky Way is so bright and clear.

Alpha_Plus

Nice photos. I especially love the first pano shot during daylight! Top effort..

Stumblebum

You make it look easy! Can you give some info regarding the gear, exposure, and time of the night.....basically how the hell did you get these shots? Would like to replicate one of them! Remember....imitation is the greatest form of flattery....

byoshi

Stumblebum wrote: »

You make it look easy! Can you give some info regarding the gear, exposure, and time of the night.....basically how the hell did you get these shots? Would like to replicate one of them! Remember....imitation is the greatest form of flattery....

I assume you are talking about the star ones? All taken with the Nikon D7000 and Tokina 11-16mm. Each individual shot was taken at 30 secs, f/3.5, ISO-1600, matrix metered. These shots were taken around 1.5 hours before sunrise. As the sun gets close to rising, it washes out a lot of the stars so I made it a point to come early. You can use programs like Stellarium to see where certain points of interest in the sky will be at what time but I knew that the Milky way was going to be facing this way from seeing it the morning before at Convict lake. Also, depending on the season, it may be better to see the Milky Way after dusk as opposed to before dawn.

If you read reviews on how to take these shots, they all recommend shooting with a fast lens wide open to capture as much light as possible in the given timeframe since the camera will pick up much much more than your eye can see. The Tokina opens up to f/2.8 but I left myself a little room for error. There are also things like the rule of 600 where the maximum shutter speed should be 600/focal length but I took some 60-70 sec ones at Convict lake and could see some streaking, so decided to keep shutter to 30 secs max.

Test shots are a must since you can't see anything out there. I didn't have any foreground elements in the shot so I set the focus to infinity and took a test shot with the noise reduction off. If it's too dark/bright I just adjust the ISO until it looks decent. Then once I have the right exposure and comp, I turn on the noise reduction and take some shots.

Processed them in photoshop CS5, adjusted the curves, levels, and exposure to make the sky pop more. Used Topaz DeNoise plug in to help reduce a bit of the noise.

Foreground came out a bit dark in these, but I like how the light pollution kinda lights the Sierras. I think next time I will try multiple exposures, one for the stars and one for the foreground element and try blending them later.

Felt like I rambled a bit, but I hope that helped. Let me know if you have additional questions.

JTB-DC

These are all beautiful, I like 3 an 4 the best. Have tried a little of the night stuff with my tokina 11-16, but have gotten nothing close to these results! Very sweet.

Stumblebum

byoshi wrote: »

I assume you are talking about the star ones? All taken with the Nikon D7000 and Tokina 11-16mm. Each individual shot was taken at 30 secs, f/3.5, ISO-1600, matrix metered. These shots were taken around 1.5 hours before sunrise. As the sun gets close to rising, it washes out a lot of the stars so I made it a point to come early. You can use programs like Stellarium to see where certain points of interest in the sky will be at what time but I knew that the Milky way was going to be facing this way from seeing it the morning before at Convict lake. Also, depending on the season, it may be better to see the Milky Way after dusk as opposed to before dawn.

If you read reviews on how to take these shots, they all recommend shooting with a fast lens wide open to capture as much light as possible in the given timeframe since the camera will pick up much much more than your eye can see. The Tokina opens up to f/2.8 but I left myself a little room for error. There are also things like the rule of 600 where the maximum shutter speed should be 600/focal length but I took some 60-70 sec ones at Convict lake and could see some streaking, so decided to keep shutter to 30 secs max.

Test shots are a must since you can't see anything out there. I didn't have any foreground elements in the shot so I set the focus to infinity and took a test shot with the noise reduction off. If it's too dark/bright I just adjust the ISO until it looks decent. Then once I have the right exposure and comp, I turn on the noise reduction and take some shots.

Processed them in photoshop CS5, adjusted the curves, levels, and exposure to make the sky pop more. Used Topaz DeNoise plug in to help reduce a bit of the noise.

Foreground came out a bit dark in these, but I like how the light pollution kinda lights the Sierras. I think next time I will try multiple exposures, one for the stars and one for the foreground element and try blending them later.

Felt like I rambled a bit, but I hope that helped. Let me know if you have additional questions.

THANKYOU!!!