Milky Way over Toadstool Hoodoos

shniks

Hi all,

Here is a photo from last night taken at Toadstool Hoodoos in Utah. The bright lights on the left are Jupiter and Saturn. The glow on the right is caused by the Mangum Fires in Kaibab Forest (GC North Rim area). Initially I was disappointed not to have a clear sky, but now feel it adds to the story.

Joel and other experts - I have a question:

I am having an issue with aligning images. I noticed that even though I used the same camera position, FL etc. for the foreground (taken at dusk) and the Milky Way (at 3 AM), when I bring them to blend, they weren't aligning. I couldn't understand why, but then realized that maybe it is happening because the foreground image is a stacked one - so obviously the dimensions of the final image are slightly different from the original. It is not just dimensions, but the image itself is transformed ever so slightly - so even if I amend the pixels of the Milky Way photo to match the foreground stacked one, I still seem to have very small issues with alignment (when looking at 100+ %). Any ideas how to fix this? I know I could just take an unstacked photo, but I prefer to stack to get the focus clarity. Here is a crop from the hoodoo on the right - notice the black line where it is not aligned. Frustrated.

Thanks for looking.

Cheers,

kdog

Wow, you're just knocking these out of the park, Nikhil. That is gorgeous!!

Are you sure the black halo isn't present on the final foreground image? There's some haloing all the way around the hoodoo which makes me think it may be an artifact from processing, maybe a local contrast adjustment. If not, then I would ask if you used the same aperture for both foreground and sky. Don't forget that focal length changes slightly with aperture changes. I don't actually understand your blending process, so cannot comment further than that. I feel your pain though, I've tediously cloned them out before when I liked the image otherwise.

David_S85

Another marvelous set of images. Looking forward to more of these.

shniks

@kdog said:
Wow, you're just knocking these out of the park, Nikhil. That is gorgeous!!

Are you sure the black halo isn't present on the final foreground image? There's some haloing all the way around the hoodoo which makes me think it may be an artifact from processing, maybe a local contrast adjustment. If not, then I would ask if you used the same aperture for both foreground and sky. Don't forget that focal length changes slightly with aperture changes. I don't actually understand your blending process, so cannot comment further than that. I feel your pain though, I've tediously cloned them out before when I liked the image otherwise.

No the black halo isn't present on the final foreground - it is the silhouetted image of the hoodoo in the MW shot. sigh - I am going crazy. I guess I will just have to not do focus stacking. At 14mm, I think an f/14 or f/16 should give acceptable sharpness (accounting for diffraction). I will go again tomorrow night and try it just as a single exposure. This thing is addictive.

@David_S85 said:
Another marvelous set of images. Looking forward to more of these.

Thanks David - it is a lot of fun. Just been staying up all night and having fun.

Cheers,

Stumblebum

Sweet capture! Bravo!