Starry, Starry Night ... at the Hoodoos

shniks

Another fabulous night shooting the stars at Toadstool Hoodoos. Here we have a 2 hour exposure, showing the star trails over the hoodoos. Two exposures - one for the foreground at dusk and a second one for the star trails. Nikon D850 and the Nikon 14-24mm lens @ 14mm.

UPDATE: I got a chance to go back to the Hoodoos yesterday and dialed in the exposure this time around - this came out much better with the color showing up. I have replaced the original photo with the new version.

Thanks for looking.

Cheers,

David_S85

Dang! You're on fire with these images lately.

Stumblebum

Its nice! I think its caught between b&w and color. I would just go b&w to make things simple. JMO. Cheers!

shniks

@Stumblebum said:
Its nice! I think its caught between b&w and color. I would just go b&w to make things simple. JMO. Cheers!

Yeah! The issue is that there were just too many stars and I had to reduce the brightness to just get it to look like this. What do you think I can do? Maybe not stack it for the full 3 hours? I could do it for an hour - that might make it look better. I am not sure about this one.

Cheers,

Stumblebum

Yeah, I came to conclusion maybe 20-30 minutes is enough for stacking. Still experimenting with it.......

Cavalier

Oh, now you're just showing off. You do wonders with night exposures and star trails.

kdog

If you reduce the exposure on the sky then you'll get fewer stars trailing and better definition. Also, you'll get more color out of them because they're not overexposed. You can see the color in the top corners of the image in the vignetted areas.

shniks

@kdog said:
If you reduce the exposure on the sky then you'll get fewer stars trailing and better definition. Also, you'll get more color out of them because they're not overexposed. You can see the color in the top corners of the image in the vignetted areas.

Should I also reduce the stacking time? Instead of 390 images for 3+ hours, do maybe like 75 or so? So the color is not there due to them being overexposed? I have the RAW files too, but just can't work with those as my computer (Macbook Pro), couldn't handle the Tiffs. Can I play with exposure using JPEGs (I shot RAW + JPEG)?

Cheers,

Nikhil

shniks

@Stumblebum said:
Yeah, I came to conclusion maybe 20-30 minutes is enough for stacking. Still experimenting with it.......

I will try it out today and see how it goes. I have the RAW files too, but didn't realize how much time it takes. I started to process the files to TIFFs and the Macbook Pro couldn't handle it. So now I guess I will just have to make do with the JPEGs.

@Cavalier said:
Oh, now you're just showing off. You do wonders with night exposures and star trails.

Thanks much - appreciate it. Although I am not happy with these as they have lost the color (as pointed out by others). Need to fix that.

Cheers,

shniks

@Stumblebum said:
Its nice! I think its caught between b&w and color. I would just go b&w to make things simple. JMO. Cheers!

I managed to go back last night with another photographer and dialed in the ISO (kept it at 1000 instead of 3200). It came out much better with the color showing. I replaced the OP with the updated pic.

Cheers,

Stumblebum

Working hard! Its lovely! Bring us more!