Goblin Pics

[Basil]

I drove up the road 20 miles and found a spot with minimal cell phone coverage. I will try to post a couple of pictures here. Fingers crossed.

The forecast I had was for clear skies tonight but it does not look like that’s going to happen without a miracle. Right now there’s a lot of clouds in the sky and especially in the direction of the Milky Way.

If it does not clear up by about 8 PM I will probably just call it a bust. In the mean, Here are a couple of pictures from around this area. (Scaling down due to crappy

 

[DrEntropy]

Sorry to hear about the poor night conditions.

Very cool! In that first shot, are folks CAMPING there?!?
The other three are some incredible geologic pix. Fourth one... rounded rocks. Glacial activity? Water erosion? Crazy stuff no matter the reason.

Thanks for the effort!

 

[Basil]

Good news! Like magic, by the time the Milky Way was visible (after nautical twilight), the sky had cleared up. I “think” I got some good shots but need to get home and process them.

 

[DrEntropy]

Great news! Lookin' forward to seeing the results.

 

[Basil]

I'm home! 11 hour drive! I'm beat. Won't mess with the pics till I get some rest,.

 

[Basil]

Still working on m y post processing, but this is an example. Have some cleanup and additional processing to do. This is Wild Horse Bluff at night (It was so dark out I could not see my hand in front of my face, but this is 25sec exposure..

 

[GregW]

That's pretty cool. What is going on in the lower right? It looks like the photo was printed on canvas.

 

[Basil]

That's pretty cool. What is going on in the lower right? It looks like the photo was printed on canvas.

This is a composite of 20 images stacked (all from exactly the same location and with same exposure settings. I'm trying to figure out what caused that weird checker pattern so I can correct it, Not sure yet what caused it, but has something to do with the stacking process I'm guessing.

 

[DrEntropy]

Could it be a similar effect to the way a Moire pattern is created by overlapping images? IOW, the pixels of the 20 images overlaid may "add up" to a pattern like that?

The image is amazing in any event.

 

[Basil]

Could it be a similar effect to the way a Moire pattern is created by overlapping images? IOW, the pixels of the 20 images overlaid may "add up" to a pattern like that?

The image is amazing in any event.

Thanks/ It could be something like that, but I’m hoping I can figure out how to stack the images and not have that happen

 

[GregW]

If you look at the stars, that may hold a clue. They seem to be longer horizontally. Except for the upper left where they are comma shaped. It could be camera movement, did you have the mirror set up to eliminate slap? Does reducing the number in the stack help? I would guess you've thought of these since you've done this more than me, just throwing ideas out there.

 

[Basil]

The stars have slight trails due to the long exposure and the slight comma shapes in the corners are normal abberation for this lens. No I did not use mirror lockup but not sure how that woud cause such a weird pattern. Thanks for the ideas, and not ruling anythign out. I have not tried reducing the number of stacked images - maybe I'll give that a try.

 

[GregW]

No I did not use mirror lockup but not sure how that would cause such a weird pattern.

My thought was if the camera moved from mirror slap at say #15, that might confuse the stacking program (if you were using auto align).

 

[Basil]

My thought was if the camera moved from mirror slap at say #15, that might confuse the stacking program (if you were using auto align).

Not an implausible theory. I might try splitting the photos into 2 groups of 10 and stacking each separately and see of the problem persists on both sets or only on one set.

 

[DrEntropy]

Okay, I'm an absolute babe-in-the-woods where it comes to the post-processing of digital images. But would not the foreground be more susceptible to changing its "location" in the 20 images than the middle (rock formation) or background (stars)? i.e. even with a wide-angle lens (and I'm guessing a 24mm here) the objects closest to the focal plane would be shifted more out of alignment than the more distant ones.

Again, just a WAG as to the cause of the foreground pattern.

EDIT: And I suspect a ten image overlay will either have the issue with all ten in each layered image (to a lesser extent) or no pattern. Not one of each.

 

[Basil]

Well, you know the old saying, when all else fails, RTFF (read the freakin' manual). In the "FAQ" section, there was a section "Why does my stacked image have a checker board or distorted checker board artifact?" Turns out the problem was that I had applied "Lens Correction" in Lightroom prior to exporting the images was TIFF files for the stacker program. Apparently that is not recommended as the process of applying the lens correction introduced these weird artifacts that are compounded when the images are stacked. The solution is to export the images without any lens correction in Lightroom, then apply that, if needed, to the final stacked image. Here is the result of my second attempt (with some additional Lightroom processing.

 

[GregW]

That's the ticket!

 

[Basil]

That's the ticket!

Milky Way pictures are fun to take except for the part where you're standing out in the pitch dark alone wondering what critters are watching you LOL!

 

[DrEntropy]

Striking and stunning difference! Congrats on the shot. It deserves to be printed large and framed for display. Effort rewarded!

Milky Way pictures are fun to take except for the part where you're standing out in the pitch dark alone wondering what critters are watching you LOL!

Good pair o' boots for th' ground dwellers and a sidearm for the ones with furry legs?!?