I've been exploring the K-1 and night photography lately. This set was
shot in the same place, on two different nights. The first night there
was a half moon that had risen a couple hours previously, the second
night there was no light from the moon, but a lot more light from hwy 17
lighting the foreground. They were actually two nights apart, it's just
that the first night was after midnight so the dates only show one day
difference:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/sets/72157670122716326
If you look at the exif data:
http://www.fluidr.com/photos/ellarsee/sets/72157670122716326
By way of comparison, here are some photos taken with the K20 at the
same spot, late at night. The mists made the scene a bit more photogenic.
http://www.fluidr.com/photos/ellarsee/albums/72157625430541230
You will see that after post processing it is nearly impossible to tell
apart two shots with the same exposure apart from ISO. I don't know why
I can see the milky way in the first set, but not the second set,
perhaps it hadn't moved into the scene yet because that is exactly the
opposite of what I expected.
On one hand, this means that if your post processing software could
handle it, you could shoot at base ISO all of the time, and almost never
clip your highlights. However, since lightroom does not handle more
than 5EV gracefully, there is also little to no downside to pushing the
ISO hard enough to see what you need to see (so long as you don't clip
highlights).
I was shooting way under exposed last night so as not to blow out the
colored lights behind the band I was shooting. The problem was that the
people in the foreground were so dark, I couldn't see anything useful on
the display.
I would love to see a paradigm shift in cameras used by people who shoot
in raw. The ability to always shoot at base ISO (not the requirement,
but the ability), and to have an equivalent to ISO control, simply
control the brightness of the preview jpeg. Ideally, being able to
adjust it in camera while you're looking at it.
The histogram would, of course, report the raw data, ideally also
showing a number with the percentage of clipped pixels in each channel.
I'd love to see some sort of number showing SNR in the shadows as well.
The only photos of any artistic merit are the ones of the fir trees at
the end. They were well lit by the headlights on the hwy. There are
some weird effects where they have more illumination in some shots than
others. It may have something to do with traffic patterns, though it
didn't seem to vary that much over 20 second time spans at the time.
For people who know the area, I took the bear creek / Black Road exit,
and doubled back to Montevina road. I parked at a little pullout there
and walked a hundred yards/meters or so back towards the exit to get a
better view of the lagoon.
BTW, I'm still waiting for a chance to try my luck with M31. I haven't
had both a clear view of it and a long lens. It seems to be rising
pretty late at night, usually after the moon.
--
Larry Colen l...@red4est.com (postbox on min4est) http://red4est.com/lrc
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