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The Astro Photographer craves the night - and not just any night - they desire the lowest of low lights. They search out dark skies, requiring moonless cloudless evenings far away from cities and light pollution. Huddled alone in the dark with camera pointed up into the vastness of the universe seeking out those faint points of light in the skies

and if you look closely you can play spot Suren...



A stitched panorama consisting of six fisheye frames shot at 25 sec @ f/2.8 and ISO 3200

Amazing image. A comp winner.

Matt. K wrote:Amazing image. A comp winner.

Thanks Matt - lets hope so - I just entered it in the monthly SMH/Fairfax Clique competition (this months topic is "Dusk to Dawn: Low Light Photography")

Superb! I just cannot figure out how you managed to keep Surenj still for that long.

Absolutely outstanding. Having suren in there is just the icing on the cake. Forget potw...this is poty


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I am enjoying the view very much,excellent work Rodney (as usual).

The inclusion of the human element provides another dimension.

Did you use a pano head to assist with the alignment?

zafra52 wrote:Superb! I just cannot figure out how you managed to keep Surenj still for that long.

Actually he's not super sharp really if you zoom in - but he was taking his own long exposures so was probably sitting stillish watching his own gear

Geoff M wrote:The inclusion of the human element provides another dimension.
Did you use a pano head to assist with the alignment?

Thanks Geoff - I was hoping so (although my wife did say - why do you have that person in the image )
On the pano head - I wish - actually I couldn't really see anything through the viewfinder so I just randomly winged it (both on the how much to angle up and how far to rotate - and since I didn't have the tripod or anything level I actually had to readjust the whole framing of the ballhead and camera for each shot -I was just hoping I was overlapping enough (or at all ) - with a fisheye that's hopefully reasonably easy and it turned out pretty consistent in the end. To be honest I wished I'd angled up a little bit more
Gerry's version of this scene is much better in that regard (and his is a lot sharper too - esp up the top)

Wow, I love it. Excellent job.

You did do well without a pano head. I assume the six images were shot vertically (portrait orientation)?

I have just ordered myself a Nodal Ninja pano head which should be here by the weekend.


Geoff

Nice one Rodney, the wow factor is definitely there with the only negative aspect being the tightness on the top of the frame.
I do like how you made good use of the 4wd tracks.

Absolutely agree about POTY, this is a great shot. But I must also agree with Rodney's wife, i don't think the human element is strong enough in the image to have an impact, I would much rather crop the image just to the right of Surenj.

I don't think cropping would help. I like the balance as it it. One thing I would definitely do is to get rid of the two small lights at the top of the tripod.

I also wonder whether a slightly darker foreground might improve it.

You used a 15mm lens but the Nikon fisheyes are 16mm. Is it an ultrawide or third party fisheye, perhaps a Sigma?

You did well to be able to take it hand held at such a wide angle and blend it successfully without using a pano setup. Maybe the nodal point is pretty far back in the lens.

Murray Foote wrote:You used a 15mm lens but the Nikon fisheyes are 16mm. Is it an ultrawide or third party fisheye, perhaps a Sigma?

You did well to be able to take it hand held at such a wide angle and blend it successfully without using a pano setup. Maybe the nodal point is pretty far back in the lens.

Thanks Murray - yep it's the Sigma 15mm fisheye

I've not ever used a nodal rail setup but to be frank except in exceptional cases where objects are really really close to the lens (differs based on focal length) I personally can't see the value of using such a setup (I'm sure it's better but software seems to be really freaking good in a fully automated way thsee days) - I've never really had much of a problem with stitching based on not rotating around the nodal point. It's only really affected me when I've got things really close (e.g. < 50cm when shooting at 24mm or less)