Moonbow

[ravncat]

Image info.
340 am. Tripod - cable release. Manual Focus.
Nikon D700. 20mm 2.8 af-d
30 seconds. Iso 800. F2.8



I had a tougher time balancing the exposure here than usual, for several reasons. I probably should have exposed to the right, because the image has a smaller dynamic range than my sensor, which is helpful. Here's what I wanted.

Falls and moonbow visible, Stars and Saturn still. As much in focus as I could. Night-feeling.

As a result, I used a wide angle to fit everything in as well as I could. I had a hard time composing to keep the sky visible, and ended up with other exposures that focused on less. (And dealing with the fact that it was incredibly dark. I do have some shots with a 24 1.4 wide open - that was very hard to focus at night - AF couldn't be used.

More aperture would have been preferable but would have caused an increase to exposure. The added depth of field and focus would have been useful.

More time and I would have had to resort to counting time manually - I didn't have a watch with me "doh". Also more time would have increased the star trail length - which I wanted to keep down to give a still feeling in the sky

More iso and the long exposure would've produced more noise and more hotpixels. 800 was already pushing it quite a bit.

More exposure was wanted in order to minimize noise and give me more room to work in post - but it really just wasn't quite where I wanted.

This seems to have been an ok compromise, but I am not sure it was the best one. Unfortunately, I only had two nights to shoot and the second night was not as good. With a limited time with the moon in the right position, I had about an hour and a half to shoot.

So - questions - What do you think compositionally? Cropping?

Would you have done something different with exposure? Should I have abandoned my wishes and gone for startrails, and stuck to low ISO with greater aperture and a much longer exposure (guessed by counting?) (perhaps I need to just buy a more complex remote trigger that has a timer function)

How's the nighttime feel? should this image be brighter? More contrast? less?

Any other tips, advice, comments?

[ik631]

I'm not an expert so I'm only going to speak to thing I know. The combination of stars and a rainbow was sort of confusing. It looked more like sunset/sunrise than night. The stars looked out of place. You just don't expect to see a rainbow and stars in the same place.

If you darken up the sky a bit it might work a bit better but like I said I'm not an expert and can't tell you how to do that.

As for cropping I'd cut more of the sky and the left up to where those ugly lights are so the waterfall and the rainbow become more of the focus of the pic.

It is an interesting effect. I would bet you could boost your ISO to 1600 without too much noise to reduce the star trails and darken the sky naturally.

Was the gorge lit by artificial lights??

[ravncat]

Yeah - darkening the sky helps to make it more nightime. I may just darken out the ugly lights - or clone them out. They are in the way - couldn't see them through the viewfinder at the time. Unfortunately, with the length of exposure 1600 really starts to impact the image at 30 seconds...

I'll try that kind of crop and see. The gorge was not light by artificial lights at that time - instead, it was a combination of moonlight (which the divide is clearly visible) and there were ugly streetlights off to the left of the image - they provided the orange glow - so it's a mixed lit scene - with almost no visible light from those artificial lights on the gorge to the naked eye - only after a much longer exposure do they show up, if you head over to my SYS shots - you can really see the effect of the artificial lights. The lights in the scene were off - and the moonbow would've been invisible later. This image is just the best combination of the stars, moonbow and waterfall elements that I have - I like some of the other images better - but I do want to work with this one. thanks for the advice.

[ravncat]

A better attempt perhaps - but maybe a bit too heavy handed on the noise reduction
Just a new runthrough conversion and then some photoshop to try and further get the image where I want it to be.

[Doug Sundseth]

I like the re-edit a lot. Now it looks like night, the colors are nicely saturated, and the 'bow shows up quite nicely. You'll have to decide about the noise reduction, but at this resolution, it doesn't look bad at all.

Very nice shot.

[Anders]

Hi ravncat !

re-edit is a lot better, but you have a problem with your composition.. The image feels a lot like you tried to get everything in the shot, just like you said you did.. There's no focal point and because of that it just feels like a snapshot..
This is not something i think you can correct in this shot, but something you should think about another time when you are out shooting..
When it comes to composition; less is usually more.. Meaning you should only have the rainbow or only the waterfall.. Or if you really want both in the shot, you would need to find an angle where the moonbow will be much much closer to the waterfall, ideally comletely in front of the waterfall..

As of shooting in the night i don't have any experience with that, so i can't help you much.. But what I would do is maybe light up the foreground somehow either in post or with a flashlight..

But good job capturing the moonbow, I didn't even know those things existed, pretty cool !

Cheers
Anders

[ravncat]

Doug Sundseth - Thanks

Anders - I agree with you. I'm not sure 3 things is too many elements for composition, but I do agree they're a bit seperated here - with that extra space in the middle. Though, I like the compositions balance better than just about any of the other compositions I tried with the three elements giving a nice view of the waterfall. To get them closer, and have a side view of the waterfall - I need to be there at a different time, when the moon is at a different angle - actually nearer to the lunar standstill, I think. (when the moon is beyond the suns position in setting) which happens 1x every 18.6 years). (and it will have to be a clear night) I went there 5 nights in a row and only saw it that bright once. So - i'm certainly glad that I caught it. I'll see if I can get back there to do a better job.

As for other compositions, I haven't reprocessed them yet - but check out my shots in the SYS section - and you'll see why I agree with you - I think. The most trouble I had was in not really being able to see (or perhaps visualize) how the background was going to be affected by the long exposure. I'm definitely getting ideas for how to better do this, so thanks for the comment.

I'm curious though - why do you think lighting the foreground would help? I'm envisioning it looking odd as brighter than the rest of the image, without a real focal point. I'd like to understand what you're thinking a bit better.

[Anders]

Wow, that's not very often

No 3 things is not too much, not if they are organized in a good way; but it's harder to do the more elements you have..
The reason I would lighten the foreground is simply to have a foreground element to give depth to the picture.. But not a lot more than you have now, just a tad..

Another thing I thought about is you should brighten the sky just a little bit.. Right now the light from the moon looks like it's comming from an artificial light source, and the reason is that if there's no artificial light the sky will always be bighter than the ground.. Maybe also try too cool down the WB a tad, the light is looking a tiny bit yellow...

Cheers,
Anders

P.S. I like the compositions in your SYS images a lot more, especially the first one though the bright sign is a little distracting..

[ravncat]

Thanks again Anders.
I see now why you would lighten the foreground. It's weird for me to not see the light from the moon as naturally there - because of the landscape and that I was there - it doesn't look artificial to me, but I can see how it can. I'll have to work on this more. It's tough to capture, and it's tough to really, "represent". There's probably a better balance in the sky somewhere. Problem was a bright sky made the image harder to reconcile, I think.

Yeah - the signs - I wished it weren't there myself - I'll likely clone it out - I ended up making that a portrait shot for my young cousins who came with me to see the moon bow - so we three posed infront of it. It looked worse with my jacket hanging on it...

[ravncat]

And yet a little different - slightly different crop, different raw conversion - sky might be too bright.