Galactic Cliffs
A few weeks ago I held a small group workshop in Acadia, and while one of my attendees was shooting a panorama on Boulder Beach, I tried out my new Sigma 50mm f/1.4 Art lens aimed at Otter Cliffs. This lens is amazingly sharp even at f/1.4, and coma distortion of the stars in the corners and edges isn't terrible at f/1.4 but it is better at f/2. But to get the most light in I stuck with f/1.4 and decided to live with the "flying saucer" effect that it causes to the brighter stars near the edge of the frame. As far as I can tell, this 50mm lens has the least amount of coma distortion on the market at f/1.4. With 50mm you get star trails pretty fast, so I limited my exposures to 3 seconds, and used star stacking to take multiple exposures of the sky to reduce noise in software.
This was also an accidental exercise in ETTR, exposing to the right, at a very high ISO and seeing that it was very usable. I accidentally left the ISO at 12,800 for a 4 minute foreground exposure at f/2, which blew out the sky and while the foreground looked very overexposed it was perfectly in tact without being blown out. In digital photography, the brighter the exposure, the less noise you'll have, even at high ISOs. This is just the way electronic cameras work, essentially raw files have more bits available to represent brighter tones. A very bright "overexposed" shot at ISO 12,800 can in fact have a very similar noise result as a "well exposed" (darker) shot at ISO 3200. It's all too much to explain here, but if you look up Expose To The Right, you'll learn all about the technique. In this case, I also had an ISO 3200 shot to compare to. The ISO 12,800 shot was at f/2 for 4 minutes, and the ISO 3200 shot was at f/1.4 for 2 minutes, so the 12,800 shot was a full 2 stops brighter than the 3200 shot. Comparing them side by side in Lightroom, with the 3200 shot brightened 2 stops, I can see that the 12,800 shot is just as clean as the 3200 shot, and of course it's sharper with more in focus because it was at f/2.
Nikon D810A with Sigma 50mm f/1.4 Art lens. Total of 11 exposures, 10 for the sky at f/1.4, ISO 12,800, for 3 seconds each, blended with Starry Landscape Stacker on the Mac for pinpoint stars and low noise. The foreground is from a single ISO 12,800 shot at 4 minutes and f/2.
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Tags: acadia acadia national park boulder beach ice maine milky way new england night otter cliffs seacoast stars winter
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Aurora Over Frozen Jordan Pond
I recently held a small private group workshop in Acadia and we were lucky enough to not only get crystal clear skies the first night but to also be treated to a display of the Northern Lights! For one of the clients it was his first time seeing the Northern Lights, always an amazing experience even though we couldn't see the color with our naked eyes. Due to the limitations of human vision, if the aurora isn't strong enough (or you're not far enough north) then it isn't bright enough to overcome our inability to see color in the dark. Instead we saw a white glow. We could see a faint pale white glow behind The Bubbles, and the spikes going up into the sky looked kind of like white search lights to us. But the camera has no such limitations and easily captured the colors.
Nikon D810A and Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens @ 14mm and f/2.8. This is a blend of 5 exposures. 1 exposure for the sky at ISO 10,000 for 8 seconds, and 4 exposures at ISO 3200 for 60 seconds taken at different focus distances to get the entire scene in focus.
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Tags: acadia acadia national park aurora aurora borealis ice jordan pond maine new england night northern lights stars the bubbles winter
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Winter Milky Way Panorama From Otter Cliffs
Maine
The Milky Way arcs over the Atlantic Ocean as twilight approaches, as seen from the cliffs of Acadia. Astronomical twilight was starting when I took the shots for this panorama, which is why the sky is brighter and much more blue than a middle-of-the-night dark sky. This was a tricky shot to edit because I made the mistake of taking my camera inside overnight and letting it warm up, so that when I took it out in the 5 degree weather (sub zero with windchill) the inside of the lens (the worst place) had condensation and there wasn't much I could do to get rid of it, my heater wasn't doing much in that cold weather. Fortunately the condensation was only on the center of the lens, so the edges of each shot were fog-free. The result was that every shot had a foggy center, so after stitching the panorama there were a bunch of foggy spots spaced out on the horizon. I fixed those spots through the tedious work of manually aligning the edges of some shots where the areas I needed weren't fogged, warping the shots to fit the panorama (wide angle lens distortion is pretty serious at 14mm) and blending in just what was needed to get rid of the fogged areas.
Nikon D810A, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens @ 14mm, f/2.8. 10 vertical shots at ISO 10,000 for 20 seconds each, 30 degrees of panning between each shot, stitched in Photoshop.
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Tags: acadia acadia national park light pollution maine milky way new england night otter cliffs panorama snow stars winter
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Fresh Snow and Milky Way Moonrise at Boulder Beach
Acadia National Park, Maine
It's that time of year again! Milky Way season has arrived in the northeast and I was lucky enough to not only have clear skies on the very first night of the season but to also have fresh snow in Acadia! It snowed all day the day before this shot, and the storm didn't clear out until late at night, leaving beautiful fresh snow all over the landscape. This is the rocky shore of Boulder Beach, which is a beach of rounded small boulders, and covered in snow it looks quite different. And to top it off, the moon rose before it was too bright out. Venus also rose not long after just to the right of the moon, but it was too far into astronomical twilight by then and the Milky Way was getting washed out. The orange glow on the left half of the horizon is from the sun approaching the horizon, about 90 minutes before sunrise.
Nikon D810A and Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 @ 14mm and f/2.8, with some cropping in post. This is a blend of 4 main images, but 13 total exposures. The sky is from 10 shots at ISO 10,000, 10 seconds each, that were stacked with Starry Landscape Stacker for Mac to create a sky shot with pinpoint stars and low noise. The foreground is from 3 shots all at f/2.8 and different focus points to get the entire scene in focus, 1 at ISO 1600 for 4 minutes, and 2 at ISO 3200 for 2 minutes. The snow and approaching sunrise made the landscape so bright that I didn't need to do my usual 8 minute foreground exposures that I would be doing in the summer in Acadia.
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#Maine #Acadia #MilkyWay #winter #snow
Tags: acadia acadia national park boulder beach maine milky way moonrise new england night snow stars winter
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Glowing Coast
Big thanks to Benjamin M. Williamson Photography for the heads up on the bioluminescence along the cliffs of Acadia National Park in Maine! After spending the weekend at the end of the coast of Maine, I finished out the trip by stopping by Acadia on Monday to see the sight with my own eyes. It was absolutely incredible! While the glow in the photo is brighter and much more blue than it was in person due to the limitations of human vision, and the fact that that camera can see more with long exposures, it was still intense to see in person and the photo doesn’t do the experience justice. The blue light is real, and is just about how my camera captured it, I didn’t do anything to boost the blue. My night vision was adapted enough to see the bright glow in the water as the waves washed over rocks, exciting the microorganisms in the water. For more detailed information on bioluminescence please check out Ben’s Facebook page and his photo from the same spot, he has a comment that explains bioluminescence emitted from dinoflagellates.
This is a blend of 10 exposures for the sky and 2 foreground exposures. 10 shots for the sky were each taken at ISO 10,000, 10 seconds, f/2.8, and then stacked with Starry Landscape Stacker for pinpoint stars and low noise. The 2 foreground exposures were taken at lower ISO and longer shutter speeds for a cleaner foreground, 1 at ISO 1600 for 20 minutes and another at ISO 6400 for 2 minutes, both at f/2.8. The exposures were then blended in Photoshop to create a single image with low noise and sharp focus. All shots were taken with the Nikon D810A and Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens at 14mm.
To learn more about my Milky Way photography editing techniques check out my written tutorials and videos on my website, www.adamwoodworth.com.
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#Maine #Acadia #bioluminescence #MilkyWay #photography #LandscapeAstrophotography #night #stars #AdamWoodworthPhotography
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