Official BeyondUnreal Photography Thread

[Rambowjo]

At first I thought these images were fake. They look stunning not to be, but apparently, they are not...

http://www.astropics.com/about1.html

http://www.astropics.com/top10.html

He says this picture is completely untouched (except to stitch the pano together)

I tried something like this, but even at 5 seconds exposure, the stars started having trails, because of the Earth's rotation. It's pretty cool though.

I just checked out that page. Imagine if the night sky looked like those photos, all of the time. That would be awesome.

 

[OO7MIKE]

Thanks! I'm guessing you meant where was I and what kind of mushrooms? Northwest lowlands, right near the city of Vancouver. You live in Oregon, right? You could probably go poke around in some woods near your house at this time of year and find a few growing on dead fir wood almost right away. That mushroom is an orange jelly fungus, also known as "Witch's butter". You can eat them raw, although they don't really taste like anything.

Thanks, I was pretty tired when I wrote that. We have a mushroom festival in our area where you can buy and sell mushrooms. Maybe I can get lucky.... or maybe I can get enough too cook with.

 

[NRG]

I just checked out that page. Imagine if the night sky looked like those photos, all of the time. That would be awesome.

A) Move to the middle of nowhere
or
B) Cause major power outages

 

[SleepyHe4d]

A) Move to the middle of nowhere
or
B) Cause major power outages

Doesn't work like that.

 

[Jackal]

I could see the MilkyWay at the beach. and out in New Mexico too. It's freaking amazing when you look at it, then start to think about it all.

 

[JohnDoe641]

I could see the MilkyWay at the beach. and out in New Mexico too. It's freaking amazing when you look at it, then start to think about it all.

When I was out in California and heading across towards Nevada the night sky was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. I also saw visible signs of the Milky Way and many things you could see in those night photos. It was really amazing to see, but you need to be somewhere where there's zero light pollution to really see the night sky.

 

[SnaKe-Fu]

A few months ago there was a large meteor shower and we went out to see it. We were fortunate enough to be able to drive about 5 minutes out of town into some hill country and watch the show. Once our eyes had adjusted to the dark, the night sky was absolutely amazing. We were able to see countless stars and parts of the milky way. It's so incredible to just lay there in the back of the truck and stare into space.

 

[shadow_dragon]

A few months ago there was a large meteor shower and we went out to see it. We were fortunate enough to be able to drive about 5 minutes out of town into some hill country and watch the show. Once our eyes had adjusted to the dark, the night sky was absolutely amazing. We were able to see countless stars and parts of the milky way. It's so incredible to just lay there in the back of the truck and stare into space.

Probably the perseid shower in August. You don't actually need to go too far to see those shooting stars there are so many of them but definately in the dark you can tons of the blighters, definately worth the effort.

I too went out into the sticks to watch them this year and even tried photographing some astro stuff but failed miserably.

 

[BillyBadAss]

Not my best work as the DOF is too shallow, but I felt like posting something the other day on Flickr. I'm so busy these days that I don't have much time to shoot. Momiji season is just around the corner though. I won't miss that.


When We Were Children by Jason_Combs, on Flickr

 

[OO7MIKE]

Yesterday I went out on a two location promo shoot for a local dance company. They specialize in Hip Hop and Jazz. Not everyone does both and there are 13-14 members in all. Lighting conditions where pretty good but I was always fighting the sun. Directing large groups is tough. I was really picky on where I wanted everyone to stand and even when I got the photos in post production I still wish I had caught a few things.

I took a lot of shots and different poses. Here are a few favorites.

1. Not my favorite outfits from the shoot but definitely the best poses collaboratively. I used a 3 point lighting system. Large softbox behind me and two strobes one both sides of them. The sun was very bright so everything was on full power.

2. A close up shot. Nobody ever smiles. haha! I didn't catch it until post but there is a green flair on the right side of the shot. It could have been prevented by turning the light cone around or pulling it back. Some flare is cool but some is not.

3. Two hours later and everyone arrived at the jazz shoot location. I had hoped to be closer to sunset by the time we arrived but we were indeed way ahead of schedule. Although this wasn't intentional, the first thing out of peoples mouths are.. "OMG Americas top model!"

4. After the group shots I took individual shots. Each dancer was able to choose their pose. I didn't like all of the poses but I did the best I could to make them look good.

5. I wish I had more time to work with them on the individual poses. With 13 dancers in all i had spent about 1-2 minutes with each of them. Give me 10 min with each of them and I could have worked on their posture, expression and a little bit more on the lighting. I dislike mass production/assembly line photo shoots but sometimes the client wants it to be quick.

6. It looks like a CGI effect but that sun was really hitting those thin clouds and creating that ring effect that you see.

 

[Zxanphorian]

I love the cirrostratus and halo effect in those pictures. I think the time of day is just fine, as the women look kind of angelic in relation to the milky-white atmosphere.

Too bad you didn't get more pictures of the sky.

 

[Twisted Metal]

It's kind of weird to see fully lit people with the sun behind them. Looks fake (I think I said this about another one of your photos too). No offense of course, you obviously take great photos. I'm just making a general observation.

 

[Israphel]

I want to know how to do this! Will my crappy little 40D do the trick?

Your 40D would probably manage it fine if you can get away from light pollution. I'm pretty sure I've submitted this before, but this was taken in the middle of the Portuguese countryside. The yellow light you can see from behind the tree is actually a small village a few kilometers away, and the brightening on the left is from moonlight.

The settings were IS0 1600 with the aperture wide open at f2.8. The shutter was set to 30 seconds (you can see the stars are starting to blur in the corners from moving across the sky).
In my experience, you can shoot the stars at up to about 40 seconds before the blur, so it's just a question of a) how wide you can open your aperture, b) how high you're willing to go in terms of ISO before you get too much noise, and c) how dark the sky is.

I couldn't see ANY of this, could barely make out the trees infront of me to compose (and there wasn't enough for the cameras AF to work, so manually set focus to infinity and hoped), but it's amazing what a camera can pick up.
I'm pretty sure that if I was shooting in a place as dark as the mountains which you originally posted, with these settings you'd be able to pick out colours in the nebulae.

 

[pine]

Question for the experts.

Bright sky - how do you deal with it? It creates problems in probably over half of my photos, because I always shoot outside during the daytime and usually in the woods where there are lots of shadows on the ground. I either massively overexpose the sky and create a distracting white flare around the top of my picture, or underexpose the foreground.

Picture related.

[screenshot]http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/8519/p1000512s.jpg[/screenshot]

 

[OO7MIKE]

Question for the experts.

Bright sky - how do you deal with it? It creates problems in probably over half of my photos, because I always shoot outside during the daytime and usually in the woods where there are lots of shadows on the ground. I either massively overexpose the sky and create a distracting white flare around the top of my picture, or underexpose the foreground.

Picture related.

[screenshot]http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/8519/p1000512s.jpg[/screenshot]

A few ways you can deal with this.

- Light up your subject via bounce card, flash, or some sort of electrical lights. Give your subjects enough light and you will be able to see the sky.
- Use a gradient filter or polorizer. These filters make one side of your frame darker than the other side. They come with varied amount of darkening qualities. If you run into this all the time you may wish to invest in a few of them.
- Fix it in post production. ACR has a gradient feature which can help with this. It wont help that much if your image has been blown out.
- Consider doing some HDR work. If you don't go too crazy with it you can create an image that looks natural and not so artificial.
- Consider doing some sudo HDR work. Expose for the sky then expose for the ground. Layer it in photoshop. With some clever (and tedious) masking you can still walk away with a stunning image
- Stop fighting it. Accept that the sky will be bright and focus on making sure that your subject is exposed correctly.

Flare only happens when there is an extremely bright light source shining directly on your front lens element. Some lenses control flare better than others. With a deep enough lens shade you can eliminate this. Use your hand if you have to.

If you cant stand the flare and you cant control it for the kind of work you like to do, consider upgrading your lens to one that excels at the task.

 

[pine]

A few ways you can deal with this.

- Light up your subject via bounce card, flash, or some sort of electrical lights. Give your subjects enough light and you will be able to see the sky.
- Use a gradient filter or polorizer. These filters make one side of your frame darker than the other side. They come with varied amount of darkening qualities. If you run into this all the time you may wish to invest in a few of them.
- Fix it in post production. ACR has a gradient feature which can help with this. It wont help that much if your image has been blown out.
- Consider doing some HDR work. If you don't go too crazy with it you can create an image that looks natural and not so artificial.
- Consider doing some sudo HDR work. Expose for the sky then expose for the ground. Layer it in photoshop. With some clever (and tedious) masking you can still walk away with a stunning image
- Stop fighting it. Accept that the sky will be bright and focus on making sure that your subject is exposed correctly.

Flare only happens when there is an extremely bright light source shining directly on your front lens element. Some lenses control flare better than others. With a deep enough lens shade you can eliminate this. Use your hand if you have to.

If you cant stand the flare and you cant control it for the kind of work you like to do, consider upgrading your lens to one that excels at the task.

Sorry, should not have said "flare" - I forgot that has a specific meaning in photography. I just meant a bright washed out white patch in the sky.

I'd rather not try to deal with doing HDR, either "real" HDR because I detest the way it looks, or the 2-exposure version because it sounds like a crapload of work (I did read about it in a book recently). Same basic problem with flash, it's more work than I'm ready to confront for the kind of photography I do, plus I really, really prefer natural lighting.

What is the ACR gradient feature you mention? Could I underexpose to avoid blowing out the sky and then lighten up just the dark part of the photo?

 

[SleepyHe4d]

What is the ACR gradient feature you mention? Could I underexpose to avoid blowing out the sky and then lighten up just the dark part of the photo?

In Adobe Camera Raw 6.2 it's the 10th option in the top left toolbar. Hotkey is G. It's called Graduated filter. You could do it that way, or the opposite way. I have no idea which would be better as I know nothing of photo editing.

I really like the filters idea though. The gradient filter could be cool, but with a polarized filter maybe you wouldn't even need to mess around with a gradient.

Again, I don't know though since I'm an extreme newbie and have no experience in these areas, but take a look at this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarizing_filter_%28photography%29

 

[DarkED]

I played around with multiple exposures the other day. This is what I ended up with:

[SCREENSHOT]http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd275/darkusedius/D5000/blah/blah_1208.jpg[/SCREENSHOT]

It's 5 exposures each taken about three seconds apart. Each shot was taken at 35mm focal length with aperture at f/11 and shutter speed at 1/1000. Sensitivity was set to ISO200.

 

[OO7MIKE]

I'd rather not try to deal with doing HDR, either "real" HDR because I detest the way it looks, or the 2-exposure version because it sounds like a crapload of work (I did read about it in a book recently). Same basic problem with flash, it's more work than I'm ready to confront for the kind of photography I do, plus I really, really prefer natural lighting.

I prefer natural lighting too.. but it has its place. It sounds like you would like to keep things as simple as possible. I don't blame you. If your taking photos of people your going to have to get creative with your surroundings in order to avoid the harshness of the sun light.

If your shooting landscapes I recommend doing most of your work in the early hours of the morning around sun rise or the late hours of the evening before sunset. I would bet a pint of beer that most of Israphel's favorite shots are done during those times. Harsh sun is just a killer to deal with.

What is the ACR gradient feature you mention? Could I underexpose to avoid blowing out the sky and then lighten up just the dark part of the photo?

It looks like SleepyHe4d gave you the hook up on that one.

Yes you can underexpose or overexpose or expose inbetween the sky and land to get workable results. The issue lays in that the camera has a limited dynamic range. Blow the highlights and you are left with unrecoverable detail. Underexpose your midrange and shadows and you are left with gritty noise when you fix your exposure in post production.

Filters are the way to go. Get it right in the camera the first time and you will be doing the happy dance.

 

[pine]

It looks like SleepyHe4d gave you the hook up on that one.

Yes you can underexpose or overexpose or expose inbetween the sky and land to get workable results. The issue lays in that the camera has a limited dynamic range. Blow the highlights and you are left with unrecoverable detail. Underexpose your midrange and shadows and you are left with gritty noise when you fix your exposure in post production.

Filters are the way to go. Get it right in the camera the first time and you will be doing the happy dance.

Yeah, I've already discovered those issues with trying to "fix" underexposure or overexposure with simple tweaks that affect the whole image. I guess the only technique that would work properly would be something that separates the parts of the image.

Thanks for the suggestion - I will definitely be getting a couple filters. They sound like they will come very much in handy. And getting a picture right the first time with the camera definitely feels good.