davew

A lovely landscape shot and I particularly like the tree reflections in the water as well as the stars. I think the Kase filter has worked very well here and I think it's because you're pointing to an area that's not overloaded with stars. It has picked out Cassiopeia and Perseus a treat. Dave.

Cheers for the link Vlaiv. Always good to have the app download just in case once it's been dropped by Microsoft. Dave.

I was thinking of emailing James, to mention, casually, to Grant that he should run it by Steve that we should have a new section on " Recipes and light snacks ". As the majority of my imaging post was about Chocolate then there's an obvious need. Any dissenting voices regarding Plain Chocolate Bounty Bars would be instantly banned, for obvious reasons. 😆 You've made a great series of images that although we know it exists, we never show the march of time. And what's more, we get to see three rather nice images again. Cheers, Dave.

Surely you mean Milk Chocolate Bounties are disgusting ?? Plain chocolate Bounties are sublime. I hope you are doing well and are busy again. Dave.

I can tell you it's becoming a little worrying. One day I'll forget where I live ! I normally only forget one thing per outing but I changed my mind about something started to rearrange stuff and then it all went to pot 😀 Dave.

Hi Kat, I know what you mean about being floored because the laptop I used to use for PS will no longer work at all due to the less than optimal memory on the graphics card. As I hadn't intended to produce this image I was in no hurry and opened all subs on a newer laptop as layers in PS. Then I literally walked off and had lunch ! If I was in a hurry I'd use one of the star trail apps before going into PS but at over 200 subs it's still not fast. One thing I do is turn multiple subs into a " Smart Object " and that makes things so much quicker and simpler. I don't normally produce star trails but if I set out to do them I use much longer, and therefor less subs. Dave.

Cheers James, Should I let everyone know that I turned up at the Hall and found myself with a camera in one hand and a tripod in the other and at first no way to attach them ? No, best not, no one would believe I could do such a stupid thing. I found a small screw at the bottom of my camera bag so it all ended well. Thanks for sorting my post out 😀 Dave.

This is an image that was never meant to be. It started out as a Day to Night timelapse but I managed to get a vital setting wrong ! It was an error that left me high and dry after almost 4 hours. After demolishing a plain chocolate Bounty and 2 Eccles cakes it occurred to me to light paint the wall and hope for the best ... and that's how I ended up making a star trail image with all the wrong settings for both the sky and walls 🤨 Nikon Z6 20mm f1.8 Nikkor lens. 227 x 5 second exposures for the sky and 6 x 10 second exposures for the wall and all processed in Lightroom and PS. It does at least show the Cosmos in motion as seen by the trailing stars, the moon moving across the scene and lighting up the far trees and the rise and fall of a man's stately abode. Dave.

This is an image that was never meant to be. It started out as a Day to Night timelapse but I managed to get a vital setting wrong ! It was an error that left me high and dry after almost 4 hours. After demolishing a plain chocolate Bounty and 2 Eccles cakes it occurred to me to light paint the wall and hope for the best ... and that's how I ended up making a star trail image with all the wrong settings for both the sky and walls 🤨 Nikon Z6 20mm f1.8 Nikkor lens. 227 x 5 second exposures for the sky and 6 x 10 second exposures for the wall and all processed in Lightroom and PS. It does at least show the Cosmos in motion as seen by the trailing stars, the moon moving across the scene and lighting up the far trees and the rise and fall of a man's stately abode. Dave. EDIT - And then finally I put the image in the wrong place again !

Outstanding stuff ! Two feature films and a poster for the wall ! Thanks for all your efforts, Dave.

Hi Paul, Can I suggest you enter the animation posted on Sunday in the Cosmos in Motion challenge ? I keep popping back to look at it and think it stands out as exactly what's wanted in there, Dave.

The other photography section is for non Astro imaging. You've done a really nice reflection image. Just the kind of thing I like Dave.

Hi Icesheet, I'm hardly the one to advise anybody about their images but I'm not sure the Knight meant tone down the first Milky Way but I'm not certain of course. I think it's about as good as it gets and looks very nice to me. It may be noisy on your screen but looks fine on mine. The second one is errr ... bright isn't it ? But if that's the way you like it then it's your image and therefor it should be how you like it and not me ! On the other hand I feel that the first image has had the lights in the town suppressed too much, maybe in Lightroom with lowering the highlights ? They have a dull lifeless look that I've managed to achieve on a few occasions ! I think you've done an exceptional job gathering so much data and blending it all together. I would never have guessed it was a Panorama done with a 24 mm lens on APSC. How did you manage to include PI in your workflow ? Dave.

That's a big area to light and you've managed it with aplomb. I also like how you've got the foreground sharp. Dave.

A lovely smooth skilful pano. I've not seen those cairns before and you've made them look very imposing. Dave.

Wow ... extreme light painting by lighthouse. Very cool. It makes my puny torch look silly 🤔 Nice lens too. Dave.

Just stunning ! So that's where you've been 😎 Looking forward to another starscape from you. No pressure ! Dave

Thanks Paul. It turned out the worst spot was the best spot ! I wasn't about to fall into a ravine but I would have got very wet on my shortcut to Cheshire ! Dave.

Cheers Paul, It was fairly dry really. I'm just a wimp ! 😟 Hope you are well, Dave.

That's very kind of you Kat, thanks. Unfortunately I didn't do any trails. I've been to this location before and I know I can't carry much weight up hill anymore so unfortunately I didn't take a second camera and tripod. I took a few 5 minute exposures from the other side of the bridge but not enough. Dave.

Another glorious night saw me at Three Shires Head. This is the meeting point of three Counties. In the image everything to the left of the river is Cheshire, everything to the right is Derbyshire and I'm stood on a rock that is just in Staffordshire because just out of shot to the right is another small river and waterfall. There were two problems I had 1. the rock was just big enough to spread the tripod legs and little more so things were a tad precarious and 2. Being in the middle of a waterfall does tend to coat the lens in water droplets ( Who would have guessed ? ) Nikon Z6, Nikkor 20mm lens, 10x 15seconds at f2.8 and ISO 800 for the sky and 5x 15 seconds at f2.8 and 4.5 all at ISO 8oo again for the foreground. Oh yes, and the most vital bit of gear, the £ 1.99 torch from B & M ( For those that don't know, B & M is a thrift store ) I took the sky images into Sequator as usual and then added in the ground via layers in Photoshop blend mode lighten. Then it was a case of playing around with the light levels until they all more or less matched. I gave up trying to put the lens cap on after each sequence of images as it was too risky and a woolly hat sufficed. All good fun and I hope you enjoy the view, Dave.

Wow, that's a really nice presentation you've done. Thank you, Dave.

I crunched my way up to Stanage Edge on the 6th to have a go at some Startrails and Millstones. Crunched because the ground was covered in hail stones from the afternoon and the temperature was perishing so it was a good job I had a mince pie and a cream egg to keep me going 😏 Nikon Z6, Nikkor 20mm, tripod, Neewer remote timer, Yongnuo RF603N II ( Fantastic for light painting away from the camera ) and a very expensive light ... a stunning £ 1.99 torch from B & M ! 35 x 2 minutes for the stars at f4 and ISO 640 and 9 individual light painted images for the foreground at 15 seconds, f4 and ISO 800. All processing in Lightroom for a tweak or two and assembled in PS using layers in blend mode lighten and more tweaking. It takes a while to load 44 images as layers in PS ! Around 2 hours to image and even more to process. Dave.

Very nicely done. Proving the 6D, in the right hands, is still one of the best cameras out there for this stuff, Dave.

I've not returned to DSS since I discovered Sequator. It does more of what I want and a lot quicker too. I only tend to use a DSLR / ML these days and believe Sequator doesn't process FITS files so that may be the clincher. Dave.