Reflections in the water

[GordonH]

I spent the evening up on Hergest Ridge in Kington Herefordshire again last night as the weather was good. I knew that it had been raining up there earlier in the week and I was hopeful that there were going to be some pools of water to catch some reflections from the stars during the time lapse. I found one pool which is where I set my Sony A7Sii and Tamron 15-30mm f2.8 zoom lens on my Rhino Camera Gear Evo Carbon slider with motion and arc. I shot two short time lapse videos during the night shooting a total of over 700x30 second exposures with the zoom lens at the 15mm setting and f2.8 and at ISO 25600.

Although it was quite breezy the water in the pool remained calm allowing for some nice reflections.

In the second clip the very bright areas are from the light pollution in Leominster and Kington

The video can be seen at the link below and is best viewed in at least HD

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbT2hpJmTJ4&feature=youtu.be

[Mark at Beaufort]

Very good Gordon. Pam and I watched it in HD as you suggested.

[barkis]

Absolutely amazing Videos. I've at mesmerised my Computer screen as these wonderful Images HD Images 
flooded my mind. It was almost a spiritual envelopment I felt myself immersed in.

A truly memorable experience Gordon, these sequences must have taken some time to create.
Not just the beauty of the star fill skies, but the ground scenery too, which formed a superb blend of earth and sky.
Sheer magic, many thanks, this has made my day, early on a Sunday morning. 

[GordonH]

8 hours ago, barkis said:

Absolutely amazing Videos. I've at mesmerised my Computer screen as these wonderful Images HD Images 
flooded my mind. It was almost a spiritual envelopment I felt myself immersed in.

A truly memorable experience Gordon, these sequences must have taken some time to create.
Not just the beauty of the star fill skies, but the ground scenery too, which formed a superb blend of earth and sky.
Sheer magic, many thanks, this has made my day, early on a Sunday morning. 

Thanks for the comments

Actually, the lengthy bit is gathering the data. For these two clips I was on top of Hergest Ridge all night and each time lapse took about three and a half hours to shoot with over 350x30 second exposures for each. The trick is to shoot at as high an ISO as possible after taking into account that at 30 seconds and f2.8 I'm at the limit of photon gathering ability before star trailing. I use a technique called ETTR or "Expose To The Right" where I check the histogram and make sure that the sky part of the histogram is as far over To the right as possible without clipping it. You must shoot in RAW and anything automatic must be switched off so no AWB, noise reduction etc.

The resulting images on the camera look terrible with grossly over exposed sky etc but this is ok because you pull it all back In the processing which is the easy bit, that takes me about 5-10 minutes in Adobe Lightroom, you process one of the 700+ images and copy and paste the workflow to all the others. Then export the lot to jpeg, import into Adobe Premier Pro, add music, text screens etc. 

It is very easy to be honest once you get the hang of it. I have put a 10 minute video on my YouTube channel which shows time lapse clips from various locations during the last 18 months with some still frames taken from the time lapses.

There is an artistic element involved as well In picking a good location and using things in the foreground and background to create extra interest such as the pool of water

Best wishes

Gordon

 

[barkis]

I appreciate the detailed account of the procedures involved in capturing the images Gordon. I certainly enjoyed the results of your labours, they are stunning to say the least. Unfortunately, much of the technical detail is lost on me, I wish it wasn't, I'm on the threshold of CCD imaging, which has been a long time coming, ask some of my Moderator colleagues, who have been having a laugh and a joke or two at the time it's taking me. My only experience is film astrophotography, back in the dark ages, when guiding was with a hand paddles fast and slow buttons through a long focal length guide scope. Very demanding of patience. The results were mainly disappointing too ?.

Anyway, thanks for the descriptive account, good of you to explain it all

Look forward to seeing.more of your videos too.