Orion in the water

[davew]

Here's an exercise in how to turn a very simple, relaxed and atmospheric image into a three act play !

Nikon D750 - Tamron 15-30 f2.8 lens.  25 seconds ISO 800 15mm f2.8. Then take five of them.

Into Lightroom for the first round ! Remove vignette, change colour temperature, increase exposure slightly, lighten the shadows and sync to all five images.

Into Sequator ( New stacking software for starscapes ) with all five. Freeze off the ground and stack the stars with a mask and save the output file. This has the effect of reducing noise in the image very effectively.

Back into Lightroom to tweak the colours ( The foreground is very slightly different to the sky ) and final lifting of shadows.

Into Photoshop to change the perspective ( Stop the trees from falling over ! ) That has the downside of making the stars look worse but hey .... Very slight noise reduction on the foreground. Slight increase in contrast to get the tree branches / leaves to tighten up. Save the final image.

Sit and stare at it for around 30 minutes agonising about whether to do just a little bit more. Didn't.

Easy ! 

Dave.

[JOC]

That's beautiful, real Christmas card stuff.  In fact I bet there are enough beautiful images on SGL to make a set of Christmas cards

[MartinB]

Superb and thanks for the Sequator tip.

[Moonshane]

What a fabulous and original image.

[Nigel G]

Stunning, Well done.

[ollypenrice]

Gorgeous! An astro Christmas card...

Olly

[davew]

Thank you all very much for the likes and comments, I'm chuffed. So ..... two suggestions for Christmas cards eh ?

With regards to Sequator, here is the link - https://sites.google.com/site/sequatorglobal/

There is a short YouTube video here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-MCvbYj-hA  although I only found it after I'd been using Sequator a short while.

I strongly suggest the Starscape crowd take a close look. I've tried it a few times now and am impressed to say the least. It's a free Windows app but Mac users have got Starry Landscape Stacker that's not free but not mega expensive. Video and short write up here - https://www.lonelyspeck.com/noise-free-astrophotography-with-starry-landscape-stacker/

One warning re Sequator. It will overwrite saved data without warning so beware and save as a new file every time. It won't touch your original files but will mess things up if you want to compare a few tests.

So far with my DSLR I've found five subs to be the minimum to get a smooth sky. Ten is better, of course but I did try fifty as an experiment and the app still coped quite well. Utter over kill and a bit " Plastic " looking so don't bother !

That's given away one of my secrets so I expect some cracking results from everyone now LOL

Dave.

[James]

On 21/11/2017 at 15:19, MartinB said:

Superb and thanks for the Sequator tip.

As Martin says  But as a Mac user thanks for the Starry Landscape Stacker tip  

 

James

[clarkpm4242]

Very, very nice.  The reflection is better than the sky! 

I too will be having a look at Sequator (currently use DSS or occasionally manual in PS...), thank you.

Paul

[johnfosteruk]

That’s one of the best reflection shots I’ve seen. Fantastic. 

[davew]

Very kind of you to say so.

Cheers,

Dave.