M45 Heybridge Basin Essex

[jiberjaber]

I took advantage of the clear night on Tuesday to spend some time in a location I had thought might produce a good milky way shot but was thwarted by lights when I got to where I was planning to image from, I turned around and say this view and thought I would give it a go, if nothing other than practise data.

Camera is a Nikon D7500 with Sigma 30mm DC HSM EX f/1.4  @ f/5.6 ISO400 Manual bulb mode with an intervalometer for timer (10s start delay, 45 shutter time, 4 seconds between shots) 

Foreground ISO 400 45s x 12

Sky ISO400 45s x 12 and ISO 1600 45s x 12

Camera was mounted on an iOptron Sky Guider Pro on 1x tracking rate for the sky shots and tracking turned off for the foreground shots.  

I initially tried to do everything in Photoshop following a guide of the net but gave up and resorted to more what I know, so in to Pixinsight to register and stack the sky image (suspect using some darks might have been better!) and then exported the integrated result as a 16 bit TIFF back in to Photoshop where I then gave up trying to do a selection mask (the spikes off the foreground lights and masts were a real pain) plus the miss match close to the horizon of the background light between the foreground and sky images.

In the end I applied a gradient mask of transparency which allowed the two images (foreground and sky) to blend fairly well.  Some of the blurred starts in the foreground image were still showing so deployed the clone stamp to flatten the sky and remove the streaks of stars.

I've added some increased saturation and vibrance as i thought the boats were looking a little grey and washed out...

Love to hear comments and hints for improvement, this is the first composite landscape I've tried - I'm still not sure about the transition between foreground and sky but not experienced to know which tools I can use to neaten it up more... 

 

[fireshipjohn]

Nice, I thought for a minute they were going to put a motorway through Heybridge!

[jiberjaber]

Revised version, I noticed some mess leaking through in the bottom left, and discovered I could use the background eraser tool to get rid of it, doing so also improved the view of the basin, so I carried on and cleaned it all up...