EP31 - Sunday, 13th December 2020 7:30pm GMT - Night Time Landscape Photography by Martin Bradley (MartinB)

[Grant]

Long-time SGL member and moderator Martin Bradley (MartinB) has kindly offered to give us a talk he had prepared for this years cancelled SGL star party 'Night Time Landscape Photography'.

Many of you will already know MartinB and have seen the amazing images he posts on the forum and on his 'AstralPeaks' Facebook page. Martin has been photographing deep space objects for several years and more recently have been increasingly attracted to the stunning beauty of rural landscapes at night.

The talk aims to be a guide for taking widefield, nightime images which combine a landscape and the night sky.  Areas covered will include planning, composition, workflow, equipment and, if time permits, a quick Milkyway process in Lightroom.  

Attached is some notes that Martin has kindly put together which will act as a companion to his talk.

This is the second-part of our double bill on Sunday, this is at the usual 7:30pm time. We look forward to seeing lots of you there

Meeting details below:

Topic: EP31 - Sunday, 13th December 2020 7:30pm GMT - Night Time Landscape Photography by Martin Bradley (MartinB)
Time: Dec 13, 2020 07:30 PM London

Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/97021146528?pwd=bHkvVFhZaTZWeDJNcG9JZUJZVUZtUT09

Meeting ID: 970 2114 6528
Passcode: 483065

 

Nightime landscape photography notes.pdf

[happy-kat]

Great tips there, read and enjoyed.

[Alien 13]

Big fan of Martins work, will be glued to this one.

Alan

[FenlandPaul]

So excited about this. Landscape astrophotography has turned my Astro-mojo back up to 11 over the last few months, so this is going to be fantastic!!

[happy-kat]

I like sequator but have found when used on data taken with a CA prone lens the image produced has strong purple bloating. Maybe I should try it again as I see it has more functions now so it's great the software has evolved.

[happy-kat]

Looking forward to this chat, see you all later

[Grant]

Talk has just started 🙂

[happy-kat]

zoom is failing to run

 

[Grant]

Just now, happy-kat said:

zoom is failing to run

 

Eek - all seems OK here so might be a local issue, we are recording it though if you don't manage to get on.

[AstroPaul]

Thanks Martin for some brilliant ideas and you explained your techniques very clearly.

[davew]

Cheers for taking the time Martin. This was my first zoom so I barely knew how to use the thing !

I hope the challenges reappear at some future point.

Dave.

[Alien 13]

Am very interested in the travel tripod that Martin uses but missed it during the talk as Leicester scored 

Alan

[MartinB]

12 hours ago, Alien 13 said:

Am very interested in the travel tripod that Martin uses but missed it during the talk as Leicester scored 

Alan

That is a good excuse Alan!! 🤣

It is a Vanguard 235CB   

https://www.vanguardworld.co.uk/collections/tripods/products/veo-2-235cb

It comes with a ball head which works very well even with my heavy Sigma 14mm F1.8 lens.  

[happy-kat]

I liked that magic tool that drew the image out as you waved over bits. I'll have to see if I've a similar tool in paintshoppro or affinity or GIMP.

[happy-kat]

Sorry to have missed the first few minutes I had joined the previous zoom with no trouble. The only difference I changed my Moon background to a startrail for this meeting which really shouldn't have been an issue. 

Thanks for the talk, it was good to see.

[MartinB]

3 hours ago, happy-kat said:

Sorry to have missed the first few minutes I had joined the previous zoom with no trouble. The only difference I changed my Moon background to a startrail for this meeting which really shouldn't have been an issue. 

Thanks for the talk, it was good to see.

I saw your star trail right at the end, it looked great!

[happy-kat]

Thank you, it exemplified the opposite of good placement as my focal foreground objects were two house TV aerials but needs must when making the most of the imaging opportunity given and I had been hoping for a comet, I think the small scale image helped hide this. I like the ease of startrails as they can be quite dramatic with helping placement with the landscape.

Edited December 14, 2020 by happy-kat

[Alien 13]

3 hours ago, happy-kat said:

Thank you, it exemplified the opposite of good placement as my focal foreground objects were two house TV aerials but needs must when making the most of the imaging opportunity given and I had been hoping for a comet, I think the small scale image helped hide this. I like the ease of startrails as they can be quite dramatic with helping placement with the landscape.

Even ugly man made structures like TV ariels/transmission towers/pylons/satellite dishes are fair game to me...

Alan 

[happy-kat]

These are not hugely exciting structures but it was fun to do

Edited December 14, 2020 by happy-kat