Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Incredible auroras at the beginning of the past month we could enjoy from Lofoten. From a small hill I was photographing directly into the sky and including the sea from time to time.
Any feedback is welcome
15mm
ISO 3200
Shutter 5s
Aperture F4
I used Denoise from lightroom
WOW!! This is gorgeous with such wonderful colors and dancing ribbons of light! I love the subdued grounding of the water and very distant skyline, which makes the light show look huge. The stars are a very nice touch. Getting sharp stars is difficult with wide angle lenses. I wonder of you would share what the lens was?
My brother-in-law and his wife went on a tour hoping to see the Aurora, but never did.
I hope they get another chance to see them!
Another absolutely gorgeous image!! Sigma has some very nice lenses for astro. The elongated star shapes in the second image look like a slight amount of lens distortion, but I’m surprised it seems better at 14mm than at 24mm. Usually wider is worse. I have the Sigma 28mm f/1.4 and corner distortion is sensitive to tiny focus changes, so I no longer rely on focusing just in the center. It’s tedious but a tiny tweak can improve the corners without degrading the center.
Thanks for that information! I had no idea what the movement of the stars was due to. Next time I will try those small adjustments to the focus.
Nicolas,
Stunning photographs of the aurora. The blur in the second photo is not that bad, and given how amazing the color variation is in each, the blur will definitely be overlooked.
It’s hard to be sure on this one. but wide-angle artifacts usually make stars elongated in the corners, pointed toward the center where stars are round. But few lenses are corrected to the degree needed for round stars everywhere. one side of the frame is often better than the other, due to microscopic lens misalignment.
You can do tests on a clear reasonably dark night, comparing different focus tweaks, and different focal lengths. Hard to be sure without looking at 1:1, but the 15mm possibly looks better.
And the issue I’ve found with my 28mm may not be an issue you have. It is very sensitive to focus, where my 14mm Rokinon f/2.4 is sharp when I turn the focus all the way to the distant stop. Very convenient!
The ribbon effect is so wonderful! I love when the photos have captured the movement of the lights. We’ve had auroras in our area (middle of Colorado) for the past two nights and I’ve been completely ‘skunked’ for photos of them because of heavy cloud cover and rain.
Hi Denise, the auroras were very strong that night. The movement was more defined with little exposure time, really a spectacle.
These last nights were on another level almost everywhere in the world, I am sorry to hear that you were covered with clouds where you live, here because we are so far north we have almost no night, so they were not visible either.
