Corona Promenaces Earthshine and stars

[John_Freeman]

Critique Style Requested: In-depth

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Self Critique

I was pleased that I was able to capture the earth shine and stars along with the Corona in this shot. Being a 9 shot bracketed set and processed as HDR using Photomatix Pro 6.2, I feel the colors are a little too purplish. I have struggled to get the colors to look the way I would like, especially the near corona being too yellow & orange in color.

Creative direction

During my research in preparation to shoot the eclipse I learned that it was possible to capture the earth shine and possibly some stars during the totality. Up for the challenge, I made it a goal to capture these features. Due to the huge dynamic range needed to capture such a shot I knew that I would need to do a bracketed shot with as many as 9 brackets to cover some 12-15 stops of dynamic range that would be needed to capture the stars and Earth shine vs the bright Corona.

Specific Feedback

Technically, I would be interested in suggestions on how to better do the HDR processing. I tried it initially using Photoshop’s HDR processing and had poor results. I also tried Oloneo PhotoEngine and it failed to give any good results.
Aesthetically, I feel the colors are too purple in the darker areas and too yellow/orange in the bright Corona regions.

Technical Details

This image was shot using Canon R5, Sigma 150-600mm f/5.6-6.3 Contemporary lens at 600mm f/6.3 , ISO 400, 1/250, 1/125, 1/60, 1/30, 1/15, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 and 1 sec. shutter times. Because this was shot during totality, no filter was used. Images were preprocessed to TIFF format using Adobe Camera RAW with no adjustments except for a slight Noise reduction. I did my own custom adjustments in Photomatix Pro 6.2 to get the HDR to look as good as possible, de-saturating the bright Corona area closest to the sun. I enhanced the shadow areas to pull out the dimmer Corona at the far parameters. When I brightened the shadows, it tended to mess with the colors making it more purple than I liked. I used a non-destructive Dodge & Burn to brighten the stars a bit.

Description

This is one set of many bracketed sets I shot during the totality portion of the eclipse on April 8, 2024. We were in Granbury, TX for this shoot. The camera was mounted on a Celestron AVX equatorial mount. I shot a whole series of images from the very start to end of the eclipse and have done a time lapse of the entire eclipse.

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[Diane_Miller]

Looks like you got some good material to work with. The earthshine looks great! The inner corona could do with less exposure – probably salvageable from the raw file. I think there are better methods than Photomatix. Excellent processing info is here:

EclipseBook

And @Youssef_Ismail posted a very helpful link for advanced processing that I haven’t had time to try: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILi9qcfp_dE

I had to rely on daytime polar alignment with the iPhone compass and level and had less than my best results for drift, so I need to go back and tweak alignment on the subs and redo the composite. I can’t align on the moon – too much movement – and aligning on the sun will take some calculations from the drift in the partial phases. I did dig out earthshine from the 1 sec exposure and need to repost that image. It was easy with LR sliders and should have done it before posting.

I did see some stars in the 2 sec exposure, that I’m pretty sure are not hot pixels. Need to work on them. I shot the star field 6 months ago when that part of the sky was dark but it was assuming the eclipse would be in Uvalde, TX so it isn’t close enough. Can re-shoot it in 5-6 months with the correct sun position.

[Youssef_Ismail]

John,

It looks like you have plenty of data to work with but unfortunately, the HDR process used really blew out the details on the inner corona. I did not get a chance to photograph the 2024 eclipse but I did photograph the 2017 eclipse and I had similar set of data to work with. I had exposures from 1 sec down to 1/250 sec. The link that @Diane_Miller posted of Nico Carver’s technique will definitely get you better results and you won’t need other software beyond PS.

Also, consider using the Pellet Method or variations of that method as described on the AstroPix.com website. I used that technique back in 2017 to process my images and came away with this photo that to my eye was almost exactly what I saw with my own eyes. It was photographed on a Nikon D2x, and given that you used a much-improved imaging camera you should be able to get as good a quality image but for sure better. It does take some work, but I think you can do it.

[Jim_Zablotny]

A very interesting and incredible image. You may want to try to reduce the overall exposure of the scene as a start. @Diane_Miller and @Youssef_Ismail provide some excellent suggestions to get this image to perfection. I am intrigued by astrophotography, but my skill set is primitive at best. There is enough brightness in the stars to enable their presence after further post-processing…Jim

[John_Freeman]

Thanks for the tips from Diane Miller and Youssef Ismail leading me to the Alan Dyer EclipseBook. I reprocessed using a technique very close to Alan Dyer’s method and got far better results avoiding the HDR techniques altogether.

I ended up with good Earth Shine and even a few stars.

This video is part one of two parts that I followed :

Solar Eclipse Imaging Techniques (Part 1) Current Adobe Photoshop Only

[Youssef_Ismail]

Excellent John! Much improved. This eclipse had a glorious corona and I’m glad you made the extra effort to bring it out.

[Diane_Miller]

Much better!! There is some posterization in a circular pattern, which shows up better with a strong contrast increase. I have seen a similar thing with bringing up detail in Milky Way shots with the R5 and wonder if it is related to the sensor or to processing. I will do some trials with linear profiles, in an attempt to bring out more detail in my exposures. Definitely a challenging subject.