Image Description
It was so damn cold that I couldn’t get my fingers to work. I was having some focusing issues with my 14-24 so had to switch to the only other lens I had, an f/4 Tokina 17-35.
Did some Light Painting on the foreground for a bit of variety.
Type of Critique Requested
- Aesthetic: Feedback on the overall visual appeal of the image, including its color, lighting, cropping, and composition.
Specific Feedback and Self-Critique
The National Weather Service said it would be 45 degrees but as it turned out, it was more like 31 degrees (f). I think the cold affected my 14-24 Nikkor because it wouldn’t keep a decent focus even using gaffers tape…oddly enough, it didn’t seem to affect my 17-35 but with f/4 comes another challenge. Both images were shot with the same settings though image one is a three shot pano.Image two was shot about ten minutes later. You can see the arc is just a bit higher.
Technical Details
Nikon Z7 II, Tokina 17-35 @ 17mm, f/4, 10 sec, ISO 8000
So, as stated above the challenge was how well the Z7 II would handle the high ISO. On1 answered that question quite nicely, but even with the high noise, others in my group shooting the D850 had far more noise in the raw file that I did.
Processed in ACR and Photoshop. I used several TK8 adjustment tools and On1 for noise reduction.
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Nice opportunity! Focus in situations like this is frustrating, but it’s surprising about that one lens. Night photography is often done in quite cold temperatures and people welcome them for keeping the sensor cooler and minimizing noise.
I think both compositions have their strong points. The light painting is subtle and pleasing. The bottom one shows elongated stars in the upper corners – a common issue with wide angle lenses. The corner vignetting can be largely mitigated in processing.
I applaud the decision to use 10 sec. exposures. Much longer and you start seeing elongated stars from celestial movement, even at very wide angles. That’s made more obvious by our higher resolutions these days. (That means we need higher ISOs and the balance comes out about the same as in the old days.) It would be interesting to balance both to the same color temp – in between the two would be my choice.
I think it would be worth exploring other noise reduction options. Your sensor should be quite good at ISO 8000 and I think you could expect a better result.
I’ve tried all the NR programs…never cared for any of them, truth be told. Those were my first two shots with the Z7 II, so there was a lot of experimenting going on and a whole lot of discovering what all the camera was capable of…and I’ve barely touched the surface. Thanks for the input, everything helps.
Chris, these are terrific. I don’t do astro (too far after my bed time) but I certainly appreciate them.
I know what you mean about noise reduction programs. I would suggest, however that you download DXO PhotoLab 6 trial and check out the DeepPrime XD noise reduction. It’s pretty mind blowing what the improvements are.
Cheers,
David
I hope its better than the earlier version as I was not at all impressed with it, but I’ll give it a try.
I normally don’t shoot at 8000 ISO so that in itself was the biggest issue, but the problem with my 14-24 necessitated using my 17-35 f/4.
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This is with the Deep Prime XD. Given it is an 8K ISO, I’m pretty impressed…lots of star movement in this shot as it was at 13 sec, not the 10 sec I shot the other one at.
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Although this is a difficult subject, I still don’t think you’re getting the best results. I’ve been most impressed with Topaz DeNoise, with a careful comparison of the various (and poorly-named) models. I’ll admit I’m prejudiced by having tried one of others when it first came out and was appalled at the results.
Judge the results with a 100% view.
Topaz was the worst of the big three, for me. It’s been a few years, so I might give it a second shot.
The older Clear model had some uses but could be way overdone. The new version is wonderful and more adapted to the newer sensors. Try the Low Light model and play with the amount and sharpening sliders. View at 100% and don’t do any other NR first.
Caution if your current processing is trying to make things look good without letting you know what it’s doing. Try a straight ACR conversion with minimal necessary tonal work and bring it into PS and run Topaz on a copy layer. Cruise around at 100% and look for areas that don’t match well – you’ll probably find very few if any. Their Sharpen isn’t the miracle that Denoise is. Denoise will do some subtle sharpening for you, but in most cases it can’t make up for getting it best in the capture. That’s not really an issue with night skies.
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tried four times to load Topaz and it rejected me all but one, but that one would accept any of my raw files. I have Invidia a G-Force gaming processor card and 32 GB of RAM. DXO and On1 had no issues. No clue but frankly, from what I saw of the demo graphics, I see no difference in either of the two, though see DXO as better than On1.
