Questions And Answers

Matate Arch in Devils Garden, Escalante by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: Website, Instagram, Facebook This is Metate Arch in Escalante, Utah. Royce Bair masterminded this composition. Thanks Royce! There is Low Level Lighting (LLL) behind the arch with an LED light panel turned down very low. See www.lowlevellighting.org This is a single exposure tanken at 20 mm, f 2.0, 8 sec., and ISO 10,000. For more images like this please take a look at Wayne Pinkston Photography . Thanks for all the kind support! Hope you enjoy! A big thank you to the wonderful Flickr family. It's a pleasure to post here.

Questions and Answers:

What color is the night sky?

Question: (more like a comment) Great composition and exposure, but the Milky Way is not blue, the color balance is not correct. 

http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/color.of.the.night.sky/

Answer: Thanks for looking, and thanks for the comment. Much appreciated. 

What color is the night sky? Excellent article you mentioned:

www.clarkvision.com/articles/color.of.the.night.sky/

I have been thinking about writing about this for a while, so thanks for stimulating me. Please bear with me for a few minutes.I have had this conversation multiple times, actually being on both sides of the argument. It took me a long time to come to a conclusion on how I wanted to present the night sky. 

I actually agree with you entirely, the darkest night sky is a warmer color physically, but...

There is a difference between:

1) What color the night sky really is optically (we cannot see the real colors because our night vision is mostly B&W). 

2) What we perceive the night sky color to be (our eyes are poor receptors at night), and what our eyes actually perceive is not what we may remember or what the colors really are. By the way, different people have somewhat differing ability to see color at night.

3) and what we remember the color of the night sky to be. 

For events that we see repeatedly, like looking at the night sky (or going to the beach, etc.), it has been shown that we do not remember every detail in every instance of looking at the night sky. We may remember the meteor we saw that night, but our memory fills in the background details, like the color of the night sky, the smell of night air or desert air, the feel of chill on your skin, etc., with a combined memory of conglomeration of all the night skies we have seen. When you replay the memory in your mind you remember the unique details, and the background is filled in from averaged memories. 

So... if you think about it, most people see most night skies in light polluted places or with a moon in the sky, all of which makes the sky lighter and bluer. The moon is above us more often than not, and lightens the sky, and that is what we mostly remember, a bluish sky.When I started out I thought the night sky was black. 

When I got out there in the really dark places, it was not black. I look at photos with black skies and that is not what I see out there. Never. The sky also never looks brown to me, unless there is smoke on the horizon. It never looks brown. As I stand out there for hours and hours, it looks to me to be a deep blue tending towards back. It mostly looks "dark" in away that is hard to explain.

I have processed them every way you can think of, including like in the article you quoted. It's actually a lot easier that way. When you make the Milky Way warmer and yellow brown (forget about airglow for now), the background sky, especially near the horizon frequently turns brownish. It has never looked that way to me in person, in weeks and weeks of being out at night. It just looks unnatural to me. 

So what do you do? Well, the answer in photo circles seems to be you do just about anything you want.

Once I got in a discussion with a very famous and respected photographer about the color of the sky. At that time I was arguing the point from the view you take. I finally asked what color is the night sky?His answer was "any color I want it to be". It bothered me at first, but less over time. 

So, do you want to make a photo that is true to physics, but is not what anyone can ever see (and at times may be ugly), or make an idealized view of the sky, or simply try to make a work of art, or something people can identify with?

It is a question each person has to answer for themselves, and the answer will be different each time. 

For me, I decided, for now, to try to make a work of art that people can identify with. Next year my choice may be different.

Cheers, and thanks for stimulating me to finally write this down!

Wayne Pinkston

The Red Toadstool by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: Website, Instagram, Facebook Beautiful hoodoo in Southern Utah. This is called the Red Toadstool, and I’m guessing it is about 18 feet, 6 meters high, maybe a little larger. Low Level Lighting was used with an LED light panel on a 3 meter light stand located on a rocky mound about 10-15 meters away to the right, turned down very low. There is also a small LED light behind the hoodoo but it was turned down so low that it’s not really visible. ___________________________________________. Made from 21 light frames and 1 dark frame in Starry Landscape Stacker. 22 mm, f/2.8, 15 seconds, ISO 10,000. Thanks for looking!

Abandoned Cathedral by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: Website, Instagram, Facebook Inside an abandoned Cathedral in Madagascar. The red on the horizon is from fires. The local people burn the fields to clear them. There is no public electricity and so there is no light pollution from electric lights. 14 images stacked in Starry Landscape Stacker, 11 light frames, 3 dark frames, 14-24 mm lens at 24 mm, f/2.8, 15 sec, ISO 10,000.

The Two Legged Hoodoo by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: Website Instagram Facebook Valley of Dreams, New Mexico. Nikon D810A camera, Nikon 14-24 mm lens, at f 2.8, 14 mm, 25 sec., and ISO 6400. There is lighting with Low Level Lighting. For a tutorial please look here: www.lowlevellighting.org For more images like this please take a look at my website here . Thanks for all the kind support! Hope you enjoy! A big thank you to the wonderful Flickr family. Cheers, Wayne

Questions and Answers

How to manage noise in night photography

Question: I've looked as many of your nightscape photos as I could and it seems that all of them are so noise free. Like you, I use a Canon 6D or the  but I always seem to get that magenta colored noise in the foreground when I shoot at 25-30 seconds. That's why I do composites for most of my nightscapes. I see that you are using a Nikon 14-24 mm lens. Is that your secret weapon? Or do you some other secret?

Answer: I use the Canon 6D or the Nikon 810A cameras. The magenta color comes from lightening the underexposed dark areas.It is a little worse on the Canon as compared to the Nikon, but can occur with any camera. There is no secret weapon unless it is the cameras themselves. Both do incredibly well at hight ISO. The key is to pay attention to detail at every strep of the process. Remember that anything you do early in the processing can snowball and make noise worse at each subsequent step in the processing. Remember also that contrast and sharpening can make noise worse so you want to minimize or simply eliminate any sharpening and contrast increase EARLY in the processing. Also remember that the sky and foreground have to be treated separately. The sky is a very high contrast subject (light stars and dark sky), and the foreground is an extremely flat or low contrast subject. Also remember that the appearance of sharpness is created by 2 things, resolution and contrast. Since the sky is hight contrast you do not need to do much sharpening. You will only increase the appearance of noise there. The foreground in low contrast and may need sharpening. 

This is what I do (1) Image acquisition - try to shoot to the right (of the histogram). There is a lot more info in the pixels to the right side of the histogram, and less on the far left dark side. A lot of respected Astrophotographers are going to ISO 12,800. The D6 or 810A can handle this ISO. When you push the histogram to the right then you are moving the dark pixels more to towards the middle of the histogram, and there is a lot more info in the pixels. The thought is that the same photo taken at ISO 12,800 has more info in the pixels that the same photo taken at 6400, or 3200. You can deal with the noise in Lightroom of Adobe RAW. 

(2) Open the image in Lightroom or Adobe RAW. Always acquire RAW images when shooting. I use the temp and tint sliders to make the darkest part of the sky as neutral as possible (grey). If I cannot make it neutral then I err to the slightly blue side. Concentrate on the upper and darkest sky, not near the horizon. Do not make the sky too blue at this early step. Use the lens profile correction function. The vignetting will pop up at 100%. Reduce it to about 50-60% or so. Too much vignetting removal will bring out that magenta color in the lower corners. DO NOT use Clarity at this time. DO NOT do any real sharpening at this level. Leave the shahrpening at the default of 25%, and increase the mask to 75%. DO NOT do any contrast adjustments at this level. If you do it will only get worse later. I use a Luminance Noise factor of about 50 for the 6D, and detail of 50%. There is not a lot of Color Noise in the 6D files, and I use a Color Noise Factor of 17-20, and set the Smoothness to 100%. Use the Shadow Slider to lighten up the dark areas to your personal taste. Again, DO NOT use the Clarity Slider.  The image will look very flat. Click Edit or Export to Photoshop or click the "Open Image" in Adobe RAW. 

(3) Select or Mask the Sky or Foreground to separate them in Photoshop, by whatever means you want. You need to treat them differently. I place the sky and foreground in separate layers and process then separately. For the Foreground/Ground Selection: I May use the Shadows/Highlights Function the lighten up the dark areas using a setting of 3 to 5 (very low). Then increase the contrast a Little, by using the Curves function and place a Minimal"S" shaped curve on the foreground.  Alternatively you could open the Levels function and move the shadows slider to the right.  I may use the Topaz Denoise plugin to further decrease noise in the foreground. It may make the foreground soft. I then do some limited sharpening. Remember, sharpening increases the appearance of the noise, so I go about it differently, and use the Unsharp Mask or Smart Sharpening to INCREASE LOCAL CONTRAST. This is a lot like the Clarity function. Do this only after you have done any color correction on the foreground, and you are happy with the foreground otherwise. It is the opposite of normal sharpening. Use use an amount of 10-20 and a radius of 40-60. I usually use 15 and 60. It increases local contrast and the Perception of sharpness without increasing the perception of noise. If there is magenta in the corners I select that area and go to Hue/Saturation function, choose Magenta, and decrease saturation. Alternatively you can select the magenta area and go to the Color Balance function and add green, or a third way to get rid of the magenta is to paint or brush over it with green. You will not need to do that much usually. 

(4) For the sky, I first use the Levels Command and take the Shadows slider and move it to the right, making the darks darker. This does not do much to the lighter shades. I AVOID the Curves function as much as possible. You do not really need it, and adjusting “Curves” changes the colors, making them much more saturated, and they get out of hand very quickly. You can adjust Contrast with the Levels Command and the Contrast Command, and it is MUCH easier to keep the colors and noise under control. Curves can also make the noise look worse, I may increase the vibrance about 10 or so. It helps to darken the sky without increasing the Contrast so much. I then go to the Color Balance Command, and increase Blue slightly. It does not take much. I then go back to the Levels or Contrast Command and adjust the Milky Way and Sky to the brightness or darkness I desire. I may use a little Dodging or Burning. I Do Not sharpen the sky. I prefer the sky to look a little softer rather than crunchy or crispy. Remember the sky is already a high contrast subject, so you do not really need to sharpen it to have the perception of sharpness. Remember,  perceived sharpness is a function of contrast and resolution, you already have one component of sharpness (hight contrast) in abundance. 

So managing noise requires you to be diligent throughout the process, from acquisition to the end of processing. The most important thing is to not make noise worse in the processing.

Cheers, Wayne

Delicate Light by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: This is the iconic Delicate Arch in Arches National Park, in Utah, USA. I had wanted to try my hand at this for a while, but the site had become so popular that I had major reservations about competing with others over "territory" for filming. Fellow photographer Eric Gail and I made the hike and found 20-25 people there including 2 people who said they were from the BBC making a time lapse. Two of the parities did indeed get into a hostile shouting match and the location "heated up". After everyone calmed down we were able to take turns and everything worked out just fine. Thanks to everyone there for such good co-operation. We did set up this lighting scheme which most found acceptable. A few people preferred the blue light of LEDs, and they had their turn. The time lapse people just filmed it all. There is smoke near the horizon from the fires in California. This obscures the stars near the horizon. You can see a layer of smoke above the light pollution. Thanks for taking the time to look. Hope you enjoy! Your time, faves, and comments are much appreciated! Please join me at: Website Facebook Instagram Blog

The Hanging Hoodoo by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: Website, Instagram, Facebook “The Hanging Hoodoo”. I’ve been away from Flickr for many months unfortunately. It’s been a busy summer and I have a whole season of photos to process and post, and I’m just finally getting around to it. If anyone is still actually following me, then many thanks. 🙏🙏🙏 I had the opportunity to explore an area in New Mexico that I had not been to before, an area outside of the usual photo locations, and I found this “Hanging Hoodoo”. I was immediately enamored by the photo potential. I was able to return at the next new moon and get this photo. Next year I’ll return and get the scene with the Milky Way to the left of the hoodoo, but it was too late in the year to get it this time. I could just make a composite and paste a MW to the left of the hoodoo, but I try to keep it real. It’s a lot more fun and challenging to make it work out in actuality than just adding a MW. A lot more trouble too, lol. I think this would be a major photo op for photographers if anyone knew about it. I was lucky to find it. There is a 20 image stack for the sky and a 5 minute exposure for the foreground, blended in PS, all taken from the same position, back to back. Thought for the day... “The night is a tunnel, a hole into tomorrow..." ... Frank Herbert Thanks for looking! Wayne Pinkston

Cyclops Arch by Wayne Pinkston Via Flickr: Website Instagram Facebook Panorama of 11 vertical images Nikon 810A, 14-24mm lens, 16 mm, f 2.8, 25 sec, ISO 10,000, This is a panorama of Cyclops Arch in the Alabama Hills of California. I had been there in August before, and the Milky Way was better centered over the arch. This trip was in June, and it was harder than I expected to get the core centered over the arch. So we "resorted" to placing the stone arch under the arch of the MW. It worked out better than expected. There is a small light panel under the arch with the light damped down very low. There is another light panel off to my left. For a tutorial on this kind of lighting (LLL) see lowlevellighting.org. For more images like this please take a look at my website here . Thanks for all the kind support! Hope you enjoy! A big thank you to the wonderful Flickr family. Cheers, Wayne

Ancient Bristlecone Pines on Flickr.

Ancient Bristlecone Pines in Bryce Canyon National Park, with the Milky Way above.