Tonight I was also joined by Alex who helped carry a few of the bits and pieces up to the tor from the car park, we also brought some drinks and food to keep us busy while the photograph was being taken.
The video below discusses Hound Tor and the positioning of the camera and North Star:
For this photo shoot, I did bring a Hasselblad 500CM with me to try to get a photograph of the stars as well, I set the camera up with a 50mm wide angle lens which easily allowed me to get the whole rock face in which I could see with the Canon Digital Camera. I used another tripod to support this camera and loaded the film into the cassette at the back. More about this later.
Anyway firstly I shot some sample images with my digital camera to make sure the lighting and exposure were correct so that I could begin the long process of shooting for stacking.
Here are the tripods, one which has the Hasselblad on ready to shoot, while the other tripod was being used for the digital camera:
A closer image of the Hasselblad:
Sample Photos
Photo Factfile
Shutter Speed: 5 minutes
Aperture: f 4.0
ISO: 1600
This image was shot using the standard sample photo settings although it has been overexposed, all the details in the sky have been lost, while the composition of the foreground rock is quite poor, so this sample image gives me a chance to change these errors so the photos taken for the stack, will look the best they can:
I did a few variations on the standard 5 minute exposure to find out if I needed a slightly different setup. For the image below I used the following settings:
Photo Factfile
Shutter Speed: 4 minutes
Aperture: f4.0
ISO: 1600
These settings gave me a better image, which has also been edited in terms of composition, so that the rock is more prominent in the foreground of the image. I used the following table to understand how long the exposure would need to be, based on the ISO number:
ISO | Timescale
100 128 minutes
200 32 minutes
400 16 minutes
800 8 minutes
1600 4 minutes
For this particular photo shoot, I decided to go for the full 128 minute exposure time, as it wasn't too bad an evening and I believe it would be worth the time. As the moon was rising quickly I decided to get going with the stack images.
The video below briefly talks about how the Moon can have an effect on my image shooting throughout the night:
Starting the Shoot
As I am following some of the rules I read back in the article I added about stacking images, I shot an initial 8 minute exposure to give the foreground some more lighting which would help it stand out in the final stacked image at the end:
Photo Factfile
Shutter Speed: 8 minutes
Aperture: f4.5
ISO: 100
I went for the slightly smaller aperture to reduce the overall exposure slightly, as I still believe it is slightly overexposed according to the 4 minute test shot I did earlier.
After completing the 8 minute exposure, it was now time to continue with at least 15x4 minute exposures which would form the image stack later in Photoshop, here is a sample 4 minute image, bearing in mind the others look exactly the same except for a marginal star movement above:
The Hasselblad Medium Format Camera
I did try to use this camera while I was up at the rock, unfortunately it was just too difficult to get any decent results with the camera, I couldn't properly make out what was being framed in the focus square and I had to concentrate on the photos being taken with the digital camera, so unfortunately, I had to let the Hasselblad fall by the wayside as I concentrated on the digital camera. Although by no means do I think the Hasselblad isn't up to the job, I just think it requires more attention than I could give it, in order to produce an amazing photograph, I will still be using the medium format camera in the future to shoot star photographs.
As i sat and waited for the photographs to be taken, I was talking to Alex about the conditions on the night, they were excellent, exactly the right brightness, not too much interference from the moon as yet at least and it wasn't too windy or too cold for a change!
I also got talking to him about how it is such a timeless environment which isn't affected by time at all, the only way anyone can tell that my photos are shot over a long period of time, is how the stars rotate in the sky, as these photos can well be mistaken for photos taken during the daytime if they are overexposed. The idea of 'timeless photography' is being presented through my work as the artifacts I am using to act as foreground subjects, have stood for many years unchanged by any humans. The artifacts are protected for people in the future to enjoy, which leads me to consider how my photos could be seen in the future? Will they have a place in the future? Will we need photographs? I will look into this deeper in a Thoughts.. Blog entry after this one.
The Stacked Image
Now it is time to gather my images together and create an image stack with them. By using the exact same technique I mentioned earlier in the blog, i will proceed to add all the images into a single image:
Below is a contact sheet, showing all the images I shot on the night to make up the sample images and the stackable images:
The result of the stacking is shown above, a very dull and 2D image which is very well composed and exposed, but simply lacks any 'kick' and doesn't stand out, so this is where Photoshop comes in.
The image below has been edited using Photoshop, changes are described in more detail below the image:
Curves
Firstly I introduced a Curves Layer Mask to edit the contrast within the image, the print screen shows how I changed the Curves below:
I created a 'S' curve which heightens the contrast in the image giving it more 'punch' and depth than it previously had. I also selected the Blue Channel to further improve the contrast in the image and bring out the blue colour in the background of the image.
Levels
To increase the lighting in the photograph, which has been knocked out by the curves editing, I moved the right hand slider towards the left to increase the lighting in the image and give it some more depth:
Hue/Saturation
This also needed a little bit of work. Take a look at the original image and you ll be able to see the heavy yellow colour cast over the rock face, this is apparent in many of the shots I have taken on the moor and this is an easy way to correct it.
I used the Yellow colour channel and dropped the saturation of yellow out to zero and also gave the overall Master channel a slight drop in saturation as the colours just looked to 'over the top' or too punchy:
Final Image
Below is the image after the editing I did above, as you can see, I haven't changed or cropped any features in the image as I did my very best to make the composition the way I wanted it to be, on location.
This image shows how the technique of stacking has come into it's own and given me this amazing image!
I am very impressed with this result and I am also glad I didn't leave it as it was and that I did have a go at trying to change the image with Photoshop.
I love how the deep blue sky above contrasts with the rock formation and also how the white star trails are very punchy and stand out in the void that is the sky at night.
The composition is the best it could be, if the image included anymore of the ground, it would reduce the effect of the vortex above and if there was to be any less of the Tor, it would have the illusion of floating in the foreground of the image which would also look incorrect.
This image has really inspired me that star photography is possible. I have had many setbacks such as the shoot at Bowerman's which failed due to the camera steaming up, this really deflated my hopes of ever getting a decent image, but since shooting this image I have high hopes for the next several weeks when I will try to get some more equally amazing images.
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