First attempt - Landscape/Astro Photo

This my first try of merging a landscape photo with an astro photo from the same location. I'm slowly learning some of the techniques on how to do astro-photos. Its lots of fun.

Anyway, this was shot last night at Cape Horn. I set up just before sunset and snapped a few foreground shots while there was still some light. I then waited, and waited some more for night to fall so I could put the camera on a tracking mount and take a long exposure for the night sky. The sky exposure was just a little over 5 minutes. You can see a lot more stars and faint fuzzy objects on the larger file.

I then tried my best a merging the two files. I'll need a lot of practice for this step to get it right.

Canon 5D,
Foreground ISO100, f13
Night Sky ISO 1000, f5.6, little over 5 minutes

Very peaceful scene! I don't think I have seen any astro photography from this area. I love the blues, the light glow is a bit intense you may want to darken just a tad in the glow. Very cool overall

Eric, this is just amazing. Certainly worth developing your abilities.

I'd love to see this in print..

Very cool, Eric. Keep us posted on your progress. I suspect you're on the path to some remarkable images.

Eric, this is great......I know its supposed to be a night scene but its a hint too dark for my liking. I do love the stars and how they cover the entire width of the sky.....

I am just learning how to merge images in CS3 and I think its gonna be lots of fun!

Eric,
I have tyo take a moment to comment on this. I really like it. I feel like I'm right there gazing at the stars. It sounds like you exhibited alot of patience and it really paid off.

Thanks all. Yeah Darren, its a bit dark for sure. I was trying to lighten it up a bit last night and think that version is a little better.

Eric, great stuff. Look forward to seeing more.

I love this image, Eric - I love night images that rely on very subtle highlights. To my eye, the brightness of the light areas is right on the mark, Not sure if you're allowed to do this within the board guidelines, but I'd be interested in seeing the two images that you've merged. I'd like to try this sometime, but am clueless on how the two parent images should be exposed. Another question is how you managed to keep a camera still in the Gorge for five whole minutes..!?

Tom

Thanks Tom,
No problem, here are the images. (at least I'll try to post them)
First is the landscape shot that I took earlier in the evening.
The second is the 5+ minute star exposure. Note how red it turned out from the heat generated from the sensor. I had to process this out.
Third is the processed star image.

Here is that sky image

And the processed sky image

As for how the camera was still for 5 minutes...it wasn't completely still. For long exposure night sky shots you need an astronomical mount that can track the movement of the stars across the sky as the Earth rotates.

Here is a shot of my tracking mount with telescopes attached. For this particular sky shot I didn't use the telescope though. I just mounted my camera on the mount and let it track by itself.

Wow! I was with you until that last photo... :-) Nothing quite like that in my gadget back at the moment! I was assuming that 5 minutes was a short enough exposure not to show star streaks, but it sounds like that would have been the case without your tracking mount. What do you consider the upper limit in exposure time before star stop being dots and start being lines?

Thanks for the background pics, Eric - very interesting stuff!

Tom

You can go about 30 seconds with a wide angle lens(24mm or wider) before getting any star trails.

Thanks, Eric. I'm going to experiment with some night exposures this summer -- I've been meaning to ever since hiking down from Cooper Spur in the dark a couple of years ago during a new moon. The stars were astounding, but the part that surprised me was how well the mountain was illuminated in those conditions. So I'm hoping to get up there under similar conditions and see if I can capture something interesting.

Tom

Great work, Eric. Thanks for posting the other pix, too. That's quite a rig. I can't wait to see more shots and watch your technique develop, now, after this first post. You GO! boy!

This is just superb. I've always been extremely interested in merging astrophotography with landscape photography - not something you see often without star trails. This is an inspiration - please take more images such as this! Tristan