Hi All,
Recently Adobe released Camera RAW 8.7 with support for the new Canon 7D mark II. I’d already taken the shots a few weeks ago, but could not process them through my workflow. Now; I can, and I have uploaded the results to the sensor test page.
Because I shoot a lot of aurora’s I have created an Aurora Forecast Service.
The service gathers all available data from the ACE spacecraft, the GOES’s satellites, as well as local NOAA estimates and presents it to users to assist them by giving them a short aurora forecast. Normally the next hour.
The service is compatible with full screen mode on iOS and android devices, all you need to do is add it to your home screen for future use, and it will remove the pesky Safari URL bar and footer. 🙂
The service also allows you to report sightings of an aurora, which will be visible in real-time to other users of the service.
As well as real-time forecasting you can also view archived dates, include archived reports of aurora’s
It’s taken me a while but last night the weather was favorable and I managed to finally get a reasonable Aurora over the ‘Pans’ at Eaglehawk neck. As an added bonus I also scored a little airglow as well, seen here as the green glow to the left of the picture 🙂
For these shots I used an ND Grad filter to darken the sky allowing more exposure in the foreground without overexposing the glow of the Aurora.
“The most well known example of a tessellated pavement is the Tessellated Pavement that is found at Lufra, Eaglehawk Neck on the Tasman Peninsula of Tasmania. This tessellated pavement consists of a marine platform on the shore of Pirates Bay, Tasmania. This example consists of two types of formations: a pan formation and a loaf formation.
The pan formation is a series of concave depressions in the rock that typically forms beyond the edge of the seashore. This part of the pavement dries out more at low tide than the portion abutting the seashore, allowing salt crystals to develop further; the surface of the “pans” therefore erodes more quickly than the joints, resulting in increasing concavity.
The loaf formations occur on the parts of the pavement closer to the seashore, which are immersed in water for longer periods of time. These parts of the pavement do not dry out so much, reducing the level of salt crystallization. Water, carrying abrasive sand, is typically channeled through the joints, causing them to erode faster than the rest of the pavement, leaving loaf-like structures protruding.”
-WikiPedia.
I’m starting to rethink the idea of fast glass over body for night photography as the ‘priority’, let me explain.
In general terms we say get the best fast glass you can and don’t worry too much about the body, update that later. I think for night photography its possibly the opposite or neutral. Maybe get a good body first, then faster glass later.
Why? Well I’ve been testing a lot of sensors recently for noise, particularly for long exposure noise and it’s fairly easy to see that the cheaper crop bodies do not stack up against the full frame cameras very well at all, at least if you exposing for minutes at a time.
Based on my testing I can’t see a one stop advantage from F4 to F2.8 in glass out weighing the performance gain going from a crop to a full frame body. I have no doubt that a D610 with an F4 lens is going to perform better than a D7100 and a f2.8 or even f1.4 lens.
Of course in the long run faster glass means lower ISO and shorter exposures which for Aurora shooting is important to capture those beams. Just don’t rule out a body upgrade before a glass upgrade. If you have an older crop body camera I don’t think you can expect faster glass to solve all your problems. Consider your upgrade carefully. 🙂
In the long run the ideal is a good body and fast lens, which does not always need to be expensive, considering you really only need a manual lens for night work.
How well do crop sensor cameras work for long exposure work? I’ve just finished testing the 70D and D7100, you can review the results on the sensor test page. In regards to the Canon 7D mark 2, once Adobe supports the 7D mark 2 with the Camera RAW software I will be able to follow the same workflow and upload a comparison. So stay tuned, I expect it will perform better than the 70D.
Hi All,
So the new Nikon D750 is awesome right? But there seems to be some very conflicting information available on the internet.
Nikon have claimed that the new sensor in the D750 performs much better than the existing technology currently being used in the D8X0 and D6X0 cameras, particularly when it comes to low light and noise performance.
However Dx0’s testing revealed that the D750’s sensor is only just on par with the D610 and offers little advantage based on their testing.
So how do the D610 and the D810 compare to the new D750 for long exposures?
Well the data is in, head on over to the Long Exposure Sensor Test page for the results. Thanks again to Walch Optics for allowing me to run the tests.