Critique - Old Man of Storr by Moonlight

It seems that talking about photography is off-topic on the members list but welcome here. Sorry. And thanks to everyone who pointed out the error of my ways so politely.

I'd like to say a few words about my entries last night.

The first was cropped and re-sized from this original:

Full resolution image here:

Folk who have been there will immediately recognise it as the Old Man of Storr on the Isle of Skye.

It was taken on Christmas evening at 8:30pm when the dark landscape was harshly illuminated by a full moon.

With my eyes accustomed to the darkness, it was difficult to judge the exposure - the chimping screen on the back of the camera seems very bright at nighttime. With the meter in the middle, the camera was compensating for the darkness so much that the scene looked like daylight. Dropping a third of a stop helped it look more like nighttime but the picture is still much brighter than the scene appeared to the naked eye. I settled on:

• 85mm
• f/1.2 (a wonderful piece of glass...)
• 4 seconds (on a tripod)
• ISO 800

Moonlight is interesting to work with. It gives a very harsh, specular light that emphasises rough textures. I encourage people to experiment with it.

But the result is difficult to deal with. It works in illumunted media, such as my laptop and on the projected screen, but the stars become dull, indistinct specks and the effect is almost lost when I print it.

Singleton

My second entry was this:

Resolution as entered here:

Which looks fabulous in print, with the feeling of an old master but the effect is reduced in projection. This was taken at the Weald and Downland open air museum http://www.wealddown.co.uk/

It was taken in a large old house with a fire smouldering in the middle of the floor and wooden barred windows without glass. The bright spring sunlight light streaming in to the darkened, smokey interior was just screaming out for a photo. The staff were quite happy for me to arrange the three items (leather jug, leather mug and horn tumbler) where the three shafts of light were falling on the table and were patiently amused as I moved them periodically as the light shifted and I tried different angles, different focal lengths and shot multiple images as the smoke was always changing.

When looking through the results, I often found interesting shapes in the shadow and the smoke. As the judge pointed out, the composition does look a little odd, with the two main components in a diagonal layout re-inforced by the sunbeams, with a "weak" area to the right. Right up until you notice the old, bearded man in the smoke, looking down from the upper right...

Or am I the only person that can see him?

Andrew

PS: And yes, it was sunlight streaming in through the window, not moonlight as I wrote earlier in a fit of confusion. The Old man of Storr was moonlight...

PPS: I'll do one image per page in future

-- AndrewBeattie - 14 Oct 2009

14 Oct 2009 21:51:24 MikeKiely:

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14 Oct 2009 22:05:08 MikeKiely:

Hi - the second images is good and interesting but not why I'm here.

I liked the first image (Storr) - it is a new view of something photographed before. Not sure its possible to have too many stars in a photo where they are a key element, but this is a personal view and the judge had his own. I did wonder if maybe you had other images where the sky was similar in its effect but there was slightly more light on the land - but again this is personal preference (I'm an aspiring landscape photographer who doesn't really take landscape pictures).

I agree that this is the best place for MCC members to seek the views of other MCC members, but I have to say that if I get an email which doesn't cause offence or embarrassement to anyone and exists solely for the furtherance of photographic debate, then I can't see the problem. Photographically, we're a pretty thick skinned bunch with good command of the 'delete' key - so I wouldn't worry.

Welcome to the website and the critique pages. We look forward to more of your images in the competitions. cheers. Michael.

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15 Oct 2009 03:39:14 AndrewBeattie:

I don't have any other pictures with the same effect because it takes a pretty special combination of circumstances:

• Full moon
• Cloudless night
• Landscape location, away from streetlights, headlights etc
• being outside to notice that we have these conditions

But I definately on the lookout for it happening again.

I too would like more light on the land and there is certainly scope to increase the exposure and bring things up to look like daylight but then the sky gets bright and the impact of the stars fades away even further. But you are not going to get a brighter moon than I had on that day.

I suppose that you could select the sky in photoshop and run the sky and land at different exposure levels but that is outside my current "rules of engagement".

Andrew

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16 Oct 2009 19:30:11 AndrewBeattie:

I have been thinking more about photographing stars. If you want the star to be points rather than trails, you have to select a shutter speed that is short enough that the stars don't move significantly during the exposure.

So I have been trying to calculate how short is short enough.

I figure that it depends upon:

• The focal length of the lens (a long focal length will pick up a smaller movement)
• The size of the pixels on the sensor (higher resolution, smaller pixels will show a movement that lower resolution will not resolve)
• Which stars you are looking at (the pole star hardly moves at all, whilst the ones at the equator move quite quickly)

Some pedants would argue that the stars don't move but as far as I am concerned, the universe revolves round me and I won't entertain any argument to the contrary.

Anyway, I have constructed a little spreadsheet for calculating how long it takes for a star to move from one pixel to another, so that I can calculate the exposure time then adjust the ISO to suit (aperture will invariably be as much as is available...)

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AiWMrLOA7ytcdEx1NGN6a01uMVBGOG1tNC1CWFA1RFE&hl=en

The spreadsheet is open for anyone to edit. Is there a geometrist to check it?

Also of relevance is The Photographer's Ephemeris, available for multiple platforms here:

http://stephentrainor.com/tool

Which can tell you in advance the fullness of the moon, together with the time and direction that it will rise and set at any location on any given day.

Andrew

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22 Oct 2009 14:14:58 JohnAshford:

The spreadsheet looks about right to me, but I think the practical requirement is a little bit less exacting than you calculate.

The light from the star will fall on / within a pixel (unless it is a big star, or a long lens) and the centre point of the star when you open the shutter will start anywhere in the pixel at issue. So the mean time till the centre of the star passes to the next pixel will be one-half of your interval of 1.3 seconds. Then it will traverse the net pixel for 1.3 seconds, and after a total of 2.6 seconds will have half-illuminated the third pixel.

So if you set the exposure to, say, three seconds, and later sharpen the image with a threshold of two pixels you ought to end up with an apparently fixed, sharp, stellar object? (I think.) Also, if you turn your camera sideways until the star tracks align with the diagonal of the cells of the sensor (about 45 degrees off track) you multiply the scan distance of a pixel by something between 1.3 and 1.414 (depending on scatter etc) and so might get slightly more tolerance again.

Sometime I'll try 3 second exposures, maybe of the moon too, though because of the much larger angle subtended by the moon (0.5 degrees from memory) it will occupy several pixels at a time so the argument made above for the star may be weaker.

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22 Oct 2009 14:28:50 JohnAshford:

Having visited Google: "The Hubble Space Telescope made a direct image of the star Betelgeuse. The image has an angular size of only 0.125 arcseconds" - so it should fit within a pixel. Indeed the reference commented that normal astronomical telescopes cannot resolve star images directly but proceed by indirect methods to form star images.

Spreadsheet column F for those of us on APS-C sensors?

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22 Oct 2009 17:50:52 PaulFranklin:

Andrew

I wanted to add how great it is for people to be able to take the discussion onwards from the judging evening on to the forum. I like the "old man image". I think though it is an idea that works for you if your brain is wired to spot those things. If it isn't then I think the image has got to also be able to stand without seeing that - unless you enhance the old man so that he is very obvious. (I sense that your "rules of engagement don't go there) I think I would have positioned the objects further to the right so that the light falling across them from the window appears better proportioned around them. This would strengthen the rhs of the image and still leave room for the old man for those who can see him.

Paul

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26 Oct 2009 17:59:47 JohnAshford:

Experiment to test hypothesis. Five shots of the same star from our front bedroom window, using a 300 mm (450 mm efl) lens on an A350 camera with an APS-C 14.2 effective mpx sensor.

Exposures (at varying ISO's to keep them fairly even) are 2 secs, 4, 8, 15, and 30 seconds. What I hadn't realised was how much effect passing traffic has on our front bedroom - shot 5 (30 secs) seemed to invite passing HGV's which are usually uncommon in Harrow Lane, but the effect is interesting.

Shots follow in increasing exposure sequence. [Actually it looks more like a planet, but same argument applies! Then I looked it up: Jupiter, diam 45 arc-seconds. Over to you Andrew.]

QED I reckon - stick to 4 seconds or less if you want the stars sharp!

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12 Nov 2010 - 08:20 -- JohnAshford

Afterthought: The experiments were done looking near the horizon. If the camera had been pointing at the Pole Star there would have been much less blur (demonstrated by some of the NHPOTY images at NHM this year). So multiply the length of the expected streak by the sin of the angle between the centre of field and the Pole Star to get a better result.

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