Question for the Milky Way panorama guys

[strongmanmike]

This is a beautiful photo (and I may well be wrong) but when I look closely I am struggling with the reflections in the water :shrug:.... they look doctored to me, very vivid but with the stars vertically elongated in spots and perfect sharp dots in others and the Eta Carina nebula looks very sharp in the reflection which I can't imagine could happen at an oblique reflection angle?....has photoshop been use here to paste stars and the Milky Way onto the water to look like reflections... or not?

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeymack/15912460803/in/pool-astrophoto



Mike

[gregbradley]

It looks natural to me. These widefield lenses usually have some aberrations/distortions. It looks like he may have some slight tilt where the left side has been affected and the right has not.

Possibly the stitching process may have elongated some as well. Looking at it again I'd say its a stitching thing as the stars are tight to the left of it and to the right of the elongated stars.

I'd say being a Canon he may have used a Canon widefield lens which probably does not do well off axis.

Suspicious aren't you? hehehehe
Greg.

[multiweb]

Yeah, looks legit. The attenuation of the faint stars and bloating of the bright ones in the water is consistent with a reflection. Water must have been incredibly still though.

[douggyi]

Fair question, Mike. I know the photographer of this one and know that he wouldn't be offended if you asked him. Pop a message in the Flickr comments and/or his Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/mackphotographynz/timeline

BTW last year he won the 2014 Harry Williams Trophy Astrophotography Competition which is held annually by the Auckland Astronomical Society in NZ.

[Phil Hart]

hi Mike

Good to see people holding photographers up to a high standard. There are plenty of doctored reflections around but this one looks about as I expect, although pushed heavily to bring out the reflection.

As Marc says, in a reflection the stars are bloated a little so bright stars gain in brightness relative to the Milky Way. If the Milky Way is the dominant feature then I get suspicious.

Here are two examples of mine for comparison: Pano (http://philhart.smugmug.com/Night-Sky-Photography/Coastal-Lakes-and-Rivers/i-PDXPZbd/A) and Portrait (http://philhart.smugmug.com/Night-Sky-Photography/Coastal-Lakes-and-Rivers/i-gKjnnVn/A)

Phil

[gregbradley]

That's interesting Phil. In your image all the stars are pinpoint. I suspect his image has one or two sub exposures where the edges of the images were included in the stitching and his lens has coma in the outer sides of its FOV which I think is common for widefield lenses.

The only ones that don't do that are the Nikon 14-24 or the Zeiss 15. Perhaps the Canon 17 TSE.

Sometimes I see the section above the MW has elongated stars which for sure are from the stitching/projection methods. Some projection methods stretch that top section of the image. His though is not near the sides or tops.

Perhaps he bumped the camera a bit or it got moved by wind when he took that panel. Its easy to bump a camera in the dark.

Greg.

[strongmanmike]

Ok, fair enough guys...was just casually inquisitive :) Having the Milky Way reflecting off water look so close to the actually sky appearance just seems too good to be true to me and probably has much to do with lens FOV, angle of the camera to both the water surface and sky etc....but looks rather cool regardless :thumbsup:

Mike

[NCHANT]

:)

Achieving reflections like that is very very hard, and that was an extremely still night!

There were 2 factors that created the warped star reflections:

• Wind – there was the odd VERY gentle breeze, enough to warp the star but not enough to blur it out of existence
• Wildlife – birds and fish are abundant int hat area, a few ducks landed nearby while it was being shot.

The lans used was a Samyang 24mm ƒ1.4 which has virtually no coma, and is extremely sharp so excellent for astrophotography.
As for the milky way in the reflection, that part of each image was lifted by one stop in Lightroom to get more details.

:D

Here's some better reflection examples:

https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3943/14927390743_53a28c3f2d.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/oK5McV)Into the Void (https://flic.kr/p/oK5McV) by Mikey Mack (https://www.flickr.com/people/82443214@N07/), on Flickr
https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3852/15128152838_2910dc0e05.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/p3PJMm)Lake Dunstan Milky Way. (https://flic.kr/p/p3PJMm) by Mikey Mack (https://www.flickr.com/people/82443214@N07/), on Flickr

[colinmlegg]

Just to add my 2 cents.. the water depth also helps. If the layer is very shallow...like <1 cm, it takes a reasonable amount of wind to move it. This was the case in the attached. There was quite a breeze blowing which bloated the stars but not enough to destroy the MW reflection. The star stretch is caused by wind moving the water. Super rare to have no motion whatsoever.