Milky Way 7 panel panorama REPRO

[gregbradley]

119356From Thurs night. Nikon D800E, 14-24mm at 14mm F2.8, 30 seconds at ISO6400. Stitched together in PTGui Pro and post processing in Photoshop.

http://upload.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/144887132/large Portrait Orientation
http://upload.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/144869476 Landscape orientation

Greg.

[RickS]

How does the full res version compare, Greg? Some nice dust and a bit of Ha visible but the sky background looks a bit mottled on my laptop screen.

[gregbradley]

Its a bit mottled as you say.

Perhaps I should try stacking several of each per panel to build up signal.

I'll be at my dark site soon so I'll be doing another few of these.

I think ideally these shots need to be tracked with the landscape component still and layered in. I'll have to get one of those little Losmandy star trackers or an adapter to fit my 14-24mm on the Proline and PMX!

Greg.

[RickS]

New toys are always good, Greg :thumbsup: I'll be interested to see what you can do at the dark site.

[strongmanmike]

Nice result Greg, while perhaps not perfect (you'll get there) it still looks great.

I shoudl get off my lazy R's and use my D7000...probably will, if we end up in dark skies outside Canberra :thumbsup:

Mike

[gregbradley]

It should be a bit better. How much more I am not sure. My home skies in the west are about 75-80% of those at my dark site.



Thanks Mike.

The large number of fabulous nightscapes on this forum has inspired me to put my DSLR to good use.

Its a bit of a learning curve with new gear.

[iceman]

Good start with the stitching, but it's pretty noisy and grainy and looks overprocessed.

I'd like to see some at ISO3200 for comparison and try running some noise reduction on each frame before stitching.

[Bassnut]

mmm, given its a 6 panel panorama and probably very hi res, thats a woefull thumbnail, cant see why you did that. The link is also fairly ordinary, and then clicking on "original" size is way too bright and noisy.

..............ahh, nikon, understand, NP :thumbsup:

[Adelastro1]

Well since I'm a fellow D800E owner I'm going to have to stick up for the Nikons here Fred! :P
Yes it does look a bit over processed to me, or it's something else. Here is a Milky Way shot I took last weekend at the Dish at Parkes (cropped out foreground to leave upper left corner). This is ISO 6400 too but only 20 secs (ignore the star elongation - I had the camera sitting on my camera bag cos I left my tripod home!). There is very little noise visible. It's processed slightly in PS6 - levels, contrast etc. The second image is a further top left crop of the first which shows the low noise a bit better.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29005492@N07/7614754052/in/photostream/lightbox/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29005492@N07/7614770956/in/photostream/lightbox/

[Octane]

Wayne,

There's a bit of a magenta cast through those images. Viewing on a calibrated monitor, too. :S

H

[Adelastro1]

Yeh I'm just on my average laptop....
I took some 30 sec darks a while ago and there's a fair bit of amp glow at high ISO on the D800 compared to other FX Nikons. Not sure why but will have to compensate or remember to subtract darks. At least the noise is good!

[colinmlegg]

Wayne, these are with high iso NR on, yes? The Milky Way looks a bit soft and plasticy. I reckon you'll get a better image if you leave high iso NR off, drop the ISO to 3200 or 4000 and use a post processing NR program with correct noise profiles - like 'Neat Image'.

[gregbradley]

Thanks for the replies.

I reprocessed it this morning to get a more natural and less heavily processed look. I used Photoshop CS6 (I love this program).

I looked at the original again and it now looks ghastly!

I think this is a big improvement.

A question:

Which orientation do you prefer, the landscape (sideways) version or the portrait (vertical) version?

If you prefer the portrait version do you think the landscape part at the top looks good or would it better if I cropped it off?

http://upload.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/144887132 Portrait Orientation
http://upload.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/144869476 Landscape orientation

[gregbradley]

Thanks Mike I've done a repro as the original was overprocessed and pushed too hard.



Hi Mike, Yes its pushed way too hard. I did a repro this morning and got it more natural. Signal to noise ratio is weak compared to multi hour CCD images so its a more delicate approach. All part of the learning curve.

ISO6400 is pretty useable and clean on the D800E like the 5D3 much the same. So I think its more the processing. See the repro and see what you think. I'll experiment with ISO3200. I did some experiments with higher ISO. ISO12800 is starting to show some noise, ISO25600 is getting colour background noise intruding. ISO6400 seems at this stage to be the sweet spot. 5D3 and D800 should both handle ISO6400 without any trouble.



I looked at it this morning and yes its pretty ghastly. Using CCD imaging processing bashing the image too hard and it can't take it. I need to be more of a delicate flower handling the DSLR images.

What did you say about the Nikon - OMG -Where's the ignore button again?:rofl:

Greg.

[CapturingTheNight]

SOOOOOO much better Greg :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup: The original had too much of a HDR feel to it for my tastes.

[gregbradley]

Thanks. Yes I agree the original was ghastly.

Greg.

[multiweb]

Cool shot Greg. I also liked your time-lapse. Nice one. :thumbsup:

[iceman]

Much better!

[gregbradley]

Thanks Marc. DSLR is a lot of fun.



Thanks Mike. Thanks for the tips.

Greg.

[Adelastro1]

Much better Greg. I can't decide whether I like the landscape or portrait better though. Both have pluses.





Thanks Colin, I'll try no NR in camera. I had High ISO NR set to high. It was also a quick processing in PS6 and could have done better. I'll take a look at Neat Image - I've used a trial of Noise Ninja once which seemed ok, but noise profiles sound interesting and worth a look.

What settings did you use Greg? Any NR in camera? I'm finding 20sec a good exposure length to reduce star movement.

[iceman]

I use Topaz De-Noise - great noise reduction plugin.

[strongmanmike]

That's heaps better and the portrait orientation looks best to me, the bottom foreground grounds the viewer IMO :)

Mike

[gregbradley]

14mm F2.8, 30 seconds, ISO6400 ICNR on, no high ISO NR.

What's the concern about ICNR? Its just a dark subtract.

Greg.

[gregbradley]

I sometimes use Noise Ninja which is very good. Best is Noel Carboni deep space noise reduction or none at all.



Thanks Mike. Yes I tend to agree with you there portrait is better.

Greg.

[StephenM]

Great work with the repro Greg! I prefer the portrait version myself.

Cheers,
Stephen

[gregbradley]

Thanks Stephen.

Yes I think that is the better orientation as well.

Greg.

[colinmlegg]

Sorry, actually meant high iso NR. Out of interest re. ICNR on the the d800e, can you take another shot while the camera's processing the dark frame?

[Adelastro1]

No. I just tried it and it only allows metering and focussing, which makes sense as the sensor needs to record the dark frame with the shutter closed, otherwise it wouldn't be a dark frame. The display flashes 'job nr' until the dark frame has been completed.

I took a 30sec frame with ICNR off at 6400 with lens cap on and also covered the lens with a cloth, and there was quite a lot of purple glow and bands. I turned on the ICNR and did the same exposure (plus the automatic dark) and there was almost no glow. So it looks like I'll need to do either manual darks each shoot, or turn on the annoying ICNR that effectively doubles exposure times or fix in post processing at hose ISO levels!

[colinmlegg]

Cheers mate. That's what I would have expected re. dark frame needing to be created when the shutter is closed -- the bizarre thing is that the Canon 5D2 allows you to take 4 shots while processing dark frames from the previous 3. Anyone know how it does this?

What about 3200? How does that look? You should be able to clean it up nicely in post. You won't want ICNR on if you try timelapse - the gap adds a noticeable jerkiness to the star movement.

[gregbradley]

High ISO noise reduction will be some sort of blurring processing and likely to damage the fainter stars so yes I agree you don't want that.

My first DSLR was a Nikon D70 and it had bad amp glow so I used ICNR all the time. There was a lot of discussion back then about Nikons "RAW" file format NEF. That it applied a fine blur to reduce noise even though it was RAW and the work around was to take an image, and turn the camera off during after an ICNR as I recall. The camera did an emergency save and did not apply that blur.

That's a handy feature of the 5D2 allowing more shots whilst doing ICNR.

Library darks are handy and speed things up. But really when we are talking about 20 minutes of shooting its not a big deal. I am used to multi hour CCD imaging.

I'll have to check out high ISO amp glow. Wayne, have you done any testing of amp glow at various ISO's? I believe digital gain kicks in at about ISO6400 so perhaps the glow is more noticeable then.

I did not notice amp glow in my time lapse which had no ICNR and used 30 seconds ISO6400.

Greg.

[Adelastro1]

Yes I have, well actually on Alex Cherney's request. He's putting together a comparison between various Nikon bodies which he will post soon no doubt (I need to resend my darks to him as a check!).
When I compare one dark to the next I can just see it at 3200, it's noticeable at 6400 and very evident at 12800. At 6400 it's not something that you would necessarily notice in an image because of everything else being recorded in the image, except maybe for a slight magenta look to it perhaps.
Alex told me at the Malins that digital gain kicks in after 1250, which would seem about right if amp glow is purely due to digital gain (is it?) and the fact that I see it visually from about 3200 (I wouldn't be able to detect it with my eye and laptop screen at 1600 presumably).

And that's interesting about the 5D Colin. I wonder how that works too!