orions belt at night

hazzayoungn · Feb 19, 2007

i got a tripod, and i took a picture of the sky. i cant exactly put my finger on it, but it looks a bit weird to me. otherwise though, how could i reduce the noise in this picture, and what type of white balance is best for night skys?

thanks

canon sd600
15 sec shutter
iso80

1986 · Feb 19, 2007

i think it looks pretty cool

JDS · Feb 19, 2007

Are those thin clouds? If so, I'm guessing the orangish color is from several street lights in the area?

As for whitebalance, if you're wanting the reflection off of the clouds to show up like this, then you may need to do a custom WB if it's possible with that camera..I don't know of a common one for those street lights.

Then again..I may be way off with my assumptions. I do think it is a cool photo.

hazzayoungn · Feb 19, 2007

yeah, you were right on with your guesses

i like it, but im a little worried with the noise. i want to take pictures like this with my film camera, so ive been experimenting a bit with the digital and getting approximate settings.

my first impression when the sensor stopped writing the info was "northernlights-esque"

Aviation&Hockey · Feb 19, 2007

Ive seen the northern lights many times and that was my first thought as to what it is. I jsut got a new camera myself and am looking to start doing some stellar photography. I like the pic.

astrostu · Feb 19, 2007

From what you posted, I really don't see much noise. What looks "weird" to you in the photo?

The orange objects, yes, are relatively thin clouds that appear streaky like that because of the exposure length.

These days, most (many, some?) street lights are sodium lights, centered at (I want to say) 567 nm (or close to that). So you could work on finding a white balance setting to sodium lights during the day and use that at night. With digital, shoot in RAW and then you can take care of it in post-processing and don't have to worry about white balance, but unless you develop your own film, I don't think you can take care of it later.

hazzayoungn · Feb 20, 2007

i guess weird as in i shouldve composed it better, but i couldnt see anything in the viewfinder and was going off of pure luck

the original image at full size looks much more noisy than i expected from iso80, but maybe its just because im viewing it at full size.

david1971 · Feb 20, 2007

What's best for night shots and stellar photogrpahy is to set the shutter speed at 30". That could make the light from the stars stand out and little more.

hazzayoungn · Feb 20, 2007

david1971 said:
What's best for night shots and stellar photogrpahy is to set the shutter speed at 30". That could make the light from the stars stand out and little more.

thanks for the advice. my p&s only goes to 15, but theres always the whole...bumping up the iso thing for when the clouds arent out

i forget, i saw it on another thread, but i cant remember what it was, somebody mentioned something about star trails and how many minutes was how many degrees of trail?

i think it was astrostu...*hint hint nudge nudge*

elsaspet · Feb 20, 2007

As a fellow star fan, I love this. Great job. I know how hard it was.

astrostu · Feb 20, 2007

hazzayoungn said:
thanks for the advice. my p&s only goes to 15, but theres always the whole...bumping up the iso thing for when the clouds arent out

i forget, i saw it on another thread, but i cant remember what it was, somebody mentioned something about star trails and how many minutes was how many degrees of trail?

i think it was astrostu...*hint hint nudge nudge*

Yuh huh ... Earth rotates once (360 degrees) in 24 hrs. That means in 1 hr, the sky rotates 15 degrees. In 1 minute, the sky rotates 1/4 degree, or 15 arcmin (1/2 the size of the full moon). In 15 seconds, the sky rotates 1/16 degree, or about 4 arcmin.

You have to know the field of view on your camera and then divide that by how many pixels (e.g., 55 deg across, 3604 pix across) to get how large a pixel is (in that example, about 0.9 arcmin) Then you can figure out if you'll see trails or not, and how many pixels across they should be.

I'm writing a tutorial on this ....