My Saturday evening date

[leeroix]

some of the rocks look OOF... is that just me? also, would like to see more highlights on them... i have never seen northern lights - im jealous.

 

[invisible]

I'm in Winnipeg, and am darn proud of it

Winnipeg's the flattest place I've ever been.

You can watch your dog run away for days up there...

I can actually see your dog from here

some of the rocks look OOF... is that just me? also, would like to see more highlights on them... i have never seen northern lights - im jealous.

It's not just you, the rocks are OOF, but this is a product of shooting the night sky. Let me explain, based on what I know about shooting auroras (which is not necessarily the gospel).

The exposure settings for this image were ISO 800, 30 seconds, and f/2.8. More than 30 seconds would've produced short startrails – not an option. More than ISO 800 would've produced too much noise for my liking – not an option either. An aperture smaller than f/2.8 would've produced a deeper DOF, but would've also produced an underexposed image, so I didn't really have a choice.

So when shooting the night sky at f/2.8, where do you focus? The sky, the foreground, or maybe you try to play the hyperfocal game with the risk of failing and then the aurora is gone? The choice for me was obvious: focus at infinity to get the stars with certain definition – had I focused on the rocks, the OOF stars would've shown as small light blobs. The foreground out of focus is the price to pay for all of this.

How to avoid this issue? An option would be a composite of two photos (one with the sky in focus, and one with the foreground in focus)... but I personally don't do any kind of multiple-exposure photography, nor do I know how to do a composite in Photoshop. Another option would be to buy a Nikon D4 and crank the ISO to 12,000, which would allow me to shots this same scene at f/13... but I'm not willing to sell a kidney to get the rocks in focus