Shooting the Stars

[Sw1tchFX]

The tents could (and likely were) lit with speedlights, BUT, I don't buy for a minute that the moon could be bright enough to illuminate the mountains that way and still allow the photographer to capture the stars that well. Still votin' composite!

Oh sure it can. The light on the mountain is from the moon rising up.

(lousy picture)

 

[MK3Brent]

Beautiful.

 

[Solarflare]

If thats "lousy" then ... welll ...

 

[480sparky41 40]

...... I don't buy for a minute that the moon could be bright enough to illuminate the mountains that way and still allow the photographer to capture the stars that well......!

And why not?

 

[amolitor]

You could do it in one. It's an evening or morning shot, probably moonlit (see the dying sunset, or burgeoning sunrise behind the mountains?) Meter for the tents, then meter the mountains every minute or two as the moon rises or sets, until they're in balance with the tents. Say 1-2 stops up. Then pray that the stars fit in. Say around 2 seconds at f/4 and ISO 3200, plus or minus a couple stops either way, depends on the tents. The figure is standing quite still. To my eye the mountains have that slightly strange look of very long exposure for an "almost daylight" look.

I'm betting against strobes. These guys are not exactly in downtown Denver.

EDIT: If you don't think everything will fit in the exposure, go look some stuff up. Poke around on flickr to see what EVs actually work to get stars (hint: there's a HUGE range that will work pretty well, the more you expose, the more stars you get) and what EVs you need to expose by moonlight.

 

[480sparky41 40]

........I'm betting against strobes. These guys are not exactly in downtown Denver.........

It's not that difficult to set up a long exposure..... long enough to get into one tent, fire a speedlight, jump outside, fire it again towards the hiker, then jump into the other tent and fire the speedlight again.

There wouldn't be a WB issue then, either.

 

[amolitor]

My point was that if they're a million miles from anywhere, Jimmy Chin might well not have brought a strobe along with him. He'd only want it for a couple of scene-setting shots, at best, and he's already humping a ton of gear up whatever crazy mountain they're scaling this week. Maybe this was shot at a base camp, in which case anything is possible, to be sure.

 

[480sparky41 40]

Hey.... when the NGS is footing the bill, helicopters can be had fairly readily.