The *Official Photography Thread*

Some photos of broken top mtn. You can smell the lavender flowers almost all the way up..

 

any of yall ever had an issue with lightroom where edits don't show up on the library tab?

Got a cool shot last night of the night sky. Edited it a bit and reduced a bunch of high iso noise, but the pic pulled into the publish slot in the library tab doesn't have any of the noise reduction edits, and it publishes the non-edited version to flikr

and its driving me insane lol

 

did you publish a virtual copy instead of straight publish ?

 

Cascades in Oregon.. Specifically my bachelor..

Anyone gonna take some photos of Perseids meteor shower.

 

Question, with LR if I want to transfer to a new CPU, is there a way to save my settings for my photos? Rather than having to re edit them all?

 

LR defaults to saving all editing instructions to a master file, a.k.a. the catalog. If you copy the Lightroom catalog files and images over to a new computer, it will initially show a question mark next to the folder(s) but should allow you to redirect the app to the new location.

Before switching CPUs, I'd of course back up the whole storage drive to an external drive.

If you are working with raw files, you can also save your editing information in the form of .xmp sidecar files which LR will store in the same location as the raw image files, one .xmp file for every single raw image file. If working with jpg's, editing changes can be saved directly to the jpg files. Either way, you can simply select any or all photos and go to the menus - metadata - save metadata to file. This won't retain any organization in the form of collections, however, you can use keywords creatively to accomplish the same effects as collections.

There is a setting you can select in the catalog settings to have LR do this every time you edit an image, but using that slows down LR performance slightly.

Hope that helps.

 

nope, straight publish

not only do the noise reductions not show in the published/exported pics, but even between the developer//library tabs when viewing the pic.

Looked into it, apparently it's a known LR bug....before the new update but for some reason im still getting it

ugh

 

Had an amazing sunset last night.

 

This looks like a rad setup!

I want to try a longer lens with it on some Nebula

http://www.fredmiranda.com/astrotrac/

 

per some friends of mine who tried those, this works better, and is more compact.
http://www.vixenoptics.com/Vixen-Polarie-Star-Tracker-p/35505.htm

here's a review, http://www.skynews.ca/review-vixen-polarie-camera-tracker/

you definately want a good fast prime focus lens, not a zoom, for this stuff, ideally one with a very smooth manual focus capability as accurately focusing wide open on a dim star with live view is a real pain.

if you get much over 200mm focal length you'll need an actual equatorial telescope mount that has computer control, so you can run an 'autoguider', and it all gets a lot more complicated (tripod, eq mount, cables, autoguider camera, laptop computer, field power for all of the above, plus the camera, with computerized remote control for the several minute long exposures you'll want to take 100s of to stack to get a good exposure).

 

The Polarie is more compact but it also has a much lower weight capacity than the Astrotrac. It's not a problem if you're using a DSLR with a wide angle lens to capture the milky way, but it's not ideal for deep sky objects where you want to have longer lenses (though if you're doing that then the best results would be with a dedicated imaging setup anyway). Keep in mind that you also need to mount a ballhead onto either tracker to be able to point your camera at whatever you want, and that will count against your weight limit also.

I do wish that the Astrotrac came with a better polar scope. The barrel of the scope is plastic and the set screw used to secure it causes the barrel to warp and even tilt away from center. The magnet mount for the polar scope is also annoying because while it's strong enough to hold the scope, it's weak enough that you can accidentally knock it and it'll let go. I've read about people using the Polarie's polar scope on the Astrotrac because it is better, but I forget how much modification needs to be done to get it to work.

Since this is the photo thread, here is a pic I took of the Orion nebula when I was in Death Valley last year. It's a single 2 minute exposure at 400mm ISO 3200, tracked with my buddy's Astrotrac.

 

Thanks for the tips and advice guys. That nebula is something I want to go for! Its not something I want to dedicate too much time or money too, but I understand its a expensive hobby. I need the higher weight capacity of the AstroTrac. Ill use it a little with a wide angle but really deeper out objects are my main target. I'm gonna give it a go with a long focal length lens and know a few people that have done it quite successfully with that long of a lens. I will get the aligning wedge too as I think that is a must with the longer lenses!

 

The wedge is definitely worth it. Once you get it dialed in for your latitude you don't ever have to touch it again. My buddy has taken pics of the Andromeda Galaxy with a Canon 600mm f/4 mounted on a ball head on the Astrotrac with the wedge so I know it can handle a lot of weight!

 

Ok thanks! I have lots of reading up to do, that's the same lens I want to use as well.

 

Be careful...it's a very deep rabbit hole!

 

Yes! There's a pretty good gravitational pull, easy to get sucked in...

 

There are some nice equatorial mounts at www.losmandy.com. Pretty sweet setup-just a wee bit expensive but, they can move the heavy stuff which some telescope mounts cannot.

 

there's even nicer stuff at www.astro-physics.com but a full blown rig from them costs nearly as much as a used Tacoma... expect to spend about $10,000 on the equatorial head, tripod/pier, accessories, then go shopping for telescope(s) and cameras to use with it

IMHO, the minimum equatorial mount for decent astrophotography is the Synta/Skywatcher HEQ5 also sold as an Orion Sirius. These are suitable for maybe 15 lbs of gear for photography, or 30 lbs max for visual use. The Synta NEQ6 aka Orion Atlas, is the next step up, good for 20-30 lbs of telescope+camera+accessories, or 40 lbs for visual use.

I have many friends who do this. ... typically takes them about 1 hour just to unload all the gear and get it assembled and hooked up, then another hour to achieve accurate polar alignment, an hour or so to setup for a series of exposures, then the rig runs all night long or until they are out of battery power (often using 2-3 marine/rv sized sealed batteries), taking dozens or 100s of the same basic picture, they then spend a week or more processing the results of that to get one good image, IF everything went according to plan. Some of these guys get /spectacular/ results, www.deepskycolors.com for an extreme instance.

After dabbling in astrophotography for the better part of a year, I decided visual astronomy was more fun, I can be completely unloaded and setup in 20 or 30 minutes, and spend my time enjoying the night sky instead of huddled over a laptop.

 

First milky way pano