Josiah Waldner

I think what they were thinking of when they told you that remote releases don’t work with your camera was the wireless remotes. Your camera should have a small 3 pin port to plug in a wired remote though, and that is the way to go for long exposures, time lapses, and delayed capture. The wireless ones work great for self portraits or shooting…[Read more]

Wow, @blessingcaptured, your pictures have a lot of potential! I edited one just to see what all it contained, and even with just the Jpeg, the results were impressive! Do you have the RAW file? If so, you should play with it a bit more. Try adjusting contrast, white balance, and clarity. These things help a lot in astrophotography. Here is what I…[Read more]

Here is one I took a while ago as part of a star trails stack, and edited just now. I found the Dropbox link closed, too.

Sure! Looks like I forgot to attach the grasshopper pics. Oh, well- I learned how to fix the blur around the antennas. I turned the f/stop up to about 20. Here is the latest from the setup.

Here is a grasshopper I caught yesterday and stacked based on @rmadris and @jamesstaddons’ critique. Still a little fuzzy around the antennae, but there is not much I can do about that. I think it does look much better, but the poor bug is covered in some kind of super fine dust that looks like bread crumbs up this close. I should blow it off and…[Read more]

I start by opening all the images as layers in photoshop, then go to Edit> Auto align Layers. Choose stack, not panorama as the method. When that command finishes, go to Edit> Auto blend Layers. Select the Auto method, and check the Correct Geometric Distortion. It takes a while when you are working with hundreds of Raw files! Depending on the…[Read more]

Oh, now I remember. I knew about the little triangles, but I guess I just forgot about them. If you click on them, they will show you exactly where the clipping is happening. I like your edit, James! It looks more natural than mine. I should try it again. Thanks for your comments!

And three more. I did some editing in Photoshop this time- trying to make the milky way stand out a bit more.

B&W images often benefit by increasing the clarity and contrast to make it “pop” Like @loganlamar said, I would try to add a little grain as well. The composition looks good too, but I think I would straighten it out a little. Maybe they were on a hill, but unless the riders look like they are leaning, I would make the horizon level. Very nice!

Yep, I built it kind of a bit at a time- first I built the slide, then I wanted a way to position the camera for top down or angled shots, so I built the hinged thingy. I might be able to use less frames, but I keep my aperture as low as possible, because I don’t have much for macro lighting. It is like doing HDR-the more frames the better, since…[Read more]

Here are four I shot last night- I had assumed that I should shoot vertically, and so most of these aren’t useable. @jamesstaddon, is this the type of photo you are looking for, or should I try to make the Milky Way “pop”? I may be able to get some more tonight. Would star trail shots work too?

I was just planning to get some Milky way shots tonight- the conditions are perfect! I do have a question though- I assume the picture is for the front of a tract, and as such, should we be shooting horizontally or vertically?

By channel, you mean that blue spike in the middle of the graph? I assume it is in the blue channel, and I wonder where there is a overexposed blue spot in the picture. Or does it mean that the camera cannot handle the huge range of blues in the picture and is clipping them somewhere? There is a lot of blue in this picture, and from very dark to…[Read more]

Thanks for the tip! Now that you mention it, I can see it too. Here is the unedited shot. It was actually pretty dark.

A few questions-

1. Why do you want a full frame? They are certainly superior to crop sensor cameras in low light, but I nearly always use base ISO in my studio, using a tripod and exposures of up to half a second. The lighting is nearly always controllable in a studio setting.
2. What do you use the images for? If they are for web advertising,…[Read more]

Thanks, @rmandaris, I just realized that I uploaded the unedited pictures. I guess they serve to show the magnification, DOF, and sharpness you can get from a inexpensive setup!

That’s strange- my histogram looks pretty good here- no clipping at all as far as I can see. This is one of the single images- the rest are HDRs. Maybe it is a little too saturated- I am pretty heavy handed in post 🙂

Very cute! The composition is great, the exposure is really good too- but I would try to focus on the eye of the duckling. It is a tad out of focus, and distracts from a otherwise great image.