Diane Miller
09-13-2015, 09:32 PM
Northern California is on fire again. Six day ago I drove across the Sierra Nevada between Lake Tahoe and Yosemite, hoping to do some astrophotography at a fairly high elevation east of Bridgeport. As I was driving up a fire started NW of Yosemite and in the next 2-3 days, several more along the western slopes. So I had smoky skies, and more clouds than forecast. Got in one abbreviated night's star shooting, before the target area sunk into the gloom of the western horizon. So Plan B got me up early a coupe of mornings to look for sunrise light on the mountains. That was largely shot down with hazy skies, too, but I'll toss this one out for whatever interest it may have. Did a lot of work to bring out detail -- the raw file was very flat.
Canon 5D3, 100-400 II at 400, tripod, pano of two assembled in LR CC (does a great job and gives you a true raw file to adjust). ISO 1600, 1/500 at f/7.1. Don't ask me why I went for 1600 -- it was early and cold and I think my brain was on hold. The camera would have been on 1600 for the previous night's astro shooting so I guess I forgot to check it. Went into PS for some more tonal stretching beyond what I could get in LR, mostly Nik's Detail Extractor. This goes a little beyond what I remember that it looked like.
I was surprised at the amount of fine detail I captured, which doesn't really show here -- didn't do any sharpening beyond the LR default and no Structure.
Second Prize was some nice hawks and Meadow Larks in soft light on funky fence posts along the road to this location. Maybe I had already seen them and wanted to be ready when the light came up a little -- who can remember what they do before the sun comes up....
Canon 5D3, 100-400 II at 400, tripod, pano of two assembled in LR CC (does a great job and gives you a true raw file to adjust). ISO 1600, 1/500 at f/7.1. Don't ask me why I went for 1600 -- it was early and cold and I think my brain was on hold. The camera would have been on 1600 for the previous night's astro shooting so I guess I forgot to check it. Went into PS for some more tonal stretching beyond what I could get in LR, mostly Nik's Detail Extractor. This goes a little beyond what I remember that it looked like.
I was surprised at the amount of fine detail I captured, which doesn't really show here -- didn't do any sharpening beyond the LR default and no Structure.
Second Prize was some nice hawks and Meadow Larks in soft light on funky fence posts along the road to this location. Maybe I had already seen them and wanted to be ready when the light came up a little -- who can remember what they do before the sun comes up....