color

[Giovanni Frescura]

canon 17/40 f.4
Canon 1dx
iso 1000
f.4
1024sec
bulb

[Don Railton]

Hi Giovanni

An interesting eperiment in super long exposures.. I like the colours you have picked up, but what is the orange glow?? Is amazing what the camera can see that you cannot with the eye. Given the image quality has suffered with such a long exposure, is it worth exploring this as an abstract by adding more blur?? I would at least add a bit of NR to smooth out the sky a little..

DON

[Giovanni Frescura]

it is the sun...

[Giovanni Frescura]

now it is better ?

[Michael Thompson]

Fantastic aurora display! where was this at? It had to be a treat to watch! For me one of the most important things is to get good focus on the stars. It took me a while, keep working on it! ~ MT

[Luis Patacao]

The aurora display and the colors are great, but i`m curious as to what happened to the IQ on this?

[Diane Miller]

Seeing the aurora must have been wonderful!! I'm surprised you didn't get more star streaking at that exposure length, but the image would be stronger if it were not so soft -- possibly from too much noise reduction?

The flying saucer shapes in the corners are due to the lens. It is a problem with many wide angles, and only some of the newer lenses are beginning to improve on it.

It's difficult to get information on that aspect of a lens, but www.lenstips.com (http://www.lenstips.com) has very good information.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Giovanni it seems the camera was not actually focused on anything? The colours are nice but my mind begs for more clarity, focus and definition here...

[Adhika Lie]

I am super late to the party in this forum. Aurora is a wonderful sighting that I really want to see at one point in my life; maybe the next time the solar storm is active again. I do have the same question as Morkel in this picture though. The photos in either panes seem to be posterized. I am not sure why this is the case.

[Diane Miller]

Was this shot as a JPEG? And then noise was reduced in post-processing?

That might account for some of the posterization-type artifacts. The land might be halfway sharp (hard to tell) but the real issue for me is that the stars are so out of focus, and that unfortunately doesn't give a pleasing soft look. With a wide angle lens it is possible to get land and stars both sharp -- or composite two focus points. Just setting the lens to the infinity mark is not necessarily accurate.

I understand the aurora was probably moving during the exposure, but that doesn't account for the strange look.

[Andrew McLachlan]

Beautiful colors and amazing display, but I must agree with Morkel in regards to the focusing.