Castle Menzies - Nikon Z8 with 14-24/2.8S Nikkor and Star Adventurer mount
Introduction
Last Friday night we had some clear skies in Perthshire. I should rephrase; there were some clear skies, at some places and at some times during the night. I knew that it would be a risk going somewhere very far to do astro work on a night that has a patchy cloudy forecast, however I decided to go out anyway. The definitive picture I made is above, of the beautiful secluded Castle Menzies in Perthshire with the plough (or big dipper) hanging low on the sky to the right of the frame. This wasn’t the plan on setting out. From the forecast, it looked like a western milky way shot with the castle beneath would be possible, however on arrival it did not look good; and went from bad to worse in terms of cloud scuppering any hope of capturing the mosaic image I planned to take that evening.
Change Plan or Leave Empty Handed
Most experienced landscape and astrophotographers’ have a saying - ‘if conditions aren’t right, change your plan for your shoot, or leave empty handed.’ I have been a very tentative planner anyway for both landscape and astrophotography. I like the challenge of just turning up and seeing what I can do. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t shoot landscape photography scenes at sunset when they are sunrise locations, or have no idea where the milky way is when I set out at night. However beyond the basics, for me, I like to show up and see what works. This means I have always been practicing this mantra. Most of the time I leave with something viable, picture wise. It may not always be what I set off for though.
The Definitive Picture
This picture was shot quickly on arrival, before the plough sunk below the tree line. Using the Nikon Z8 I was able to quickly compose a pleasing perspective and foreground; but first, I aligned and turned the tracker on and did x3 60 second shots at ISO 500 and f/2.8 for stacking later. It is always a toss up of properly exposing the sky background; vs burning out the star cores to white, colourless dots. These days, I tend to prefer low ISO and underexposure to protect the star cores, and delicately bringing them up in post later. Stacking several shots easily takes care of the space between the stars to prevent noise or blotchyness. After capturing these three 60 second shots at low ISO, I switched up to ISO 1600 and took x3 60 second pictures with the tracker off, in exactly the same alignment for the foreground. This helps to combat any RGB pixel noise etc in the final result, and improves image fidelity overall for the foreground.
Editing
Editing took about an hour and a half. This might seem like a long time on one picture; however this includes stacking, saving, transferring between Lightroom and Photoshop, cleaning all the little hot pixels and the complex masking required, and all the other fun stuff. What makes or breaks good astro images is making sure the sky is brighter than the foreground: because that’s reality isn’t it! So despite the fact we are making a picture and it is always gonna be brighter than the actual scene, I try to bare this in mind. The pointers I would give about this, especially star tracker work, is the quality of the masking between the two is really important for believability. Even close up the first image in this article has impeccable masking between the sky and the foreground castle. I used select and mask to do this from within Photoshop, however I also use a lot of luminosity masking too (which I used in the last picture in this article). A rough outline of the edit would be:
Stacking the X3 tracked sky shots in Sequator following minor tweaks in Lightroom
Importing these to Photoshop for stretching
Applying star masks to prevent loss of colour during stretching process (Select, Colour Range, Highlights, adjust)
Bringing out the plough constellation using various techniques including StarSpikes Pro, the Orton effect and clarity
Fixing vignetting and some coma aberrations if required / other lens defects
Then, stacking the x3 ground shots in PS using a combined smart object, applying a median stack mode
I then gently bring that to the right place in terms of brightness colour and contrast before masking
Masking the two shots together - this is the time consuming part if you want the file to stand high level scrutiny
Masking involves hiding any blurred areas from the tracked exposures underneath the actual foreground stack - this takes time to do well
Minor tweak to distortion of the castle from using a wide lens, some left in for effect
Final touches after combining the two shots together
I had planned a ‘Vampiric’ green tinged shot. I shot at the technically incorrect white balance of 4000K which gave this naturally, on import we were somewhere around 3950 with a tint of +4 to magenta in LR.
Thoughts
Could this type of shot be done in a single shot? Yes, well of course it could. However, generally speaking this would not be optimal. The ground exposure is many times darker (on average 5-6 times darker than the sky). This means capturing the sky and ground in one shot gives serious compromises; including noise penalty. So, could we capture this without tracking? Absolutely we could. We could take 10 shots and stack them. It would make processing a bit easier too. Although it has to be said, stacking 3-4 long exposure shots of the night sky, really does provide the highest fidelity though, which is why I went this route. Notice how I have not over-brightened the ground? This seems to be a very common thing now. Because camera’s and image processing software is so powerful now, many seriously over-brighten their foregrounds when it is meant to be a night shot. I caution doing this. It creates a daytime feel, which is more often than not to the be-puzzlement of the viewer; who is thinking, why are the stars out when it is daytime? Moon shots can be really confusing because the ground gets very bright at night when photographing the night sky with full moons. I don’t light paint, other than accidental, head torch on during the shot light painting. Light painting is for the most part a nasty way of artificially lighting a scene. It also annoys the bejesus out of people like me trying to capture the natural starlight, and the light from the stars passed down onto the foreground. Think about how annoying it is when someone shows up to a coastal location or something, a car park or the like, and they leave their full beams on. Not fun for an astrophotographer, is it?
I also made a similar feeling shot on the way to this Castle:
Plough in the Road, Perthshire
Take Pictures While the Going is Good
I often stop on the way to a location, even just for a quick impromptu shot. I’ve done this for as long as I can remember; and whilst it started off as an eagerness to start shooting on the way to a final destination, it is something that at least means I strike when the iron is hot. By working this way, I probably never leave without at least one viable picture. Yeah it is a simple shot, and perhaps even a little cliche, however it is pleasing enough. At night sometimes there are places when traveling through you find that work very well for astro work, and seeing them during the day you wouldn’t necessarily think they would make a good picture.
I have one more picture to share from this night, as it clouded over and I was done for the night. I will add this here if I get round to looking at it.