I would fucking kill to have night skies of level 1 were I live
I live about an hour out of LA and my night sky seems even worse than the level 8 shown in this video.
The most amazing sky I've ever seen was in the middle of the night on a dirt road at ~10,000 ft in the Colorado Rockies with not a single light to be seen in any direction. It actually took my breath away.
i think the most incredible display of stars of seen was when i was hired by my uncle to work his sail boat in the caribbean. my cabin had enough room for my bag and that's about it so i just slept on the deck every night and oh man was it beautiful. growing up around nothing but cities i had never seen anything like it.
I think it's worth saying just for those who might not know any better, you will basically never see skies that look like this to the naked eye... videos like this are done with some very fancy camera equipment. I've spent a fair bit of time smack dab in the middle of outback Australia, just north of the SA / NT border and even on the most perfect of clear nights, you don't see anything approaching what you see in these videos. You DO see the most incredible carpet of stars and a surprising blend of colours (even more so on a lunar eclipse, holy shit the things you can see), but still, these videos are meant to exaggerate the effects of what little to no light pollution can uncover - to your camera.
I'm dying to get back out there again some day and take my modern camera gear with me, would be absolutely wild to see what I could capture. Amazing land and starscapes out there.
at least living out in the middle of fucking nowhere in Nebraska has it's pros. When you get pitch black nights with no moon, you can just go see the milky way in your backyard. If you live in the country of course.
Once upon a time, I got lucky enough to go on a cruise. For some reason though, despite being pretty far off the coast, I couldn't see any stars besides what I could catch at home anyways. I still wonder why... maybe because the boat itself was so bright? Or maybe it's just my poor night vision
[QUOTE=Sobek-;51587421]I think it's worth saying just for those who might not know any better, you will basically never see skies that look like this to the naked eye... videos like this are done with some very fancy camera equipment. I've spent a fair bit of time smack dab in the middle of outback Australia, just north of the SA / NT border and even on the most perfect of clear nights, you don't see anything approaching what you see in these videos. You DO see the most incredible carpet of stars and a surprising blend of colours (even more so on a lunar eclipse, holy shit the things you can see), but still, these videos are meant to exaggerate the effects of what little to no light pollution can uncover - to your camera.
I'm dying to get back out there again some day and take my modern camera gear with me, would be absolutely wild to see what I could capture. Amazing land and starscapes out there.[/QUOTE]
curious, if you might know, how do they get shots like this?
[t]http://i.imgur.com/YKtFGgr.png[/t]
is it just long exposure times or is there a special lens/cover that you need to see it?
[QUOTE=Gamerman12;51587669]curious, if you might know, how do they get shots like this?
[t]http://i.imgur.com/YKtFGgr.png[/t]
is it just long exposure times or is there a special lens/cover that you need to see it?[/QUOTE]
The long exposure time is the main thing, but you also need to crank up the aperture (f8 or higher I believe) and they're usually done with an ND filter as well to bring down the light levels even more.
[QUOTE=TFA;51587451]Once upon a time, I got lucky enough to go on a cruise. For some reason though, despite being pretty far off the coast, I couldn't see any stars besides what I could catch at home anyways. I still wonder why... maybe because the boat itself was so bright? Or maybe it's just my poor night vision[/QUOTE]
Cruise ships are their own little cities, and there's always a light or 100 on somewhere and they ruin every bit of nature they touch.
The most spectacular star view I've ever stopped to take was on my way back from The Grand Canyon back to Flagstaff. I was a little afraid I'd popped a tire (turns out there was a big stick caught in my fender, tire was fine) and couldn't see any cars, lights, or people anywhere. There was just an inky blackness and a spectacular show of stars.
It was amazing.
I remember seeing level one in north Arizona(was heading for the Grand Canyon), about five years ago. Breath taking doesn't even start to describe it. We had to pull over to get gas, and I walked out into the desert for a little bit where it was darker, and started crying. It actually upsets me to think that we'll never be able to calm light pollution down enough for everyone to see the beauty of the stars.
It's no wonder people in ancient times studied the stars so much. They had a perfectly clear view of them every single night.
[QUOTE=JoeSkylynx;51587819]I remember seeing level one in north Arizona(was heading for the Grand Canyon), about five years ago. Breath taking doesn't even start to describe it. We had to pull over to get gas, and I walked out into the desert for a little bit where it was darker, and started crying. It actually upsets me to think that we'll never be able to calm light pollution down enough for everyone to see the beauty of the stars.[/QUOTE]
I'm just imagining you getting on your knees and sobbing like the double rainbow guy in the middle of the desert at night outside of a gas station.
My old university was in a mountain range in New York, it was normally a level 5 but occasionally it would go down to level 4, to someone who has only ever seen a level 7 sky irl it was gorgeous, took some time lapses that came out badly because I didn't have an ND filter at the time, tried to overexpose them.
Yeah, driving from Portland to San Francisco, we stopped quite a few times just to admire the night sky.
We even got to see the ISS zoom pass over us as we drove in the dead of the night.
Space is awesome.
[QUOTE=fauxpark;51587695]The long exposure time is the main thing, but you also need to crank up the aperture (f8 or higher I believe) and they're usually done with an ND filter as well to bring down the light levels even more.[/QUOTE]
So you're saying they use long exposure times, but then they close the apertures down to f/8 and slap on an ND filter to make the scene [B]even darker?[/B]
I'm not sure if you're just confused, or you know something that I don't.
So eventually it's gonna become like Darker than Black but without the super powers? That is assuming the population and "light pollution" increases. I am curious which type of light contributes more to light pollution. LED, Halogen, or CFL. I'd imagine it would be LED because of the glaring effect it gives off.
[QUOTE=Aide;51588479]So eventually it's gonna become like Darker than Black but without the super powers? That is assuming the population and "light pollution" increases. I am curious which type of light contributes more to light pollution. LED, Halogen, or CFL. I'd imagine it would be LED because of the glaring effect it gives off.[/QUOTE]
Light is light, they most likely all contribute equally.
I'm not sure what this glaring effect you talk about is.
[QUOTE=paul simon;51588477]So you're saying they use long exposure times, but then they close the apertures down to f/8 and slap on an ND filter to make the scene [B]even darker?[/B]
I'm not sure if you're just confused, or you know something that I don't.[/QUOTE]
I might be wrong about the ND filter being "usually" used, but I imagine it would be handy if you closed the aperture all the way down, set the ISO to the lowest it can go, etc. and it still turned out overblown because you want a ridiculously long exposure or something. Maybe I'm getting it confused with daylight long exposures, where it's obviously definitely needed.
[QUOTE=fauxpark;51588524]I might be wrong about the ND filter being "usually" used, but I imagine it would be handy if you closed the aperture all the way down, set the ISO to the lowest it can go, etc. and it still turned out overblown because you want a ridiculously long exposure or something. [B]Maybe I'm getting it confused with daylight long exposures, where it's obviously definitely needed[/B].[/QUOTE]
You really are :v:
This is a night scene. You want as much light as possible. Long exposure times, wide apertures, higher ISO values.
Closing the aperture & applying an ND filter would do exactly the opposite.
Wow, this is actually the first time I've watched one of these nightsky time-lapse videos and actually thought of it as the stars are stationary and the earth is rotating. Usually when I see these videos I subconsciously think the opposite. It's making me dizzy.
[QUOTE=paul simon;51588536]You really are :v:
This is a night scene. You want as much light as possible. Long exposure times, wide apertures, higher ISO values.
Closing the aperture & applying an ND filter would do exactly the opposite.[/QUOTE]
I always figured it was better to have low-ish ISO so it doesn't turn out too grainy (although thinking about it, is that an issue with long exposures?), closed aperture because you don't need DOF and your focus is going to be at infinity anyway, and just let the long exposure collect the light instead.
this is so beautiful that i cant believe its real
[QUOTE=fauxpark;51588553]I always figured it was better to have low-ish ISO so it doesn't turn out too grainy (although thinking about it, is that an issue with long exposures?), closed aperture because you don't need DOF and your focus is going to be at infinity anyway, and just let the long exposure collect the light instead.[/QUOTE]
Lower ISO = less noise, but modern cameras can use higher ISO values without significant noise so it really depends on your equipment.
Closing the aperture = less light - You want more light, so usually you'll set it to the highest you can (or nearly)
When doing night shots, you don't necessarily always want long exposure times. I'd say exposure time has the biggest effect on the overall look.
If you rely only on using long exposure times, you'll get star trails - even when you don't want them.
I do a bunch of [url=https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5732/22036570481_33b5caac33_k.jpg]aurora photography[/url], and with auroras you ideally want short exposure times.
i was out in the middle of finnish forest buttfuck nowhere a while ago, in the middle of the night. pitch black, couldn't see anything without flashlights. the level must've been somewhere around 2, and it was the most stars i've seen in a long time
one of my eyes is a bit bad so that ruins the experience a bit every time, but actually seeing the disc of the galaxy never stops being amazing
[QUOTE=Gamerman12;51587669]curious, if you might know, how do they get shots like this?
[t]http://i.imgur.com/YKtFGgr.png[/t]
is it just long exposure times or is there a special lens/cover that you need to see it?[/QUOTE]
This is about the best you'd see with the naked eye
[img]https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-856f29f0c8295751fb49b508133eb2e4?convert_to_webp=true[/img]
It was designed to be as close as possible to what you would see. So the cameras they use are pretty fancy. You need the long exposure but that can capture too much light and wash out a lot of details, so you need some sort of filter as well. Another way is to take many shorter exposure shots and then layer them on top of each other, but it gets blurry fast with either method if you don't have the camera on some sort of tripod that can track
that Interstellar song remix though.
[QUOTE=paul simon;51588536]You really are :v:
This is a night scene. You want as much light as possible. Long exposure times, wide apertures, higher ISO values.
Closing the aperture & applying an ND filter would do exactly the opposite.[/QUOTE]
actually the ND filter might make more stars visible because it takes out a little atmospheric reflections, but a standard polarizing filter would do that much better.
Using filters makes the daytime sky a much darker blue while preserving the lighter details
Can confirm, you don't see that much with your eyes. And then tourists are always disapointed when they see aurora borealis because they are never as bright and as colorful as in pictures.
[QUOTE=Glitchman;51588923]actually the ND filter might make more stars visible because it takes out a little atmospheric reflections, but a standard polarizing filter would do that much better.
Using filters makes the daytime sky a much darker blue while preserving the lighter details[/QUOTE]
ND filters are neutral density (hence the name), they block out all wavelengths of light equally, and shouldn't in any way bias the light filtering.
Polarizing filters are a good idea though, I've yet to try that for night sky photography.
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