I would really encourage you to click on the image above to get a larger image view of this photo. I was over camped on the Quinault river and set up my camera on a tripod. I had a 21mm lens on my DSLR and an exposure of 15 seconds … a combination that lets you take some interesting night photos without having the stars turn into tracks.
A wonderful treat to see the auroras down this far south (Olympic Peninsula, WA). We drove out to North Beach (just west of Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend) which has a view to the north (duh) getting there about 10 PM and staying for 2 hours. The colors were not nearly so vibrant until you did a 2 second time exposure. Some folks were using their cellphones as ‘viewers’ … which worked well. These were taken with my Nikon D-850 and Zeiss 21mm f/2.8 lens. I shot at ISO 3200 and f/5 or so.
Well, there’s really two photos of a crescent moon, not two moons. But I figured you’d all figure that out. I have worked at getting crescent moon photos for years and these are two of my favorites. These are both waning crescents: very old moons. The thin waxing crescents (thin new moons) are more of a problem for me, since you have to get up early. Even before breakfast.
I took this photo a couple years ago (it’s got a lot more snow this year). In the middle distance is the top of Mt Whitney. I was camped in the Lone Pine (California) Campground. This is a 15 second exposure at ISO 3200 taken with my Nikon D810. Below the three stars of Orion’s Belt, the bright star is Rigel. Just above Orion, the yellowish star is Betelgeuse. To the right the bright star is Aldebaran. The small group farther right is the Pleiades.
What’s new with this photo is that I used Lightroom’s new AI noise reduction to minimize the noise associated with the higher ISO and longer exposure. Below see the before and after image … zoomed in 300% so you can see the difference easier. (At 300%, you also see a little of star motion.) You see a lot of the color dots are gone … that was mostly noise. Unfortunately, a few were likely very faint stars. But mostly, I wanted to do a little show-and-tell. You can see it is smoother. Some images will benefit from this new feature more than others. Sorry, but you can’t use it on a JPG image (yet) …
These two images were taken a few minutes apart, but have different moods.
