Night Shot

[mtngal]

Since I happen to be staying in the city tonight, I thought I'd try my luck at taking night shots (for those that don't know, I live in a rural/mountainousarea that is popular with amateur astronomers because of the little light pollution). I'm using just the laptop's monitor, which isn't calibrated, so I didn't try to adjust the white balance at all, or the exposure (let me know if it's too dark, light or whatever - the histogram looked OK in Lightroom). I did rotate it slightly (I never get my lines straight) but didn't bother using the skew tool to straighten the vertical lines - I didn't think it was that far off to bother with. Picture was taken in raw format, converted/rotated in Lightroom, cropped and resized in CS2 after using Neat Image.

I thought this was interesting from a camera and a lens point of view. Here's the full frame picture after going through Neat Image, resizing and a little USM - the only pp I did. I was leaning on a pillar so I had some support, but otherwise hand held.



Here's a 100% crop of the upper right-hand window and the hand-painted ceiling inside:



One last 100% crop. I include this one to show that while I ran the original through Neat Image, I still left quite a bit of noisein the shadows. I wanted to keep as much detail as I could, so I wasn't very aggressive with the noise reduction. It still amazes me just how much detail this camera/lens combination can capture (I was standing across a quad area on the steps of another building, focus at infinity) even at f2.8 (focal length was 50mm - you can check the shutter speed on the exif information).



This is the first time I've tried the DA*50-135 at night at f2.8. I've used the lens at 2.8 during the day, but never with 800 ISO or at night - it was a fun exercise.

[dafiryde]

nice and clean,

was it hand held or tripod

[Gumnut]

wow

imagine if you had used a tripod
thats a pretty sharp image considering

what was the shutter speed (or did i miss it)
i cant get to the exif data at work

the exposure is very nicely controlled too

[bigdawg]

Very good ones...Did you try different WB's on it? If so could you post some?

Dawg

[mtngal]

Shutter speed was 1/15 sec. And I sure wish I had had a tripod with me - its a wonderful place to photograph (could have used a slower ISO). Oh well, I was still pretty pleased.

[mtngal]

Dawg - I'll try to do a bit of change to the white balance when I get home (to a calibrated monitor) tonight. It doesn't look that "off" from what it really was like, a bit too orange perhaps. Let's see, my Christmas list is getting longer - tripod that's not too heavy and awkward to carry around, a flash, a wide angle lens, a circular polarizer for the A*300, wonder what else will get added by December? Of course, by the time we get around to buying ourselves presents, I'll probably be lucky to get a subscription to a photo magazine!

[Monza76]

Pentax's finest (zoom)lens and Pentax's finest camera. Combine that with a good eye and we get impressive images.

Ira

[bilybianca]

mtngal wrote:

Let's see, my Christmas list is getting longer - tripod that's not too heavy and awkward to carry around, a flash, a wide angle lens, a circular polarizer for the A*300, wonder what else will get added by December? Of course, by the time we get around to buying ourselves presents, I'll probably be lucky to get a subscription to a photo magazine!

Harriet, it's not very kind of you to post these pictures :shock:as I struggle hard to restrict my wishlist to the very essentials. Seems like the DA*50-135 will end up there... and the blame is entirely on you.Well, if I start cleaning windscreens at the streetlights...

Kjell

[bigdawg]

mtngal wrote:

Dawg - I'll try to do a bit of change to the white balance when I get home (to a calibrated monitor) tonight. It doesn't look that "off" from what it really was like, a bit too orange perhaps. Let's see, my Christmas list is getting longer - tripod that's not too heavy and awkward to carry around, a flash, a wide angle lens, a circular polarizer for the A*300, wonder what else will get added by December? Of course, by the time we get around to buying ourselves presents, I'll probably be lucky to get a subscription to a photo magazine!

I love what you have...Not making a ctitique at all. Just wondered if you had played around with the WB and would like to see how they came out if you did!

Dawg

My Christmas list consits of one line.....Nothing on that line but I have one line there!!

[Keithw]

Absolutely fabulous!

So much detail. that is one hell of a lens.

To hell with Christmas, I'm gonna rob a bank!!!