Under the stars...

Quite a lot of work for a single picture. The result is good, but I think it could have been better. Did you stay close to the camera during the use of flashes and torches, since the light on the tower looks very flat. Maybe more light fromnm the left or right side would have helped.

Thank you, Hans, for taking a close look and writing the constructive critique, I appreciate it. The look of the tower is indeed the result of the procedure of lightpaiting with a torch. I did not stay near the camera I rather moved all around the place and lighted the tower from  several positions, to prevent shadows that I regarded as potentially distracting and to give it a look as if it were lit by a stronger diffuse ambient light, not an artificial light beam from an identifiable position. Another factor is that you have to be careful about local overexposure and light the scene accordingly. So this lighting was intentional. Your suggestions is good, however, and makes for a viable alternative that I can try one day. The trouble is that is difficult to orchestrate all the conditions (clear moonless sky, flowers..) to be able to take the single shot within a narrow window of suitable light to record star trails on a blue sky with the remnants of sunset on film. For now, I am quite satisfied with the result I obtained on this occassion. Best wishes. Peter

Peter,

That's a lot of work to craft an image. I agree that the tower is a little hot but you could tone it down in PS. It's quite an image though with the sunset remnants and those beautiful yellow bushes.

Thank you, Jeff. I shall try to prepare a version with less brightness on the tower. Here, it already is presented slightly toned down. I used a 20-LED white torch to light it, a difference to my previous attempts where I used a 6-LED torch. I'll also decrease the saturation further, the slide was colorful enough. I found that when I save the JPEG for web in PS, saturation is boosted compared to the image seen and edited in PS. Have you experienced it yet (see the attachment for the difference) ?

Peter, I always thought that it was PN that changed the colours not PS. I have certainly experienced differences in the past. I'll look more closely next time.

Hi Peter,

I'm really impressed by your superb night shots and it's a blessing for me to read your detailed descriptions of your technique. I have never tried to shoot star-trails but it's something I'm very interested in experimenting with when I'll have an opportunity. I just recently read that for long time exposures Velvia 50 wasn't adequate because of the reciprocity failure and that Velvia 100F or Provia 100 were the better Fuji film; I have some Velvia 100 (no "F") in stock, have you made some experience with it? I also want to thank you for answer and explanation on your picture "Chives, version 2" which was also very instructive for me, another thing I'll keep in mind, but I have no experience at all with studio shots.

The light on the tower isn't bothering me here, but imho the little bit brighter grass area in between the tree and the flowers attracts a bit too much the eye and takes attention away from the tower and flowers. Maybe it can be toned down a bit in PP?

Regarding your saturation issue between the web and PS:

it seems that you are using Chrome as web-browser which doesn't have color management as Safari or Firefox does and this might be the reason for your issue. I have found a link explaining how to turn on color management within Chrome, but I'm not sure how good it works. If you try it out, you can test if the color management works with this test page. But this test will only tell you if your browser takes the color profile embedded in the pictures into account you can't test there if your browser takes the color profile of your monitor into account. For instance Firefox (which I'm using) doesn't support V4 color profiles and my calibration software produces V4 profiles I had wrong colors in Firefox even if the tests on the second link I provided told me everything worked fine. (I'm converting my profiles from V4 to V2 now for Firefox) Basically as long as you can see a difference between PS and your web browser it means that the color management of the web browser doesn't work properly. One advantage of Firefox is that you can force it to consider sRGB color profile for pictures that are not tagged. I hope this helps.

Kind regards,

Jan

Thank you, Jan ! 

Later on I shall post a reworked version of the shot, taking into account the suggestions. I have little experience with star trails and Velvia 100, most of my shots were made with the 100F version. I made some long exposures with Velvia 100 at dusk, they came out fine. I believe you could make a test if you have the film. Although the digital sensors are becoming much much better, film is still the best media for star trails, IMO, especially with very long exposures. Depending on the darkness of the sky, you can expect to see the sky shift from blue to magenta, or a bit reddish color, but I would not be bothered with this. I was almost always satisfied with the colors I got - moment of surprise. And the star trails themselves tend to be much more colorful than with digital capture (that I tried at this occassion as well, but without lightpainting, since there is no reciprocity failure with digital and this shot would be overexposed). My  approach at star trails is to use a wide angle lens to cover a large area of sky and make sure that your foreground is sharp enough (consult DOF tables), shoot at f/4, ISO 100 slide film, usually Velvia 100F, but I have seen brilliant examples of star trails shot with Astia 100F, which is more foregiving regarding shadow details. What is clear, is that Velvia 50 is not the way to go. Not because of reciprocity failure, that all the slide films have - sometimes this is an advantage, but because of green color cast on the sky with long exposures.

As far as the colors are concerned, I see the difference in saturation when I view the image using Chrome, FireFox, Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer, IrfanView, but oddly enough not Windows Photo Viewer. I shall have a look at the pages you suggested to see what I can do. In PS I "Save for web", which includes converting to sRGB.

Many thanks for your suggestions and help with the colors.

Best wishes

Peter

Thank You again for the detailed explanations Peter! I'll be on vacation next two weeks of June and I found out that the second week (starting 27th of June) the moon will rise pretty late (starting 22:30 and later the following days) so I hope that I'll have some opportunities to give it a try those days even if there will be almost full moon.

Regarding the colors: I see that even if your picture was converted to sRGB the color profile is not embedded in the picture (not tagged) -> FireFox will apply color management for this picture only if the right option is set: I haven't tried FireFox 4 yet, but if you have FireFox 3.6 or 3.5 you can try following steps:

1. type in the are for internet addresses: "about:config"

2. click on "I'll be carefull, I promise!"

3. scroll down to the line "gfx.color_management.mode" and double click it

4. set the value on "1" and confirm

5. restart Firefox

-> now Firefox will apply color management also to untagged pictures assuming they are sRGB and hopefully your picture will look the same as in PS

as far as I know Internet Explorer, windows explorer and IrfanView have no color management; I don't know about Windows Photo Viewer, but it's true that I wouldn't have expected that it has color management active

But maybe you have also deactivated color management in PS? I think this can be achieved by checking from the menu "view -> proof colors" while the option "view -> Proof setup -> Monitor RGB" is checked too. But this is rather unlikely as I think you'd have to check "proof colors" every time you open a picture. At least that's the case with PS2, I don't know about later versions.

Please let me know if it solves your issue. But what I can suggest for sure is to always include the color profile in the file you save (box "ICC profile" checked while you "save for the web")

Best wishes!

Jan

Jan, you should receive the icon of a golden critiquer, your suggestions helped ! I now view in Firefox with the changed setting and I see exactly the same thing as in PS. There, I also changed the setting for Proof setup. I had it set on Woking CMYK. I attach a screenshot of comparison between the new Firefox with the correct view and Chrome. Now the question is how many PN users are viewing what the posting photographers wish them to see... Thank you very much once again. Best regards. Peter

here is the screenshot

I'm glad it worked! I received so much help from forums and today I'm always happy if I can help! :o) But your indications are very helpful too and it's an extra pleasure to help someone who shares his knowledge too!!

you're right -> there's no way to guaranty that the other users have accurate color settings... but as sRGB is the standard on internet, common screens are tuned in factory to display sRGB relatively accurately and therefore as long as you post in sRGB you can assume that the color shifts from one user screen to another will remain relatively limited. Embedding the color profile will increase the chance that users using a browser with color management will see what you want them to see.

Best wishes and may the light (or night) be with you ;-)

Jan

I made some adjustments as you suggested and posted a new version. Thank you once again for your constructive critique.