At Porteau Cove, at least in the summer months, there is regularly a freight train that goes through at about 11:45pm from Vancouver to Whistler. You get a little warning that it's coming, because about 15 minutes before it arrives, they send through a pickup truck converted to run on the rails, presumably to check that the track is clear of obstructions.
Unfortunately, being a freight train, it is fairly poorly lit from anything except right at the front, and as it's usually going in the same direction I'm looking, I've never managed to get a good shot of it with the stars (despite frequently trying).
However, this time the pickup truck came in the other direction -- from Whistler to Vancouver. I wasn't sure if it was simply returning home, or if this was a sign that for once the train would be going in the opposite direction. Once I heard the sound of the train horn about 15 minutes later, I couldn't get set up quickly enough!
I knew the front lights would be bright, but I didn't really know how bright, so I scrambled to level the camera, compose the shot, and guess at some settings, opening the shutter just as it rounded the corner. As the light seared my retinas, it was immediately clear the shot was going to be significantly overexposed -- but I hadn't expected this stunning (unedited) lens flare, especially from a lens that is usually very resilient to flare.
I would love to take credit for the lens flare lining up with the Milky Way in the sky above, but this was really just luck!
I'm a British software developer and photographer living in Vancouver, BC. I mainly photograph landscapes, cityscapes, night scenes, and water.
If you're interested in any...
dear me sir. You are rediculous. I remember reading a biography about jimi hendrix once. He did a show for a load of the best muscians around at the time (beatles, stones, cream, the who etc). The book interview most of them and every guitarist in these bands said they either thought "whats the point in carrying on. He is too good" or "wow this is amazing. I must get better". This is how you make me feel Alexis.
I never tire of your astrophotography, Alexis. your results make it seem like it doesn't require and epic planning journey and effort. I'd really like to hook up sometime in Vancouver and go on a shoot.
@cameronknowlton Let me know if you're going to be in town sometime and I'm sure we can get together! Although astrophotography might be difficult from a ferry timetable point of view...
I typically shoot at anywhere between ISO 3200 and ISO 8000, so this is at the lower end of the noise I have to put up with. I use a number of techniques to control the noise, the first one being the noise reduction and sharpening built into Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom. With these being used correctly, they can do 80% of the work without too much difficulty.
Knowing how to correctly use the masking slider in ACR/Lightroom helps a lot to ensure that when you sharpen the image, you're not sharpening the noise. A lot of people don't know how to use the masking slider (unsurprisingly, as it's hardly the most intuitive thing), there's a good tutorial here: http://www.mcpactions.com/blog/2012/09/14/lightroom-sharpening-layer-mask-the-hidden-secret/
The Canon 5D3 shots have a low level of purple and green 'blotching' at high ISO settings. This is quite faint so isn't always problematic, but when you are trying to bring out detail it can start to be emphasised. This blotching is too coarse to be reduced by the colour noise reduction in ACR/Lightroom, so if I find this is becoming a problem I'll load the image into Photoshop, switch the colour mode to LAB, and blur the A and B channels. LAB is another colour mode where, instead of colours being represented by red, blue and green channels, they are represented by a luminance channel and two color space channels. This means you can affect the colour of an image without affecting the brightness or sharpness. There's a tutorial on using this for noise reduction here, which is basically the same process I use, although I'll typically paint some colour back in using layers if necessary: http://www.adorama.com/alc/0008413/article/100-in-100-Reduce-noise-with-LAB
If I still have noise problems, I'll typically load a second copy of the RAW file as a new layer, with really heavy noise reduction. I'll then use a layer mask based off finding the edges in the shot (so that the noise reduction is applied to smooth areas rather than detail), and then do further manual masking and opacity changes to the layer to bring in the strongly noise-reduced image in the problematic areas. The basic technique is described here: http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_get_smarter_noise_reduction_photoshop
This is very similar to what the masking slider does in ACR/LR, but leaves you with the layer mask to fiddle with afterwards, so you can choose not to noise-reduce a certain area of the shot (e.g. the heart of the Milky Way), if necessary.
I rarely use all these techniques on a single shot, but they're useful to have. I don't like to go too overboard with noise reduction -- all shots like this will have a degree of noise, and I prefer that to an overly-smoothed photo that's lost a lot of detail.
http://365project.org/discuss/general/18860/the-death-of-a-perseid
I typically shoot at anywhere between ISO 3200 and ISO 8000, so this is at the lower end of the noise I have to put up with. I use a number of techniques to control the noise, the first one being the noise reduction and sharpening built into Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom. With these being used correctly, they can do 80% of the work without too much difficulty.
Knowing how to correctly use the masking slider in ACR/Lightroom helps a lot to ensure that when you sharpen the image, you're not sharpening the noise. A lot of people don't know how to use the masking slider (unsurprisingly, as it's hardly the most intuitive thing), there's a good tutorial here: http://www.mcpactions.com/blog/2012/09/14/lightroom-sharpening-layer-mask-the-hidden-secret/
The Canon 5D3 shots have a low level of purple and green 'blotching' at high ISO settings. This is quite faint so isn't always problematic, but when you are trying to bring out detail it can start to be emphasised. This blotching is too coarse to be reduced by the colour noise reduction in ACR/Lightroom, so if I find this is becoming a problem I'll load the image into Photoshop, switch the colour mode to LAB, and blur the A and B channels. LAB is another colour mode where, instead of colours being represented by red, blue and green channels, they are represented by a luminance channel and two color space channels. This means you can affect the colour of an image without affecting the brightness or sharpness. There's a tutorial on using this for noise reduction here, which is basically the same process I use, although I'll typically paint some colour back in using layers if necessary: http://www.adorama.com/alc/0008413/article/100-in-100-Reduce-noise-with-LAB
If I still have noise problems, I'll typically load a second copy of the RAW file as a new layer, with really heavy noise reduction. I'll then use a layer mask based off finding the edges in the shot (so that the noise reduction is applied to smooth areas rather than detail), and then do further manual masking and opacity changes to the layer to bring in the strongly noise-reduced image in the problematic areas. The basic technique is described here: http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_get_smarter_noise_reduction_photoshop
This is very similar to what the masking slider does in ACR/LR, but leaves you with the layer mask to fiddle with afterwards, so you can choose not to noise-reduce a certain area of the shot (e.g. the heart of the Milky Way), if necessary.
I rarely use all these techniques on a single shot, but they're useful to have. I don't like to go too overboard with noise reduction -- all shots like this will have a degree of noise, and I prefer that to an overly-smoothed photo that's lost a lot of detail.