Stars over Giewont

Recently I don't have luck considering shooting stars. I either have bad weather (clouds, rain, fog) or full moon or both at the same time. However, despite these very difficult conditions I managed to capture above night photo showing Giewont (which is one of the most popular massifs in Polish Tatra mountains) and starry sky just above it.

I'm really happy with the atmosphere of this shot. The fog made it a bit mysterious and the light coming from the street lamp that was just behind me, made this shot a bit surreal. Also to create such mood I used rather warm white balance (if I recall correctly I had it set at about 4500 K).

If you want to learn how to capture starry skies yourself make sure to read my tutorial.

Technical details:
Camera: Canon 5D MK III
Lens: Canon 24 f/1.4 L USM II
Focal length: 24 mm
Aperture: f/3.2
Exposure time: 13 s ("middle" exposure)
ISO: 640
Number of exposures: 1
E.V. Step: n/a
Flash used: no
Tripod: yes
Filters: no
Technique: luminosity masking
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Lightroom 5.0, Photoshop CC

Milky Way wallpaper

One of my favorite and most popular photos. I shared it before but I think today is a good reason to reshare it as starting today you can download this image as a HD wallpaper. To get it just go to the Wallpapers section or click on one of the links below to get resolution suitable for your monitor:

• 1920x1200 
• 1600x1200

Stars above the hotel

It'll never cease to amaze me how starry the sky is over Fuerteventura island. Even lights cannot make the stars disappear.

For this photo I stood very close to the sea hoping no wave would come and grab my tripod. And believe me I was nervous because I had to stand a few meters away from it as the ground was very wet and soft. Even changing location of feet while standing quite close to a tripod resulted in a completely blurry shot because it caused tripod to move.

In this case I used 5 exposures and manually blended them. This way I have both the stars in the sky, properly exposed hotel as well as nice reflections.

Technical details:
Camera: Canon 5D MK II
Lens: Canon 24 f/1.4 L USM II
Focal length: 24 mm
Aperture: f/1.4
Exposure time: 2.5 s ("middle" exposure)
ISO: 800
Number of exposures: 5
E.V. Step: 1
Flash used: no
Tripod: yes
Filters: no
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Lightroom 4.2, Photoshop CS6

Have a rest under the stars - redone

Yesterday above photo was Top 1 for a few hours on 500px portal (if you're there make sure to add me to your friends) reaching 99.7 points and about 4000 views! Although this photo isn't new and I uploaded it earlier here, I think I prefer this new version. I really like magenta cast in it as well as more details in the darkest shadows. This version also benefits from deblurring using Topaz InFocus plugin.

Changing a subject a little bit, a few of my photos have been recently shared on a few websites. Just yesterday 50plusser website featured me, and a few days ago +Miroslav Petrasko added me to his Great Photographers list. Thank you!

Technical details:
Camera: Canon 5D MK II
Lens: Canon 24 f/1.4 L USM II
Focal length: 24 mm
Aperture: f/1.4
Exposure time: 10s
ISO: 800
Number of exposures: 1
E.V. Step: n/a
Flash used: no
Tripod: yes
Filters: no
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Lightroom 4.2, Photoshop CS6

Canon 24 f/1.4 L USM II Review

Canon 5D MK II | 1/160 s | f/1.4 | ISO 200

For a few months now I'm a lucky owner of a Canon 24 f/1.4 L II lens. It's the fastest prime lens I own and use it for many of my landscape shots and almost for all night landscape shots (including both HDRs and astrophotos).

First some technical specs:

Apertures	f/1.4 - f/22
Field of view	84 degree
Minimum focusing distance	25 cm
Filter thread	77 mm
Dimensions	9.35 cm × 8.69 cm
Weight	650 g
Number of aperture blades	8
Auto-focus	YES
USM	YES
Image-stabilization	NO
Price	~ 1800 USD

The build quality is typical for L-series lens and it means it's excellent. The lens looks and feels very firm, solid and durable (in fact I think this lens looks more solid than most of the other L-lenses). The only downside is that it's pretty heavy (650 g) and quite large. It also uses 77 mm filter thread.

Sharpness is fantastic across whole frame. It might be a bit soft at f/1.4 (but still sharper than most of the lenses wide-open) but stop it down to just a f/2.8 or f/3.5 to get razor sharp images. However, please note that f/1.4 is still completely usable and I use it with success to capture many night photos.

Chromatic aberration is hard to notice even at f/1.4. There is also no noticeable issues with distortion. Also flares are rather small. Please note that I can compare results here to Canon 24-105 at 24 mm.

One more thing to note is that this lens produces very nice bokeh.

The greatest drawback is large vignetting at f/1.4 (vignetting is really strong!). However, together with very shallow depth of field produced by this aperture it creates interesting effect so it may not be a downside for everyone.

Another is that this lens is quite expensive (it costs about 1800$).

Summing up this short review, Canon 24 f/1.4 II is a truly wonderful lens which I would recommend to anyone serious about landscape photography as well as for anyone shooting in low-light situations (astrophotographers, wedding photographers, etc.).

Pros:
- excellent image quality (great sharpness, low chromatic aberration, low distortion)
- great build quality
- fast and accurate auto-focus
- beautiful bokeh
- very fast aperture

Cons:
- heavy vignetting at f/1.4
- quite expensive
- heavy

Below are a few more sample photos taken with this lens on 5D MK II:

Canon 5D MK II | 1/125 s | f/1.4 | ISO 200

Canon 5D MK II | 1/320 s | f/7.1 | ISO 100

Canon 5D MK II | 1/500 s | f/7.1 | ISO 100

Canon 5D MK II | 30 s | f/1.4 | ISO 100

Tutorial: How to take photos of the stars - part 3. Post-processing

In this part of the series I will show you how to process an astrophoto to get such a result as above.

It took me very long time but finally here is part 3 of my tutorial about shooting stars. There might be 1 more in the future but we shall see.
If you haven't already read:

1. Part 1. Which discusses equipment and shooting regular starry sky.
2. Part 2. Which focuses on taking photos of star trails.
3. My other tutorials.

Straight out of the camera (SOOC) image will rarely look good.  Astrophotography is no different. Professional and advanced astrophotographers employ a number of techniques like dark frames, flat frames, light frames and bias frames for best and noise-free image quality. But as they shoot distant galaxies they use much longer exposures and basically deal with a lot more issues. I won't go into that. Why? Because I'm landscape photographer, occasionally shooting stars to show their beauty as the background for our earthly landscapes. I'm not shooting stars just to show them but to use them to create certain mood or atmosphere.

In previous parts I discussed techniques I use when shooting stars in the field. However, when I'm back home I usually spent quite a lot of time post-processing them. In this tutorial I will focus on this aspect. However, as describing it with words is rather difficult I decided to record a video tutorial which shows some of adjustments I make on an example photo:

Isn't Milky Way beautiful?

Isn't Milky Way beautiful? Full of galaxies, stars and planets. Billions of billions of them (or maybe even more? who knows if we're right in our estimations). All far far away... that always amazes me.

Also I just got 2x teleconverter (from Kenko as Canon's is more limiting...) so I plan to test it and write a short review in the days to follow.

EXIF data:
Camera: Canon 5D MK II
Lens: Canon 24 f/1.4 L USM II
Focal length: 24 mm
Aperture: f/1.4
Exposure time: 10 s
ISO: 800
Number of exposures: 1
E.V. Step: n/a
Flash used: no
Tripod used: yes
Filters used: no
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Lightroom 4.2, Photoshop CS5

Starry sky again

I haven't uploaded any photo of a starry sky recently but still a few remain on my hard drive. Here is one of them. I really like amount of detail as well as the colours in this shot. Sorry for not writing anything more this time but I'm short of time today. I hope to write something more (and maybe post some useful tips about HDR photography) tomorrow.

EXIF data:
Camera: Canon 5D MK II
Lens: Canon 24 f/1.4 L USM II
Focal length: 24 mm
Aperture: f/1.4
Exposure time: 10 s
ISO: 800
Number of exposures: 1
E.V. Step: n/a
Flash used: no
Tripod used: yes
Filters used: no
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Lightroom 4.1, Photoshop CS5

One more night shot

Ok, one more astrophoto. From tomorrow I should be back to uploading some HDR stuff and some tutorials as well. In this shot I used slightly different exposure settings to the rest of my recent astrophotos. Instead of ISO 800 + 10 s combination I used ISO 100 + 30 s combo. This resulted in a slightly lower noise (although there is some due to long exposure of course). I'm really happy with the composition and colours.

If you're interested in how I achieved such an effect read my tutorial about taking photos of the starry skies (part 3 should be ready next week). There are much more tutorials in the Tutorials section of this blog.

EXIF data:
Camera: Canon 5D MK II
Lens: Canon 24 f/1.4 L USM II
Focal length: 24 mm
Aperture: f/1.4
Exposure time: 30 s
ISO: 100
Number of exposures: 1
E.V. Step: n/a
Flash used: no
Tripod used: yes
Filters used: no
Software: Lightroom 4.1, Photoshop CS5

Traces of aliens?

Ok, one more astrophoto. There are a few more left on my disk so I hope you won't get bored with them. Some HDRs will be uploaded soon so stay tuned.

In this case I used focus stacking to create bigger depth of field. For details you can read my tutorial about this (or other tutorials in the Tutorials section). Otherwise with aperture of f/1.4 I would have either foreground or background completely blurry. I still regret not taking more photos (I took 3 as far as I remember) because the hut could be a little sharper.

EXIF data:
Camera: Canon 5D MK II
Lens: Canon 24 f/1.4 L USM II
Focal length: 24 mm
Aperture: f/1.4
Exposure time: 10 s
ISO: 800
Number of exposures: 1
E.V. Step: n/a
Flash used: no
Tripod used: yes
Filters used: no
Software: Lightroom 4.1, Photoshop CS5

Milky Way over Corralejo beach

I really love shooting stars and here is one more photo of them. If you're interested in how I achieved such an effect read my tutorial about taking photos of the starry skies (part 3 soon!). There are much more tutorials in the Tutorials section of this blog.

EXIF data:
Camera: Canon 5D MK II
Lens: Canon 24 f/1.4 L USM II
Focal length: 24 mm
Aperture: f/1.4
Exposure time: 10 s
ISO: 800
Number of exposures: 1
E.V. Step: n/a
Flash used: no
Tripod used: yes
Filters used: no
Software: Lightroom 4.1, Photoshop CS5