Utah Astrophotography
Crystal Reflections
This is a 2 shot composite from my trip up to Crystal Lake in the Uinta Mountains of Utah last fall. I setup/aligned my tripod and iOptron Skytracker with my Nikon D600 and Rokinon 24mm lens, took my sky shot first with the Skytracker turned on, camera set to ISO 800, f1.4, and took a 50 second exposure. Next I turned the Skytracker off and took my foreground shot, ISO 400, f1.4, 3 minute exposure, being careful not to move the camera.
In post processing I layered the two shots, I selected just the trees/mountain/earth (both the real and reflection) and mask/layered that over the shot of the sky covering the earth portion in the sky shot. The stars in the shot of the foreground with the Skytracker off had long trails (including in the reflection), while the earth in the shot of the stars with the Skytracker on was blurry (from the camera rotating along the polar axis). This is the combination, a very tricky shot to edit.
For some reason I couldn't get the color balance of the reflected sky to match exactly that of the real sky, it came out a little more green while the actual sky came out more orange and red (especially at the horizon because of intense wildfire smoke and light pollution from Salt Lake City).
Crystal Reflections
This is a 2 shot composite from my trip up to Crystal Lake in the Uinta Mountains of Utah last fall. I setup/aligned my tripod and iOptron Skytracker with my Nikon D600 and Rokinon 24mm lens, took my sky shot first with the Skytracker turned on, camera set to ISO 800, f1.4, and took a 50 second exposure. Next I turned the Skytracker off and took my foreground shot, ISO 400, f1.4, 3 minute exposure, being careful not to move the camera.
In post processing I layered the two shots, I selected just the trees/mountain/earth (both the real and reflection) and mask/layered that over the shot of the sky covering the earth portion in the sky shot. The stars in the shot of the foreground with the Skytracker off had long trails (including in the reflection), while the earth in the shot of the stars with the Skytracker on was blurry (from the camera rotating along the polar axis). This is the combination, a very tricky shot to edit.
For some reason I couldn't get the color balance of the reflected sky to match exactly that of the real sky, it came out a little more green while the actual sky came out more orange and red (especially at the horizon because of intense wildfire smoke and light pollution from Salt Lake City).