I need to tell you about the absolute brutal shit I went to get through to get this picture.
Four exposures, stacked and bracketed at -2, -1, 0, and +1. Doing an exposure at 2 would have made me bring out the bulb and since I don’t have a remote shutter, I gotta do it with my phone, and I wouldn’t wish CanonConnect on Stephen Miller. So that said, I stood there at Kerry Park in Seattle, amongst seventy or a hundred other people, and they were all trying to capture this with their terrible little phone sensors, and I had my actual real shit, I was the only one with an actual camera.
So I took my exposures and some extra ones on the side, came back home to Portland, and set to work. My +1 was slightly off, just a little windblown. Darktable doesn’t give a shit, it’s not aligning nothing. I had Hugin stack up my control points and try to align it, told me it was a success, but every last point of light looked like AI circa '22, so that was a no-go.
In the end, I just edited the 0 exposure and just went with that. Dammit.
Thanks for seeing my frustrating work.
Oh also @nothingcorporate@lemmy.today, eat your heart out, here’s a space needle.
The whole notion of merging bracketed exposures without using a tripod is newfangled witchcraft.
My very limited experience with merging photos (panoramas, in my case, mainly) has been that my available commercial option (Affinity 2) works a lot better than the free ones (I must have used Hugin years ago) I’ve tried.
I think your photo came out well!
Ah, but that’s the thing: I was using a tripod! I was just bad at it, I guess.
Ah, gosh, sorry.
It also didn’t help that the interior of the space needle was slowly rotating.
I think my problem was that I pushed the shutter button and that nudged the whole camera each time.
Many cameras have a two-second self-timer mode to help out in this situation. Which doesn’t stop the Space Needle from rotating, of course.
Yeah, but then I’m stilll applying force to the camera body by virtue of pressing the shutter button.
I think I need to endure CanonConnect or get a remote timer.
I have a camera that supports Canon Connect, but after reading about it on the web a little bit, I decided I’d try it out … some other day. That day hasn’t come yet.
I also have a cheap ($10 or less) simple wired remote shutter release. That always works. Worth the $10.
My Canon has an option for using the touch screen as a shutter, while using live view mode.
That works better than the 2s timer IMO.
And canon connect does suck ass… I remember some third party apps, but those also didn’t work super well.
Oh also they make camera remotes that plug in with a little wire, they are like two bucks online. I’ve had the same cheapo one for like 10 years
If wind is moving your tripod, you can tie a weight to the center point and have it hang under the camera to steady it. They make all sorts of different sized ones for different wind speeds.
If you already knew this than nbd just trying to help!
I run around with one of these for this sort of thing, and I desperately wish it had a ballast hook. :(
Crazy that a tripod that expensive doesn’t have a hook built into that center pole. Usually they aren’t the beefiest hooks when built in but give us something! Come on pro master!
It does everything else I ever wanted in a tripod!
Also it’s insane that my tripod costs two-thirds of what my camera cost.
A good tripod is never cheap, and a cheap tripod is never good.
You made the right move investing in a good one. Especially if you’re going to be doing night landscape or city scapes. Gotta have a good setup for long exposures.
I want to get an L bracket for my camera, or a cage so I can get long exposures vertical orientation! Never ending GAS! lol
Did you try - 2, - 1 and 0?
Yeah, I tried 'em in every permutation, shit’s just fucked. Happens that way with most of my brackets. :(
I normally just end up doing what you did and editing from a single RAW for that reason :)
Good ol’ single raw. :D
Thanks for the reminder to buy a cable release. I want to try nightime pictures like this.
My sister joked, on the trip home yesterday, that the purpose of my life was to serve as a warning to others. :D
Warning? No. Inspiration. The picture looks great even without exposure stacking, which is how I would take this myself. I’ve never done exposure stacking, and if there’s a way to do it in a darkroom, I’m not ready for that just yet.
Thank you so much! :D
Excellent photo! One of my favorite spots to catch the needle. Seattle at night really is something special.
Hugin! That’s a name I have not heard in a long time. I got a ton of use out of that software in the aughts.
On modern(ish) bodies I haven’t really had the need to exposure stack. Most sensors have enough DR out of the box, especially if you’re able to keep ISO down. What promoted you exposed stack? Were you being proactive, were you looking for super dynamic range, …? I’m genuinely curious and do not mean to sound like I’m questioning the technique.
Nice photo btw!
Here’s my original exposure stack, edited and finished, at the same 1800x1200 size I post everything else at:
If one doesn’t glance too hard at it, they might be inclined to say “wow, neat photo,” and carry on. However, because cities fuckin’ twinkle a little bit, because the space needle revolves, because the wind is moving my camera about just a bit, and because I physically pushed the shutter button with a two-second timer before each long exposure, any sustained look at the lighting just falls apart on the spot. Buildings have an echo, support struts are blurry, and no individual detail stands out or is anything approaching perceptible.
Basically, I made AI slop by hand, by my craft, outside, in public.
