Steve Kennedy and I stayed a night at Lost Lake prior to heading to the Columbia River Gorge on a photography trip in May of last year. We never saw the stars, only clouds.
I had a day off when the conditions were right again the next month, so I headed back to try again. This time the skies cooperated, and the clouds stayed away. There was a bit of wind so I didn’t get sharp star reflections, but I kind of liked the smear of light in the lake with longer exposures.
Type of Critique Requested
Aesthetic: Feedback on the overall visual appeal of the image, including its color, lighting, cropping, and composition.
Technical: Feedback on the technical aspects of the image, such as exposure, color, focus and reproduction of colors and details, post-processing, and print quality.
Specific Feedback and Self-Critique
I love Milky Way photography, and find it quite challenging. Every time I’ve shot it, I’ve learned something new I did wrong. For this image, this was the first time I shot the Milky Way with the 20mm. I took images to stack in Sequator, but unfortunately I shot them at f/1.8. I didn’t realize it until I returned home, but the 20mm is significantly soft at 1.8, and is much sharper stopped down slightly. Fortunately I was playing around and had a single image at f/2.2; it’s much sharper but is a little noisier than I had hoped for. (It works okay at this resolution, but I’d likely have to run it through noise reduction software if I wanted to print it really large.)
I find balancing the luminosity of the land with the dark of the night sky to be quite challenging, and since color balance is a matter of personal opinion I find I have a lot of arguments with myself. I often find I’ll get something I’m happy with, only to return and wonder what in the world was I thinking. I’d love your thoughts the balance of luminosity and balance of color on this one. Any other thoughts and suggestions more than welcome.
Technical Details
NIKON Z 7II
NIKKOR Z 20mm f/1.8 S
10.0 sec. at f/2.2 and ISO 2500 (sky, taken at 2157)
30.0 sec. at f/1.8 and ISO 2500 (water, taken at 2154)
1/4 sec. at f/5.6 and ISO 64 (land, taken at 2007)
Looks excellent to me!! I love the soft moonlight! The composition is very nice – I could see aiming the camera a squeak to the right – but just a squeak. If you are able to pull up more tonal detail in the sky, the dust arms reaching out toward the right edge are a very interesting feature. With slight overexposure, then bring it down in the raw converter, noise with your camera should be very low. This one looks excellent in that regard.
The water turned out to be a very nice feature, with the soft reflections. I think the brighter line at the shore is wonderful! (The breeze was your friend!) I love the darker gradient at the bottom! I wonder about aiming the camera up a tiny bit next time, to put the horizon just a squeak lower and give a little more sky.
Stars are so unforgiving for sharp detail. A lens that is 110% for normal daytime use can have problems with pinpoint stars. Stopping down can help some of the issues but not all. It looks like you got great focus, though. Mirrorless bodies are so much easier to work with in that regard.
This works just fine for me, John. I personally like the balance you struck between the landscape and the star laden sky as this looks much more natural than some night photography where the landscape almost looks as though it were taken during the daylight. Here it is dark, but I can see plenty of details in the trees and the mountains. The color in the sky looks very natural to me as well as I would expect it to be cooler. I also quite like the brighter area along the shoreline as it gives you a bit of separation between the shore and the water. This looks superb, no suggestions from me. This makes me want to go out and try my hand at it again.
I love this! I don’t mind the tones on this at all! Looks like maybe during the edge of astro twilight? I get that more purplish tone when there’s still a bit of sunlight up there. Really like the obscure reflection too. I do love perfectly calm water, but it’s hard to find. I have a Sigma Art 20. It opens to 1.4 but has terrible coma. I shoot it at 2-2.8. I prefer this final length because I think it makes the Core more accurately sized to what it looks like to our eyes. I’ve also accidentally shot it too wide open and couldn’t salvage the images. Nice shot!
Hi John, I don’t really have any suggestions to add on except I might try to lighten the vignette at the top two corners. I really like the composition & I understand you’re a bit frustrated that you couldn’t get a clean reflection but the “suggestion” of it on the lake surface is great! I haven’t photographed the milky way since 2018 but am hoping to head to Acadia NP in a couple of weekends if there are clear skies. Your photo is adding to my excitement! I’d also like to note that I’m very impressed with how little noise there is for a single image!
John, if your intent was to produce a soft image you achieved your goal, I respect the photographer’s right to illustrate thier vision.
For me, personally, the image has too much of a blue color cast and I would sharpen the MW, letting it stand out a bit more, perhaps darken the dark areas and brighten the light areas of the MW. I do like what you did with the refelction in the water.
Well done.
