Unified Photography » Tips and Tricks

Star Trails Quick Tips

kensnyder — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 02:17:30 +0000

In this post, I’m going to share some star trails quick tips that work well for me while photographing the nigh sky. The Sleeping Bear Dunes are one of my favorite locations to watch and photography the night sky. There is just something special about the refreshing crisp night air from a top a giant bluff on the edge of lake Michigan. Then the bluffs help block out the minor light pollution in the area which brings out the stars unlike any other location even the newly designated dark park in northern Michigan. The photos below are a star trails composite images of time lapse footage I shot last Aug while watching the shooting stars reflect over lake Michigan. I can’t wait to watch the annual Perseids meteor shower again this summer!

Star Trails Quick Tips

Set white balance to daylight
Set focus to infinity
Use lowest f-stop possible
Set Image preview off
Set long exposure noise reduction off
Take ISO 1600 – 6400 to frame / test
Use ISO 400 – 800 depending on ambient light
Use jpeg instead of RAW when shooting for fun to minimize processing time. If you are shooting to publish your work, I always recommend going with RAW to get the best possible quality from your images.
Use remote shutter release and button lock on remote
Set Continuous mode
Manual mode, 30 sec exposure
Capture time (need 1 hour, 120 shots)
To process, I use this Photoshop script

Empire Bluff North Star by Kenneth Snyder

Empire Bluff North Star – Photo Details

Sleeping Bear Perseids Startrails by Kenneth Snyder

Kenneth Snyder on Google+

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How to Create Star Trails Timelapse Video Effect

kensnyder — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 05:33:01 +0000

Star Trails pictures are one of my favorite subjects to photograph. Recently, I discovered a rock’n built-in effect within Adobe After Effects called ‘CC Time Blend FX’ which helps create a Star Trails effect for time-lapse videos. Here is a quick video tutorial on how to use this exciting effect!

Here are a couple of my recent timelapse videos where I used this effect:

2012 Perseids Meteor Shower 4K Timelapse

Sleeping Bear Dunes – Starry Nights

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Creating 32-bit HDR Photo with Photomatix Pro and Lightroom 4.1

kensnyder — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 05:20:18 +0000

I’ve been shooting a lot of HDRs for my Sleeping Bear Dunes timelapse project and needed to find a better way to process 100s of HDR brackets quickly and efficiently. There are many HDR tools and techniques out there in the market but almost none of them deliver produce a ‘natural’ look that I’m typically seeking for my images. I continue to be a huge fan of the iHDR process outlined by Jay and Verina Patel; however, its a time consuming process which isn’t very repeatable when batch processing HDR timelapses. On flip side, Photomatix Pro is one of the best tools for batching HDRs which really helps when processing HDR timelapse but I’m not a fan of the tone-mapping results from Photomatix Pro which leaves way too many artifacts and noise for my taste these days. I heard about the new 32-bit TIFF support in Lightroom 4.1 and saw some video tutorials on how to leverage that new support with Adobe Photoshop’s HDR Merge tool. After trying a few, I still just didn’t like what Photoshop does to the HDR images and it takes WAY too long to process and cannot be easily batched. This led me to explore using Photomatix Pro to render the 32-bit HDR image and use Lightroom 4.1 to edit the image without tone-mapping in Photomatix. Turns out – this works amazingly well!!

I put together this tutorial to share how to use the new 32-bit TIFF support in Lightroom 4.1 to create natural looking HDR photos with Photomatix Pro. First, demonstrating how to use either Adobe Photoshop to save the rendered HDR composite from Photomatix into a TIFF file or saving as a floating point TIFF file from Photomatix which can be directly opened in Lightroom 4.1. Then walking through how to use Lightroom’s develop module to edit the HDR image by recovering highlights and shadows with the very large dynamic range in the 32-bit image.

Here is one of my recent photos rendered with this exciting new HDR workflow:

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Yosemite Star Trails

kensnyder — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 03:11:40 +0000

On my way out to Yosemite for the 2nd time in little over a month, I was checking the weather forecast on my iPad via the in flight wifi. At first I was disappointed to see clear skies in the forecast as Yosemite is always best photographed with some clouds to help show depth and dimension. Then I realized the clear skies and no moon would make for a great opportunity to capture a star trails picture so I quick jumped onto BorrowLenses.com and reserved the Canon 14mm 2.8L lens. Thankfully, BorrowLenses.com main location is a short drive from SFO so I was able to swing by on my way out to the valley and pick up the lens.

I arrived in the magnificent Yosemite valley the afternoon before earth day and first day of National Parks week. It was stunning to see how busy the valley was compared to a month ago. Due to very little snow this winter, Glacier Point opened up the day before my visit so I decided to head up before sunset and take advantage of the clear sky for some star trails and astro photography. After sunset, I setup to photograph a star trails image over Yosemite Valley. I’m uber excited with the results. The swirling star trails help capture the grand and mystic feeling when experiencing the purity of the cool air stinging your lungs while standing above the mighty Yosemite Valley on a clear spring night.

It turns out, (Sheldon Neill and Colin Delehanty) the time-lapse ninjas behind the incredibly awesome Yosemite HD video were also out to start their planned follow up video. Check out their behind the scenes post from last weekend – (The Start of Yosemite HD II). I was extremely impressed with their dedication as they photographed all night and were still shooting when I returned for earth day sunrise the following morning!!

Star Trails Field Notes

For those interested, here are my star trails notes that have worked great for me:

Set white balance to daylight
Set focus to infinity
Use lowest f-stop possible
Set Image preview off
Set long exposure noise reduction off
Take ISO 1600 – 6400 to frame / test
Use ISO 400 – 800 depending on ambient light
Use jpeg instead of RAW
Use remote shutter release and button lock on remote
Set Continuous mode
Manual mode, 30 sec exposure
Capture time (need 1 hour, 120 shots)
To process, I use this Photoshop script

Gallery | Photoblog | Twitter | Facebook | Google +

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Comparing Nik Color Efex Pro Tonal Contrast Filter 4 vs 3

kensnyder — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 04:21:46 +0000

Nik Color Efex Pro is one of my favorite Photoshop plugins with its incredibly awesome filters. A few months back I received an invite to participate in the Nik Color Efex Pro 4 Beta which is an exciting new major update that was recently publicly launched. I tested out all of my favorite filters and greatly enjoyed the new ability to ‘stack’ filters within Color Efex Pro 4 which is quickly becoming a huge time savor especially when adding the new ‘recipe’ feature to save my favorite filter stack combinations. There are already a ton of great tutorials and overviews of the exciting new plugin suite so I’m going to focus my attention on this review regarding my hands down favorite filter in the plugin suite called Tonal Contrast. I couldn’t wait to evaluate and compare the Tonal Contrast filter in version 4 vs 3. To my surprise, I quickly noticed Tonal Contrast 4 vs 3 results were vastly different. I was pretty much able to duplicate results between version 4 and 3 for just about all of my other favorite filters (Polarization, Pro Contrast, White Neutralizer, Brilliance / Warmth, Glamour Glow, Darken / Lighten Center) except for Tonal Contrast. I know results vary greatly between images but I was finding my results were becoming a pattern not an exception among all of the images I tested. Tonal Contrast in version 3 was consistently coming out with a more ‘edgy’ / ‘grunge’ look compared to the ‘softer’ and ‘darker’ results in version 4.

Here is one of my examples. I selected this image because it has lots of contrast between the white barn and the surrounding landscape and tons of potential detail in the barn and moody clouds.

Nik Color Efex Pro 3 – Tonal Contrast

Nik Color Efex Pro 4 – Tonal Contrast

As you can hopefully see, there is a huge different between the two images. Now lets take a closer look with a 100% crop.

Nik Color Efex Pro 3 – Tonal Contrast at 100% Crop

Nik Color Efex Pro 4 – Tonal Contrast at 100% Crop

The 100% crop really tells the story. Tonal Contrast 3 resulted in far more sharpening but it also created a bunch of unwanted halos. Tonal Contrast 4 wasn’t as ‘edgy’ but overall it was a much cleaner result. On flip side, I really didn’t like the ‘darker’ results of Tonal Contrast 4. The primary reason I use this filter is to pop detail which just wasn’t happening the way I wanted / expected it to work based on my version 3 experience. Then I discovered the missing trick!

Nik Color Efex Pro 4 – Tonal Contrast with ‘Fine’ Contrast Type

Nik Color Efex Pro 4 – Tonal Contrast with ‘Fine’ Contrast Type at 100% Crop

Setting the ‘Contrast Type’ to ‘Fine’ resulted in exactly what I was seeking with nice detail pop without the undesired darker shadows or halos and almost no noise. W@@T! Now I truly was getting the best of both worlds in Tonal Contrast 4 – a cleaner image with the right amount of ‘edgy’ feel without all of the halo and noise side effects.

In summary, I give Nik Color Efex Pro 4 two towering thumbs up!! I greatly enjoyed version 3 but version 4 takes this plugin suite space bound with limitless possibilities that are not just fun but also a huge value added time savor!! If you were a fan of Tonal Contrast in version 3, I highly recommend checking out version 4 but make sure to play with the ‘Contrast Type’ options.

Thanks for visiting!

-Ken Snyder

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5 Tips for Photographing Outdoor Soccer

kensnyder — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 04:49:51 +0000

Photographing outdoor soccer is very fun and equally challenging! Shooting sports is one of my absolute favorite photography assignments. It was the primary reason I bought my first DSLR just over 6 years ago so I could photo the wrestling team I help coach over the winter months. I have been shooting youth soccer games on the weekends for past few years and encountered several lessons learned along the way. If you are interested in indoor action sports photography, I also shared my favorite tips for indoor fast action sports.

Here are my top 5 favorite tips for photographing soccer outdoors:

Go long! The longer the lens the better. I first started shooting outdoor soccer with my 70-200mm 2.8 which great choice especially when adding a 1.4 extender. The 70-200mm works well for kids playing on the smaller 3v3 fields but I quickly found myself wishing I had extra reach when photographing on bigger soccer fields. Last fall, I made the decision to invest in some longer glass and narrowed it down to either the Canon 300mm f4 or the Sigma 120-300mm 2.8. The Canon 300mm 2.8 would be the ultimate but its way over kill for capturing youth soccer games. I also felt that I needed a zoom lens because the action changes so much across the field that I didn’t want to tug around two DSLRs: one with the 70-200mm and another with the 300mm f4. This led me to go with the Sigma 120-300mm 2.8 and the Sigma 1.4 extender which performs beautifully with amazing depth of field along with the zoom flexibility.
Use a crop sensor camera. I prefer to use my Canon 7D crop sensor camera over the Canon 5D Mark II full sensor camera simply because the 7D extends my reach i.e. the Sigma 120-300mm on my 7D is equivalent to a 420mm lens with the 1.6 crop sensor magnification. I typically use center point focusing so all of the marketing hype around number of focus points really doesn’t add any value for my sports photography.
Shoot JPEGs. I use RAW for just about everything else except my sports photography. JPEG offers a few advantages over RAW that greatly help capturing the moment of sports photography such as JPEGs are much smaller files then RAW thus the camera can process way more rapid fire JPEG images before the buffer fills up. It’s also very difficult to anticipate the action in sports photography so ‘spray and pray’ is often the only way to hope for a keeper shot. This can lead to hundreds if not thousands of images captured at a single game thus leveraging the smaller JPEGs will extend the number of available shots on the memory card.
See the light! This is one of the most critical tips that I can share. I always try to keep the sun at my back when shooting as I’m often out shooting in harsh mid day light when shooting into the sun is not so much fun! Since I shoot JPEG, white balance is critical to set in the camera. I typically leave it at ‘daylight’ instead of ‘auto’ or ‘cloudy’. It provides a nice neutral look that is consistent across all of the images thus I can easily leverage Lightroom to make bulk change adjustments to all of my images at the same time to either warm or cool the pictures depending on the light. I’m a big proponent against the use of flash at youth sporting events as I feel its distracting to the players and offers little to no value. In my opinion, there are rarely any situations where flash is justified in outdoor sporting events. Unlike the challenges of indoor action sports, the available light typically makes it pretty easy without increasing the ISO too far to keep shutter speeds over 1/500th a second to freeze the action.
Use a tripod. Using a heavy long lens can get tiring very quick! The tripod enables me to stay focused on the action and not miss any opportunities. I also like to raise my tripod as tall as possible so I can try to shoot on a downward angle which helps eliminate distractions in the background.