The Amazing Sony A1/A7/A9/APS-C & Anything else welcome Mega Thread!

snerkler said:
That's pretty special :eek:

Is that a separate foreground and sky exposure?
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thanks
stacked sky, not a separate exposure for foreground though.
It was in June, so we are in perpetual twilight. There was enough light, I just used foreground from one of the shots.
 
snerkler said:
I am concerned the 35mm isn't going to be wide enough
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35mm is pretty wide, I'd still classify that as wide angle. But its the "limit" of what I'd consider wide for this kind of shooting.
so if for some reason you need wider you are stuck. You can always crop in but you can't get wider field of view.

take your 16-35mm with you too. you will end up needing higher ISO and/or longer exposure. Its not end of the world, its better not getting the shot at all.
preferably try to pick your spot so that you can compose with your 35GM.

Three shot verticle pano below with samyang 24mm f1.8 from last night. You can always do this too :)

_ASA3955-Pano.jpeg
 
snerkler said:
Thanks very much. I am concerned the 35mm isn't going to be wide enough so I'll likely take both lenses out and if there's enough time/activity try it with both. My other concern with shooting wide open at f1.4 is that the foreground won't be sharp, but as I say I might do a separate shot for that :thinking:

Looking online, surprise view is my nearest dark sky so I'll likely head up there.
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35 won't be wide enough. Not going by last night as a lot of the purple was high in the sky and overhead.

I was shooting at 8 seconds which with a 2 second gap works well for a timelapse. F/2.2ish and ISO 640 for the location last night. No immediate foreground though.

Best off shooting a proper stopped down foreground first. Then change the settings for the sky to blend or shoot timelapse video and just take some frames from that to blend with the in focus foreground.

I ended up pointing the A7 and 35GM straight up and just timelapsing a section of the sky.
 
LeeRatters said:
35 won't be wide enough. Not going by last night as a lot of the purple was high in the sky and overhead.

I was shooting at 8 seconds which with a 2 second gap works well for a timelapse. F/2.2ish and ISO 640 for the location last night. No immediate foreground though.

Best off shooting a proper stopped down foreground first. Then change the settings for the sky to blend or shoot timelapse video and just take some frames from that to blend with the in focus foreground.

I ended up pointing the A7 and 35GM straight up and just timelapsing a section of the sky.
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Thanks, so I'd need to be around ISO 1600 for f4 then going by this (y)
 
snerkler said:
1209 images :eek: How would you blend images like this if the aurora is moving?
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Timelapse (y)

I'll just select a few frames from the video to make a single image. The only issue doing things that way is you can't really move about or swap compositions as you want at least 240 images for a 10 second video. So..... 40 minutes for 10 seconds.....
 
nandbytes said:
I think he is going to make a time lapse out of it



Probably higher at f4
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I'm thinking that LR's denoise should help with higher ISO, but I'll probably start with the 35mm in portrait orientation to get more sky in.
 
nandbytes said:
not looking great unless you are ready to drive south till Stafford. There's some gaps in the cloud later at night
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Yeah, regretting not going out last night. The weird thing is BBC’s saying clear skies :rolleyes:

Which sites do you use for weather and the northern lights?
 
I was thinking about going to the seaside later but the cloud cover seems to be increasing.
 
Stayed out till 1am last night, no signs of the lights :( Had a go at some basic 'astro' photography instead, couple of take away points. Firstly, when the scene is that dark the EVF/LCD does not show the final exposure even when exposure preview is on. It will show underexposure and then as you increase the ISO you see the image brighten to a point, and then it won't brighten any further. Is there a way to 'boost' this so that it shows the final exposure, or is it just a case of shoot, review and adjust accordingly?

Secondly, even though I thought I was in a dark area (although I didn't go to a listed dark sky place) the sky ended up looking quite bright, see here at f2, ISO 1600 5s

Screenshot 2024-05-12 at 08.27.38.jpg
 
A budget option maybe?

First image of the new 7Artisans AF 85mm F1.8 E lens and of the new Sniper – sonyalpharumors

www.sonyalpharumors.com www.sonyalpharumors.com

After my limited experience with Chinese lenses one thing I'd want to keep an eye on if doing low light photography is the transition / aperture accuracy as for whatever reason a higher ISO or lower shutter speed may be required to obtain a similar exposure to what you'd get from the same aperture with a similar lens from one of the more mainstream Japanese companies.
 
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snerkler said:
Stayed out till 1am last night, no signs of the lights :(
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same here :(

snerkler said:
Had a go at some basic 'astro' photography instead, couple of take away points. Firstly, when the scene is that dark the EVF/LCD does not show the final exposure even when exposure preview is on. It will show underexposure and then as you increase the ISO you see the image brighten to a point, and then it won't brighten any further. Is there a way to 'boost' this so that it shows the final exposure, or is it just a case of shoot, review and adjust accordingly?
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yes it's called "bright monitoring".
it's only available via. Button press so you'll need to assign the option to a custom button.

ILCE-1 | Help Guide | Bright Monitoring

helpguide.sony.net

snerkler said:
Secondly, even though I thought I was in a dark area (although I didn't go to a listed dark sky place) the sky ended up looking quite bright, see here at f2, ISO 1600 5s

View attachment 422793
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Yeah welcome to England :p
Even designated dark sites in England have light pollution especially at the horizon. It's just a bit better above you but horizons are generally bright because of cities and motorways.
 
nandbytes said:
same here :(


yes it's called "bright monitoring".
it's only available via. Button press so you'll need to assign the option to a custom button.

ILCE-1 | Help Guide | Bright Monitoring

helpguide.sony.net


Yeah welcome to England :p
Even designated dark sites in England have light pollution especially at the horizon. It's just a bit better above you but horizons are generally bright because of cities and motorways.
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Thanks (y)
 
To give some idea how bright the sky became (foreground lifted heavily in post, was completely silhouetted)
Edit: the Stars aren't showing up well on here, much better on flickr (although still far from great :LOL:)


A1_09240-Enhanced-NR by Toby Gunnee, on Flickr

And some more of Betty ;)


A1_09209 by Toby Gunnee, on Flickr

A1_09229 by Toby Gunnee, on Flickr
 
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I went to a friends house for a vegi feed earlier and it was lovely :D This friend is not into photography at all but does take the odd picture of the Mrs + the kids etc with a mobile phone and he was keen to show me one. He and his Mrs had been to the seaside in the evening and he'd taken a picture of her and guess what???? In the background were the Northern lights. This amazed him as they'd seen nothing by eye... I'm not sure he was even aware of the event. "The camera saw things differently to us" he explained.

I have mixed feelings on this. One of my dreams is to see and photograph the lights but when I looked out on Friday night and there was nothing to see I didn't go out and try but if I'd gone to the seaside I could have potentially got a picture of the lights even though they weren't visible by eye. So I'm sort of disappointed that I didn't try and get a picture but on the other hand it's one of my dreams to see and photograph the lights and on Friday I wouldn't have seen them except on the cameras back screen and on my pc so my dream would have only half come true.

Oh well.
 
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woof woof said:
I went to a friends house for a vegi feed earlier and it was lovely :D This friend is not into photography at all but does take the odd picture of the Mrs + the kids etc with a mobile phone and he was keen to show me one. He and his Mrs had been to the seaside in the evening and he'd taken a picture of her and guess what???? In the background where the Northern lights. This amazed him as they'd seen nothing by eye... I'm not sure he was even aware of the event. "The camera saw things differently to us" he explained.

I have mixed feelings on this. One of my dreams is to see and photograph the lights but when I looked out on Friday night and there was nothing to see I didn't go out and try but if I'd gone to the seaside I could have potentially got a picture of the lights even though they weren't visible by eye. So I'm sort of disappointed that I didn't try and get a picture but on the other hand it's one of my dreams to see and photograph the lights and on Friday I wouldn't have seen them except on the cameras back screen and on my pc so my dream would have only half come true.

Oh well.
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Yeah I'd want to see them with the naked eye too, but appreciate they'd be more dramatic on the camera.
 
Another effort, looks like there was a plane in this shot.

(Again what stars there are can be seen better on flickr)


A1_09238-Enhanced-NR by Toby Gunnee, on Flickr
 
snerkler said:
Yeah I'd want to see them with the naked eye too, but appreciate they'd be more dramatic on the camera.
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If there's a next time I think I will go out and try and get a picture but if I couldn't see them seeing and photographing them will still be on my wish list.
 
woof woof said:
If there's a next time I think I will go out and try and get a picture but if I couldn't see them seeing and photographing them will still be on my wish list.
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I've just googled and 'tinternet says that they could be "visible" again tonight "in the north" although not as visible as on Friday. Hmmm. I might go and try... I'll have to think about it.
 
woof woof said:
I went to a friends house for a vegi feed earlier and it was lovely :D This friend is not into photography at all but does take the odd picture of the Mrs + the kids etc with a mobile phone and he was keen to show me one. He and his Mrs had been to the seaside in the evening and he'd taken a picture of her and guess what???? In the background where the Northern lights. This amazed him as they'd seen nothing by eye... I'm not sure he was even aware of the event. "The camera saw things differently to us" he explained.

I have mixed feelings on this. One of my dreams is to see and photograph the lights but when I looked out on Friday night and there was nothing to see I didn't go out and try but if I'd gone to the seaside I could have potentially got a picture of the lights even though they weren't visible by eye. So I'm sort of disappointed that I didn't try and get a picture but on the other hand it's one of my dreams to see and photograph the lights and on Friday I wouldn't have seen them except on the cameras back screen and on my pc so my dream would have only half come true.

Oh well.
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Well half is more than none ;)

Sorry don't mean to rub salt on your wounds but just wanted to explain seeing them (like in pictures) isn't always possible.
Friend and I visited Norway in March to see them. We did see them but we saw them differently.
Each of us are biologically different with different amounts of rods and cones in our eye.
My friend being caucasian was already disadvantaged compared to me because genetically they have less cones I believe. So the "luck" factor starts there.
I could see very light shades of green but my friend mostly just saw greys and green very rarely!

To see colours you needed some epic amounts of activity like on Friday. you are more likely to see colours in the UK than if you go hunting for them in the arctic.
that is because if you can see them in the UK it mostly means its a solar storm, but in the arctic you can almost always "see" them even with minimal activity.
Of course when you see them in the UK, the colours in Arctic will be even better but you can hardly time a holiday/travel to match with a massive solar storm.
But the main difference between what I saw here and in arctic was that in arctic you could properly see it moving/dancing in the sky (even if it was grey), there was less of it here.
but the colours I saw on Friday was way better then the "greys" or "light greens" in Norway/arctic.

snerkler said:
Yeah I'd want to see them with the naked eye too, but appreciate they'd be more dramatic on the camera.
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as above IME :)
 
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woof woof said:
I've just googled and 'tinternet says that they could be "visible" again tonight "in the north" although not as visible as on Friday. Hmmm. I might go and try... I'll have to think about it.
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you can track on here:

AuroraWatch UK · AuroraWatch UK

See the aurora borealis from the UK
aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk

of course this is current activity versus prediction but I don't bother looking into it more seriously till I see amber warnings.
 
woof woof said:
I went to a friends house for a vegi feed earlier and it was lovely :D This friend is not into photography at all but does take the odd picture of the Mrs + the kids etc with a mobile phone and he was keen to show me one. He and his Mrs had been to the seaside in the evening and he'd taken a picture of her and guess what???? In the background where the Northern lights. This amazed him as they'd seen nothing by eye... I'm not sure he was even aware of the event. "The camera saw things differently to us" he explained.

I have mixed feelings on this. One of my dreams is to see and photograph the lights but when I looked out on Friday night and there was nothing to see I didn't go out and try but if I'd gone to the seaside I could have potentially got a picture of the lights even though they weren't visible by eye. So I'm sort of disappointed that I didn't try and get a picture but on the other hand it's one of my dreams to see and photograph the lights and on Friday I wouldn't have seen them except on the cameras back screen and on my pc so my dream would have only half come true.

Oh well.
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snerkler said:
Yeah I'd want to see them with the naked eye too, but appreciate they'd be more dramatic on the camera.
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We could see the green a bit of Friday night. And although you couldn't make out the purple, you could see some of the stronger pillars showing as lighter than the actual sky - you could see them enough to know which direction it was really kicking off in and which way to point the camera.
 
nandbytes said:
Well half is more than none ;)

Sorry don't mean to rub salt on your wounds :)
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Not at all :D

I didn't know that about different races. I'm getting towards very old now :D but I think my vision and even my night vision is better than many peoples but I'd have to be with someone who could see any lights better than me to know how genetically lucky or unlucky I am in this.

I might give it a try tonight as even if I can't see them by eye but manage to capture something digitally that's still an experience. If there looks to be significant cloud cover I wont go and that may be the case as we're forecast thunder storms later.

20mm f1.8 and tripod may be at the ready. It's low tide tonight so if we don't have a thunderstorm or cloud cover I could at least get a shot of the beach and pier.
 
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woof woof said:
Not at all :D

I didn't know that about different races. I'm getting towards very old now :D but I think my vision and even my night vision is better than many peoples but I'd have to be with someone who could see any lights better than me to know how genetically lucky or unlucky I am in this.

I might give it a try tonight as even if I can't see them by eye but manage to capture something digitally that's still an experience. If there looks to be significant cloud cover I wont go and that may be the case as we're forecast thunder storms later.

20mm f1.8 and tripod may be at the ready. It's low tide tonight so if we don't have a thunderstorm or cloud cover I could at least get a shot of the beach and pier.
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Nothing to loose by trying Alan. Except a few hours sleep :) But you can make that up in the morning :)
 
LeeRatters said:
Nothing to loose by trying Alan. Except a few hours sleep :) But you can make that up in the morning :)
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I'm running at about 4 hours sleep a night at the best of times so I doubt stopping up late will be much of a problem. Only difference is I'll be taking pictures instead of watching a movie or three. And I'll still be up early in the morning.
 
woof woof said:
I'm running at about 4 hours sleep a night at the best of times so I doubt stopping up late will be much of a problem. Only difference is I'll be taking pictures instead of watching a movie or three. And I'll still be up early in the morning.
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I have been running on 4 last few days and I'm not 100% during the day.
Personally I need at least 6 hours.

But even so I can easily stay up till 2am, wake up 8am and start working at 9am without much impact on my day.
 
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