Friday, November 27, 2009

Blog has begun the move...

Hello and Happy Thanksgiving! I am so happy with the interface on my new website that the blog has already moved over there. So now everything is in one place...jeffball.squarespace.com. Eventually earthandskyphoto.com will point to the new website, but I am cleaning up some issues from a site hack. So for now, the squarespace domain is my home. Please visit when you get a chance and check out the new posts with more on the way. Take care and thanks.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

New Website Preview

I am getting excited about my new website. I had been searching for a while and I believe I have found what will work very well for me. The site is hosted by squarespace. They provide a template type of input that is configurable in many different ways. The site will also host my blog. So everything will be moving to the new site when it is up and running. Unfortunately, most of this has been the result of a hack on my original website, but the site was in desperate need of an upgrade. The earthandskyphoto.com link is still not active as I had to transfer web hosts, but you can get a glimpse of the site and new blog at jeffball.squarespace.com. I hope you get a chance to check it out. I don't have the galleries active yet as I am building them now. Please let me know if you have any problems accessing the site and check back often as I hope to take it live very soon. Take care and Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Photographic education

Photographic education never ends. The sources I utilize for continuing education are listed in the links section to the right. Most recently, Charles Cramer provided an update to his Photoshop handbook to his email subscribers for free! Charles is one of, if not the best, photographic instructors in the word today. I owe a great deal of my improvement to his instruction and photographic examples. The update covers a lot of the changes with PS CS4 and there were a lot of changes. I encourage you to visit his website and sign up for his newsletter and to certainly look into taking one of his workshops. I hope to attend one of his Yosemite workshops in the next couple of years myself. One additional note is that I have been working very diligently on the Smoky Mountain portfolio or "folio." This will be an entirely new presentation and one that I really find conducive to my artist vision. I will keep you updated as the folio nears completion. I am expecting the folio to be completed in the next couple of months. Take care and have a great Thanksgiving.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Smoky Mountain Rain


I was hoping for at least one day of rain for atmospheric enhancement on our Smoky Mountain photography trip and boy did we get one. I have more portfolio images from the rainy day than from all others, but I didn't need 1-2 inches of rain, just a mist or a sprinkle would have been just fine. I love the saturation that the rain provides. My gear selection for rain prevention included garbage bags and umbrellas. Many other photographers recommend the garbage bag option as a way to demonstrate frugality. I have now yielded to the more elegant option for rain protection which includes a Kata E-702 camera rain cover from Amazon. I received the unit a few days ago and while I haven't had it out in the elements, it appears to be just what I need. It can cover my 5DMKII with the 24-105 zoom and even the 70-200 f2.8 IS zoom. You can find more information at Amazon or by Googling Kata. This will now be a permanent part of my supplemental bag for those rainy/snowy days. Can't wait to use it on our return Smoky's trip in April!

Sunday, November 1, 2009

What a treat!

I don't know why I took so long to take a photographic visit to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I can tell you that it won't take me long to visit the park again. I returned this past Thursday from 5 wonderful days of landscape photography in the park. The visit exceeded my expectations. There were many wonderful moments of exciting photography from changing lighting conditions, dramatic sunrises, wonderful streams, perfect fall leaves, and wildlife including elk and bear. I love the western U.S. locations, but GSMNP is second to none of these locations and I plan on it becoming a frequent location for me in the future. I have just completed my first work through on the images in Adobe Light Room. I will keep you updated on the progress of the images. My plan is to publish a PDF portfolio of the images within the next few months. Plans are underway for a spring visit in late April 2010.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Smoky Mountains Here I Come

Tomorrow morning I will be heading to the Smoky Mountains for 5 days of landscape photography. My trip will be based out of Cherokee and I hope to capture some of the wonderful beauty of the area at this gorgeous time of year. Many things are in the works behind the scenes; astrophotography work continues with a new portfolio and entirely new presentation evolving both in digital as well as printed formats. I am very excited about these presentations, but they are going to take a while to complete. I may produce a smaller portfolio with the same formats from the Smoky Mountains if the work merits such a presentation. I hope all is well and please drop me a line. See you next week.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Hello again!

My apologies for being absent. The past few weeks I have been training for a Multiple Sclerosis Bike Ride. Yes, I was new to biking as well, so it was a lot of effort to get ready for the 150 mile ride over two days. The ride went very well and I am getting very comfortable on the bike now. I am even a few pounds lighter now! There is a lot going on right now with photography and I will provide updates over the next few posts. Both astrophotography and landscape photography efforts are under way. I am also learning some new ways of presenting images and will be sharing my experiences here on the blog on that as well. So just wanted to touch base again and wish you well. See you soon with more info. Take care.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Leaves


Experimenting with interpretation is one of the most enjoyable aspects of photography today. I must confess that I don't always know at the time of capture how I want the image to appear in the final state. Brookgreen Gardens stood out to me as a place of structure. The complex entanglement of the Oak trees, the beautiful sculpture work on display, and the lines and form of leaves and plants. This plant has a very green color to the leaves, but I found that too distracting from the original motivation for the image and that was the structure and lines. I didn't really envision a black and white presentation so I played around with some of the Light Room default color schemes. The one that represented my original vision most clearly was the "aged" scheme. The leaves really seem to respond to this color presentation. I apologize for not having comparison images, but I also believe they may be more distracting than educational. My main point is to experiment with all of the tools we have available today. Knowing what tools are available can only make one more proficient in the field knowing how to apply those tools to the interpretation at the moment of capture. I will continue to share with you more images from Brookgreen over the coming weeks. Take care.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Oak Tree-Revisiting the image


While I enjoyed the "unreal" presentation of the original "Oak Tree Canopy", there were two items that continually gnawed at me. One was that the midtones were just too MIDTONED! So I applied another curve to the image to raise the mid and upper tones a bit on the scale. The second bother was that the image looked too "squatty." It simply looked compressed. So I elongated the image with the transform tool in PS and I like the aspect ratio much better now. Since I make no bones about manipulating images, this image is certainly no attempt at representing "reality." I will address the reality of photography off and on in this blog, but as you may have guessed, the camera is certainly not a truth-teller. I hope you enjoy the discussion of the revisit and have a great day.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Oak Tree Canopy - An Unreal Vision


In the field I try my best to just respond to interesting light that catches my eye. Sometimes it may be the brilliant color that is being revealed while at other times it may be textures and the play of the light on the subject. In this particular case, I believe it was both, but my first interpretation led to a black and white presentation and minimizing the impact of "color" in the image.

Technically, this is a bit different in that it is a vertical panorama of two images taken with the 90mm tilt/shift lens on the Canon 5D MarkII. The tilt/shift permits me to simply shift the lens from top to bottom to increase the field of view and minimize field distortions as a result of changing the angle of the camera. This was also my first real outing with the 5DMKII and I must say it performed very well.

I do encourage you to click on the image to see a larger presentation. Viewing the image on a full screen, it certainly strikes me as something "unreal", but yet this interpretation does exactly what I want it to do in presenting the texture of the complex canopy of branches and hanging moss with the dappled light of mid-morning. To contrast this presentation, I hope to soon be posting a color interpretation so that we can perhaps compare the "real" and "unreal" interpretations afforded by the same image.

I do love the old oaks of the south with their hanging moss scattering light amongst their branches. To me the oaks really shine with the sun providing a mostly backlit situation, which can be technically challenging from a dynamic range standpoint. There are other images still "stewing" in the Light Room "pot" so please check back for more presentations and interpretations and a discussion of the approaches to each individual image.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

"Slow music for fast times" - Highly Recommended

I have been a fan of Hearts of Space for a number of years, when you actually listened to the radio on a RADIO. For the past couple of years I have been a subscriber to the HOS streaming music option on their website which is linked in the title above. The music featured on the program is exactly as their tag-line indicates "slow music for fast times." The Hearts of Space programs provide a very inspirational soundtrack for me when I am at the computer working on images in Light Room and Photoshop. I don't know what I would do without it as each show is fresh and unique. The streaming option provides a depth of music that would be unachievable through a personal music library. The newest episode is of particular interest to photographers as it features selections from the soundtrack for Ansel Adams biography film. I highly recommend the Hearts of Space streaming option as it has provided me countless hours of beautiful music to enhance my digital darkroom experience. Take care and please check it out if you get a chance.

Friday, July 3, 2009

I love photography!

Winding down vacation and all I can say is that I waited way too long to get the camera out and go photographing. I did finally spend some time the last two days photographing at Brookgreen Gardens and in the morning surf at the beach. It has been far too long since I engaged in some landscape photography. Man did I have fun! Simply being in the moment, exploring beautiful Brookgreen Gardens and looking for compositions...it was marvelous. The thrill of the hunt, looking for that great moment of wonderful light and composition, and I think I may have found a couple of images to share with you. I can't wait to get home and work on some of the compositions in the digital darkroom. But even if I hadn't found a single composition, it was an amazing experience to simply be on the hunt again. Brookgreen is an amazing combination of gardens and sculpture. Being in the midst of wonderful fine art created even more momentum for my photographic pursuits.

I am trying to balance astrophotography and landscape photography and it may prove to be too challenging. But I am going to really take a stab at achieving the balance since I enjoy both so much and I believe the pursuit of one helps the artistic expression of the other. If it has been a while since you went out on the hunt for a great photograph, I encourage you to grab the camera and isolate yourself from the cares of the world and begin to look for those great moments of light and composition. I really hope to return to this area and explore Brookgreen more extensively. Stay tuned for images and more information and Happy Independence Day!!!

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Recommended-Brooks Jensen Podcasts

On vacation in Myrtle Beach with golfing, beach, and photography. My photography location will be Brookgreen Gardens just south of Murrell's Inlet. I hope to visit there tomorrow. But I had a chance to catch up on my favorite podcast from Brooks Jensen and I wanted to invite you to visit his podcasts as well. Brooks provides valuable insight into photography today from all angles including technical advancements and artistic presentations. I always glean something of value from his podcasts and if you are a student of photography like me, I think you will, too. Please follow the link above for his website and links to his podcasts.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

First light...sorta

Last night was my first night to setup the Mach1 and Tak FSQ 85 for an imaging run. The clear sky clock looked wonderful and the skies were pristine during the evening. I setup in the backyard since I was hoping to have two straight nights of imaging and wanted to work out the kinks in the new gear. Setup went very smoothly and the equipment worked flawlessly. Unfortunately, a persistent puffy partly cloudy sky never relinquished. So no images were taken, but the gear checked out nicely. I was able to do a lot; monitored the drives performance via the autoguider, perform calibration for autoguiding, refined technique for using the laptop for focus with and without an h-alpha filter in place in the camera, and tested all of the new USB cords and hubs in use. So it was a successful night and I am ready to tonight! Clear skies!

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Horsehead: A refinement in processing




With some time to process, I have dug into the Horsehead and astronomical workflow to find the best approach. My main efforts are built around noise reduction and determining at what point to apply noise reduction software. The choices are to apply in RAW conversion in LR or to wait and use a PS plugin or 3rd party independent software. I have previously used Noise Ninja after the image is nearly complete, but was recently introduced to Noiseware. I am using the Pro version of Noiseware as a PS plugin. The main advantage to Noiseware is that I can use it in my normal workflow within PS and can use color profiles effectively. Noise Ninja did not work well with color profiles as an independent app. Noiseware has numerous controls, too numerous to mention here, for controlling how and where the noise reduction is to be applied. My thoughts are that it might be best to add some noise reduction in the RAW file in LR and then utilize Noiseware late in the processing stage. This particular image had no noise reduction applied in LR. I am going to rework the Horsehead image with that approach and will report back with results. One thing I love about astronomical photographs is that they are so difficult to work with that it makes landscape optimization so much easier. Take care and check out Noiseware if you get a chance on some really noisy images.

One other change in workflow with this image involved applying a flat field from the RAW camera files to the image in PS. This worked very well and is now a part of my workflow. I found no advantage to applying dark frames to the image. I believe dark frames are largely a waste with the Canon 450D and that simply increasing the amount of signal is the best way to maximize the signal to noise ratio.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Apple's other update


While all iPhone uses were upgrading to 3.0, and it is a nice upgrade, Apple also made some very nice enhancements to their Safari web browser. I hadn't really seen anything about this upgrade and was pleasantly surprised to see some new features. Two new features that I love are tied to the "new tab" request. Upon forming a new tab the surfer is presented with a screen of previously visited top websites by you in a portfolio presentation of images. I love this and it makes browsing my favorite sites even easier than pulling down a bookmark. In addition, the user can browse or search for previously searched webpages. This webpage looks just like the iTunes page of album art search for movies or music. These two features have not only made Safari my preferred browser on the MAC, but I have now upgraded to the Safari 4.0 on my Windows machines and I love it. Check it out if you haven't already, especially if you are a tab browser.

A bit of an update: There is a "Top Sites" icon at the top left of the browser that pops up the top 12 sites you visit. This actually may replace tabbed browsing. Finally, Apple has applied their creativity and genius in user interface to the web browser!!!

Monday, June 15, 2009

Cinderella's Ice Castle


In the fall of 2008 our family visited Disney World for my son's senior high school trip. For a camera, we had my wife's convenient Canon 400D. The stock 18-55mm lens was on the camera which limited compositions as well as perspective control options. Long telephoto lenses can help minimize distortions when photographing from a distance. The ice decorations on the castle were quite stunning and so I worked on a couple of different compositions, mainly for practice, as I knew there would be some different techniques involved. On this particular image, I combined 4 frames vertically in Photoshop to give extra image area so that I could then perform a perspective correction. This composition poses several challenges including a huge dynamic range, hand-held image capture at ISO 1600 and 1/8 of a second, large crowds of people, and a tired tourist at the shutter. So this is the final presentation after RAW conversion in LR, vertical stitching and perspective control in PS3. I hope you enjoy the image and I encourage you to visit Disney World during the holiday season for some special treats like Cinderalla's Ice Castle.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Comet Lulin video


Comet Lulin graced North American skies in the winter of 2009. Fortunately, the closest approach was during the Winter Star Party in February. Comet Lulin proved to be much more interesting than I had previously been inclined to believe. The comet brightened dramatically over the week of February 24 and sported a beautiful ion blue tail. I slewed to the comet with the scope and began my initial exposures and was surprised by the views on the LCD screen. The blue ion tail was crumpled and extending away from the comet nucleus in a beautiful fashion. So this object became the main target object during the 2-4 a.m. imaging window on most nights.

This video is a time-lapse sequence of 9 3.5 minute exposures taken on February 21, 2009 from the Winter Star Party in the Florida Keys. Each image was optimized in Adobe Light Room and the video was compiled with Windows Movie Maker. The video loops several times so that the viewer can pick up the subtle changes in the blue ion tail. Geostationary satellites are common in this area of sky and pass through the field as through they were moving airplanes, but in fact it is the telescope and camera moving to compensate for the Earth's rotation.

You can download a wmv file from my Vimeo site which is a much larger and higher quality presentation.

Comet Lulin


Comet Lulin graced North American skies in the winter of 2009. Fortunately, the closest approach was during the Winter Star Party in February. Comet Lulin proved to be much more interesting than I had previously been inclined to believe. The comet brightened dramatically over the week of February 24 and sported a beautiful ion blue tail. I slewed to the comet with the scope and began my initial exposures and was surprised by the views on the LCD screen. The blue ion tail was crumpled and extending away from the comet nucleus in a beautiful fashion. So this object became the main target object during the 2-4 a.m. imaging window on most nights. More information on the comet can be found by clicking on the title of the blog at NASA's website. You may also click on the image for a larger presentation.

This particular image was taken during the 2 a.m. hour of February 21, 2009. It is a composite of 9 exposures of 3.5 minutes each at ISO 1600 on the Canon 450D through the TMB 92SS refractor. Comet imaging poses additional challenges when the comet is fast moving such as Comet Lulin. The imager must combine several short exposures for the background sky as well as for the comet. So two iterations of stacking are needed since the comet is moving relative to the fixed star field. This is quite challenging in processing, but we do have techniques that allow us to accomplish this with nice results.

All of the processing was accomplished with Adobe Light Room 2.0 and PS3 with some Noise Ninja for noise reduction. Images were aligned and stacked with Images Plus. A Sigma median combine was used on the comet nucleus to achieve a reduction in star trails and isolate the comet nucleus and tail in the combination. The total exposure time is approximately 30 minutes. I am also going to present a movie which depicts the comet moving relative to the star field. I hope you enjoy the image and please check out the NASA link for more information on the comet.

Monday, June 1, 2009

What size should web image be?

With the introduction of the "netbooks" and smart phones, I was curious to revisit the most common screen resolutions currently being recorded by web browsers and those data mining groups that do such things. One report I found lists 36% of surfers are using 1024x768 in January 2009, down a bit from 2008. Where is the move? To higher resolutions. The report only lists resolutions higher than 1024x768 and that percentage is 57%. But are we possibly seeing a move back to smaller screens? Do the data mining groups account for web browsing on smart phones? I know that I look at images on an iPhone, Macbook Pro, and a 24" Apple Cinema display. I have looked at the netbooks and can't say that they catch my fancy at the present time. A quick look at one of the HP netbooks (N270) shows it sporting a 1024x576 screen resolution. Will netbooks find a strong foothold in the marketplace? Another consideration for how large of an image to post to the web is how much of an image do you want your audience to view. I personally always want the entire image showing with no zoom effect. Why? I take great care on the entire composition of the image and want the image always viewed in its entirety. To me, posting a larger than 1024 image on the web would be like Ansel Adams only allowing you to view one of his prints from a distance of 6" away. There is a proper viewing distance for all images and one should consider that even for web presentations. Now I do understand that some browsers can re-size the image to fit the window, but I really don't want to rely on that effect 100% of the time. So at the present time I have chosen to post images with a long side of 1000 pixels with some modifications for portrait orientation. To me that hits the sweet spot of fitting nearly every screen resolution out there (93%)and presenting the image in its entirety to the viewer. So that is my take on proper image size in June 2009. I hope to revisit the issue as time passes to see where screen resolutions may go into the future.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

An Orion experiment


Now this is simply crazy. I had some Orion Nebula data from WSP that I basically captured on a whim. So in reviewing the data in Light Room I wanted to see just what the new techniques could bring out of this data. Let me state up front that this is simply not enough data to get what I eventually want out of this image. But, it is a great exercise in seeing exactly what the technique can do with very limited amounts of data. I selected 11 of the best frames captured on the Canon 450D and TMB 92SS combination. I optimized each image in LR 2.2 and exported to tiff. I used Images Plus and Sigma clip for the alignment and combination and then processed as normal in PS3. Now one other major error on my part, not that the clouds at WSP had anything to do with it, was that I failed to capture shorter exposures to compensate for the over-exposed core of M42. So I did plug in some old data from other instruments for the core of M42 in this image. There is a fair amount of noise reduction via Noise Ninja applied to the shadow areas. So for only 40 minutes of data with a lowly DSLR, I am very happy with the potential to really capture the Orion Nebula area as I hope next year. My expectations are that two hours of data at ISO 800 will be wonderful data to work with and accomplish my imaging goals. Please drop me a line if you have any questions or comments and I hope you enjoy the image.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Rosette Nebula from Winter Star Party


The Rosette Nebula (please click on image for larger presentation) is approximately 5500 light years from Earth and spans over 1 degree in the sky which is more than 5 full moons. The nebula itself has different NGC designations including 2223, 2238, 2239, and 2246. The open star cluster in the middle of the nebula is designated as NGC 2244. The nebula is located in the constellation Monoceros.

This image is another in my continuing experimentation with using Adobe Light Room and Photoshop exclusively in post-processing. I actually selected only 11 of the best images I had for this object taken during the Winter Star Party in February 2009. The 11 images were each 3.5 minutes in exposure at ISO 1600 for a total exposure time of 40 minutes. ISO 1600 was used as a compromise to maximize exposure time due to the sporadic cloudiness that was present. The telescope used was a Tom Back 92mm signature series refractor at approximately f4 and a focal length of about 400mm. The camera used was a modified Canon 450D. So far, I am very happy with the results of the Adobe processing work flow. The only question that I have is how well with this process work on hydrogen alpha images. I hope to do some experimentation with this in the coming weeks. I hope you enjoy the image and please drop me a line if you get a chance.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Yes, Canon to offer video firmware upgrade

I purchased the Canon 5D MarkII about one month ago. My primary purpose was to use it in my landscape photography, but I was really drawn to the HD video capability. The one downside to the camera was the lack of manual control in video mode. The user was limited to simply letting the camera do everything automatically in video mode. Today Canon announced the availability in early June of a new firmware upgrade that will now make available to the user manual controls in video mode. The user will have control over aperture, ISO, and shutter speed. This is a tremendous announcement and I am very excited about this new opportunity with the camera. Please stay tuned for further developments and reports on the camera and video opportunities it presents.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Kirk Rogers featured on Maine TV show

Please take a moment to visit my good friend and wonderful photographer Kirk Rogers' website for a video clip that presents Kirk's astrophotography to the viewers in Maine, U.S.A. The clip is approximately 5 minutes long and shows Kirk's equipment, images, and the observatory of Rob Burgess where Kirk's gear is housed. Congratulations to Kirk on the feature and I hope you enjoy the show.

Bill Green's Maine featuring the Astrophotography of Kirk Rogers

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

The only mount I will ever need



You may never have heard of the Astro-Physics Mach1 GTO mount before, but it is a beautiful piece of equipment that should prove to be the only mount I will ever need. I have had experience with numerous astrophotography mounts over the years including the Losmandy GM8, G11, and Titan as well as the Astro-Physics 600E QMD, 600E GTO, 900 GTO, and 1200 GTO. The Mach1 offers the astro-imager the most rigid and stable mount in a very portable package. The mount is capable of being used in a fixed location observatory or as a portable mount for remote high mountain imaging from the darkest skies possible.

Any mount this size eventually has a limitation as to how big of a scope it can carry. But my astro-imaging compositions require relatively small instruments and I don't believe my scope requirements will ever outgrow the capabilities of the Mach1.

I just received the mount last week and have begun familiarizing myself with the functions and performance. My plan is to image with it next new moon and I hope to have results for you a few days after that.

So until then...clear skies to you all and may you have wonderful photographic opportunities.

A Night at the Winter Star Party

While at the Winter Star Party in February, I imaged with multiple cameras through the night. The primary camera was on the telescope with a secondary wide angle camera on the G11 mount and a third camera for night landscape from a tripod. One of the techniques I wanted to experiment with was a time-lapse of our imaging area with a star field for the entire night. My first results of this can be found on my Vimeo page linked below. A higher quality video is available for download from the Vimeo webpage for Vimeo members. Registration is simple and takes only a few seconds.

I really hope to explore this technique more fully over the coming months and to incorporate the results in a more comprehensive artistic output. I hope you enjoy the video and there is more information on the Vimeo webpage. I am also experimenting with the video capabilities of the 5D Mark II and will update the blog with results from that soon. Thanks and take care...

A Night at the Winter Star Party 2009

Friday, May 1, 2009

The Globular Cluster of Stars


What contains over 5 million solar masses, has about the same mass of the smallest whole galaxies, and is the second brightest globular cluster in the local group of galaxies? The globular cluster known as Omega Centauri or NGC 5139 is the answer. This image was captured along the beaches of the Florida Keys during the Winter Star Party in February. (Please click on the image for a larger presentation.)

The image was taken with a relatively short focal length telescope at 400mm. This view is very close to approximating the view through a nice pair of astronomical binoculars. That is my favorite way to view this object as the sparkling cluster shimmers against a backdrop of dark space. For more information on the object please see
http://messier.obspm.fr/xtra/ngc/n5139.html.

The image information is: captured with a modified Canon 450D, 11 frames of 3.5 minutes each at ISO 1600 on a TMB 92mm telescope at f5. The mount used was an Astro-Physics 400GOTO. All processing in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. Please contact me if you have any further questions and I hope you enjoy the image.

If you are ever at a southern location in northern hemisphere winter, please do yourself a favor and gaze through a pair of binoculars at this heavenly site.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Horsehead Nebula from Winter Star Party 2009



Hello again,
I have completely changed the way I am processing astrophotos. I am no longer utilizing frame calibrations such as dark frame subtraction, flat fields, and bias frame subtraction. The reason? I felt that the images were pretty clean to begin with and that the camera manufacturers and Adobe LightRoom had better RAW image processing algorithms than any independent software manufacturer. I also know Adobe Light Room and Photoshop intimately and I am in control of the entire image processing chain at every step. So my first effort with this new approach is the Horsehead Nebula region in Orion taken at the Winter Star Party in February 2009 (please click on the image for a larger version.} The image is a composite of 5 frames at ISO 800 and 15 frames at ISO 1600 at 7 minutes and 3.5 minutes, respectively. The scope used was a Tom Back 92mm at approximately 400mm focal length and f5. The camera is a modified Canon 450D. I hope you enjoy the image. I will be posting more on my new processing as I work through other images from the trip. Take care and drop me a line.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Hello Again!


Hello to all and I hope you have had a wonderful winter and spring. I just wanted to touch base with you and let you know that I am producing new work and will be presenting work in many different formats. For instance, you can now join me on Facebook to see what's new. Now Facebook will include a mix of personal and business, but it is a great place to interact and a great way to stay in touch. Please join me on Facebook today.

Jeff's Facebook Profile

P.S. I hope to begin sharing with you new ideas and resources on producing multimedia content featuring HD video. Please stay tuned and drop me a note.