Thanks to my friend Marcus, i was able to shoot some nice pictures from the moon eclipse today in the morning. Additionally it was also a Blood Super Moon! This happens pretty rarely and the next time will be 2033.
Check it out!
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Category: LANDSCAPE
Clouds over Stuhleck – A HDR Time Lapse
Recently we were going to ski at Stuhleck in Austria. Or, better my girlfriend went skiing and I went to time lapse and HDR shots… I took three time lapses and some HDR shots. Two of the videos where really nice, the third went to crap because of two reasons. First, before setting up the camera to record I didn’t check about the memory card. I recorded my footage and went with the other camera around the mountain, after I cam back I noticed the memory were full. And second, I tried to photograph trough a hole in a tree, covered in snow, to have the sun moving on the sky. Nice idea but even with HDR everything was white and blur. Also the tree was moving a lot… Anyway here are the first two lapses in one Video.
For the HDR processing I used Luminance HDR 2.4.0 and, as usual, After Effects for processing the Video. I also tried to make some processing on two pictures for uploading to 500px but the rating was poor. A single picture I have to say looks boring but the moving clouds and light on the ground looks nice in the video.
Hyper Parliament- A Hyper Lapse of the Austrian Parliament
Yesterday I thought, enough with work, let’s go photographing! But the questions were: what? how? After a bit of sitting around I remembered the tutorial from gwegner.de (by the way, a really good site for tutorials and information) for hyper lapses. This video is in German, but here is also a nice one in English from digitalrev.com.
Basically, with every picture you move with the camera along an imaginary line and take a picture while aiming at the same spot on every picture. As described in the videos, you should use marks are already present, like stones on the ground or just use your step span. In any case this will produce a bit shaky footage, but this can be corrected in after effect. If you shoot in the night, and the are no clouds or stars visible, like in my video, the interval between the pictures is not important. But if you have something in the screen with a steady movement, like clouds, then use a intervalometer. In this video there is a very good description of that. Anyway, in my case i was just going a step forward, point, shoot, step forward, point, shoot…. 250 times. And done. The camera settings were 3.2 s exposure, f/4.5, ISO 100.
After that you have your footage, but this is really shaky. It is impossible to align the camera and the rest completely! But for this there is Adobe After Effects, if you have money, or Deshaker for Virtual Dub, if you don’t have money or just like Open-Source. In any case, the result looks really nice. In post processing I gave to the footage a little bit of a unnatural look, so it looks like rendered, but it is actually taken with a camera in 2 hours and another 2 hours for post processing.
In this video is also stated, that u don’t need fancy equipment like tripod, intervalometer and chalk marks on the ground for 1 km. It’s worth taking a look.
Karawanken Mountain Chain Time Lapse
After New Years Eve we got an invitation for a short ski holiday trip near Klagenfurt. I was able to shot some nice time lapses from the Karawanken mountains. The clouds coming Italy seem to fall like water over the mountains. Also i go a nice day to night transition withe the moon as light source on the mountains. The day to night transition was made with LRTimelape 3. For this tool are a lot of tutorials available and the free version is more or less full featured, except that the footage is restricted to 400 pictures.
Karawanken Mountain Chain Time Lapse von Thomas leber ist lizenziert unter einer Creative Commons Namensnennung 4.0 International Lizenz.
Beruht auf dem Werk unter https://www.jamendo.com/en/track/654856/sombre.
Vienna at Night
After I posted the Special Shot Section of Vienna at Night, here now the normal section for the Vienna at Night shots.
Vienna at Night – Special Shots.
During the last year I was able to take some shots of Vienna at night. A very nice spot is the Karlskirche. With my EOS 600D I took some shots at once, but I had the problem that I had no tripod. So I took some pictures with the hand and ISO 3200. But because of the APS-C, I had a lot of noise and used the stacking technique and stacked tree pictures into one. This technique is really nice for people that have a small sensor size and also want to have low noise pictures.
Karlskirche in Vienna. Taken with EOS 600D and ISO 3200 free hand
I also took some HDRs of the Karlskirche an tried different setting to the algorithm. I’m not really satisfied with the Adobe Photoshop algorithm. It looks somehow false and not nice. Next time I will evaluate the programs Photomatrix from HDRsoft and also the open source alternative Luminance HDR. I’m really looking forward to test both programs and their performance. Anyway, here are the results of Photoshop HDR after a really long time of trying. Most of the times I ended up with monochrome settings but this is also boring all the time.
The Karlskirche in Vienna. HDR Shot out of tree pictures with +- 2EV.
The Karlskirche in Vienna. HDR Shot out of tree pictures with +- 2EV.
I also made some HDR pictures of the Musikverein in Vienna. The main problem was that I had a bit of rain. This can be seen in the dark areas where the water drops form some halos.
Vienna Musikverein. Assembled out of three pictures with +-2EV.
I also really like long exposure photographs. They show you a surreal picture of the real world. Also they are easy to made. You just need a nice spot and a long exposure. The camera type, small sensor sizes and weak ISO performance doesn’t matter, as well as lenses with aperture numbers above the f/3. These pictures below are taken with a EOS 600D and the stock 18-55 mm IS II.
The picture below is stacked out of five pictures with ISO 100, f/22 and 10 s of exposure. The camera was the EOS 600D with the 18-55 mm IS II. I stacked the picture with Photoshop with the Bright Color mod for each layer.
Light Streaks in Vienna.
This picture is also stacked, but i used 40 pictures for stacking. The Camera settings were f/11, ISO 200 and 2.5 s exposure.
Highway A22 near Vienna.
The picture below is also stacked but for this I used the the Vivid Light settings. The camera settings were f/22, ISO 100 and 15 s of exposure.
Light Streaks in Vienna at Karlsplatz.
A normal long exposure is the picture below. This was taken with the EOS 6D and the Sigma 50 mm 1.4. I did not stack them, just used some Camera RAW Settings.
Long Exposure Capture at Liechtenwerderplatz in Vienna.
Also the following picture is not stacked, just reworked with some Camera RAW settings. This time also the camera was the EOS 6D and the Sigma 50 mm 1.4.
The Währinger Gürtel an Night.
Autumn
Today we went to Belvedere and the Botanic Garden in Vienna. Because of the massive amount of people, disturbing every picture, I concentrated on macros and some plants.
Vienna at Night Panorama
Today hat had a short trip to the Höhenstraße in Wien and had the chance to take this picture.
Vienna at Night from Kahlenberg
Vienna at Night from Kahlenberg
Vienna at Night from the DC Tower
This picture is taken from the DC Tower in Vienna and where made by stacking four different pictures to reduce noise.
Vienna at Night from Am Himmel
The picture above is taken from Am Himmel. It’s a bit shacked because even the tripod was moving in the Wind at this late December night in Vienna.
Vienna, in the Woods.
Wine growing on the Kahlenberg.
I had just a short trip to the woods in vienna. This time i had a standard Canon EF-S 50mm 1.8. A pretty nice lens and also cheap. If someone want to go the first steps with a fixed lens, i can recommend this lens.