Exploring Night Sky » Nightscapes

Apr 16

by Amit Kamble in Astrophotography, Deep Sky, Nightscapes, Tutorial 6 comments

Optolong light pollution filters

If you’ve read my other blog post about light pollution filters, you know I love them and they work really well especially with Deep sky images. Like all other products in the market, there are several brands that make the same product (similar), one of the companies that make these awesome light pollution filters is Optolong Recently, Optolong reached out to me and was asking about my experience with light pollution filters and they mentioned about one of their latest filters “L-Pro” filter, The description sounds good for the same, but you can’t tell unless you use it. I wasn’t in the market for new filters but asked them if they would like to send me their filters so I can test them out and yeah!!! they agreed and sent me 3 filters. CLS (City Light Suppression) UHC (Ultra High Contrast) L-Pro (L-Professional) CLS and UHC are really good for deep sky photography, as they provide less transmission of light pollutants and enhancing the contrast between the background sky and the nebula. CLS: Gives better results for objects that emit light in a broader spectrum, objects like reflection nebulae UHC: Gives better results for objects that emit light in a […]

Nov 26

by Amit Kamble in New Zealand, Nightscapes, Travel 0 comments tags: glow worms, mclaren falls park, new zealand, night, tauranga

Glow Worms – New Zealand

I’ve been attempting to shoot a proper timelapse video of the glowworms at McLaren Falls and every time I’ve been there to shoot, something went wrong, but I finally managed to get some decent footage over the weekend. I’ve fallen for this location ever since I first saw them, I’ve been there for hours staring and being fascinated by these little creatures of the dark. This time, I took my little chair, some food and drinks and just sat there as my camera did the painstaking task of shooting. It was funny when people walked around the tracks and looked at me as if I was some sort of lunatic, just lounging there with all the snacks. It’s a must visit place for locals and anyone visiting Tauranga. Would love to spend more time here and take a really long and awesome time-lapse in the future. Shot using Samyang 24mm f1.4, Canon 50mm f1.8 on Canon 6D and motion using SYRP Genie mini

May 29

by Amit Kamble in Astrophotography, Nightscapes, Tutorial 2 comments tags: Amit Kamble Photography, astrophotography, comparison, east cape lighthouse, Light Polluted Location, lighthouse, nightscape, Nightscapes, photoshop, processing

A 5sec Exposure – East Cape Lighthouse

Often when you talk about astrophotography, first things that come to mind are Long Exposure and High ISO. For most of the time this is true but then there are times when you cannot use both at the same time and sometimes you just have to stick to short exposure times. Sometimes, the images produced with a short exposure will not have much detail of the sky, but if you are a dark site, it is sufficient enough to capture those details. I recently visited East Cape lighthouse, which is the easternmost point of New Zealand to capture the milky way rising next to the lighthouse. This was my first time so I did not know what to expect. These beautiful beams going across the sky looked so beautiful and I wanted to capture them with the milky way rising. As usual, I set up my camera to a 20sec exposure, ISO 6400, f/2.8 and not to be surprised but the lighthouse was overexposed and I did not capture any of those beams. A bit disappointed, I tried again with slow exposure and got better. Then I thought, the reason I am not capturing the beams is because, when on […]

Apr 04

by Amit Kamble in Astrophotography, Nightscapes 0 comments tags: Amit Kamble Photography, astrophotography, comparison, milkyway, moon, nightscape, photoshop

Before and After moonset – Milkyway comparison

How much does the moon affect when capturing the night sky ? Here is a comparison of what the camera sees when the moon is out and when the moon has set. The night / morning i captured this image, It was Waxing Gibbous moon with 95% Illumination. Moonset was in an hour and that is when i started doing a timelapse to capture that smooth transition from bright to dark sky. The images i used in the comparison are straight out of camera (SOOC) without any editing. The botton one is the first frame and the top one is the last frame of the timelapse. Exif: 15sec, ISO 1600, f2.8 at 24mm on Canon 6D

Apr 02

by Amit Kamble in Astrophotography, Nightscapes 0 comments tags: Amit Kamble Photography, Fuel Agency, Nightscapes, Photo Essay, UNO. MAgazine

My first magazine feature – UNO. Magazine

It was such an honor when the editor at UNO. Magazine asked me if I would like a feature in the magazine. Who could say no to it. This was going to be first magazine feature and really did not know what to write about myself, struggled to start with and then went back and asked the editor for some tips. She suggested writing a photo essay and that’s when I decided to write a short essay on my 4 year journey into astrophotography. After sorting a lot of images and proofing the article, it was finally the time when the article went under the press. Freshly printed, i got to see the final result. Wow, what an amazing feeling it is when you see an article featured in the magazine. I am too happy to not boast about it and the hard work that UNO. and guys at Fuel Agency has done to bring the latest issue to your nearest table. Below is my article feature, feel free to share and don’t forget to checkout UNO. Magazine and Fuel Agency [pdfviewer width=”100%” height=”570px” beta=”true/false”]http://amitkamble.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Uno-Issue-32-2016_Amit-Photo-Essay-2.pdf[/pdfviewer]

Dec 01

by Amit Kamble in Astrophotography, Nightscapes 3 comments tags: astrophotography, lightroom, photoshop, processing

Processing Nightscapes

Processing nightscapes is a challenge that every nightscape photographer faces. Nightscape photographers spend hours under the dark sky capturing the beautiful night sky and spend more hours processing it. Unlike most landscape photos which are shot at faster shutter speeds and do not have noise and darker foregrounds, nightscape images are polluted with noise, dark foregrounds and so many other artifacts that are caused by long exposures. Recently, I attended an astrophotography camp organized by Horowhenua Astronomical Society with Jonathan Green as volunteers for AstroNZ, where i gave a presentation / talk on processing nightscapes. My talk included topics on: 1) Gear required 2) How to capture 3) Post processing in Lightroom and Photoshop. As, this talk was focused on nightscape processing, I also included panorama stitching and processing. Here is the presentation that was a part of my talk at the astrophotogtaphy astrophotography camp.