Dunno what settings went wrong? ? ?

Iancar29

OK so my friend was in Longford during the week with her new Nikon D3100 , she was asking me about best settings for sunsets and night sky shots... so she got great sunset ones yes but for some reason the settings for the night sky wasnt showing up anything at all really bar some of the brightest stars?... i was the one who told her to take sky shots as the milky way would be visible from the middle of no where...

I got her to do the following,

Lowest f stop , iso 1600-3200 , exposure 30 seconds, tripod.

and ye.... nothing? ... heres her exif data from the shot that i asked her to put up . http://www.flickr.com/photos/pandakacks/7976233990/meta/in/photostream


Now .. comparing that to another D3100 shot of the night sky and the milky way is visible?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12682473@N02/6965491943/meta/

So like its not the camera sensor... the lens is ok.. 18mm F3.5

What went wrong ???? Even in photoshop i could bearly bring out anything for her with the shots in Raw...

any help much appreciated folks !

Gregor Samsa

The link to her Flickr image isn't working. Could you ask her to post it up again so we can see the image and the Exif?

Iancar29

Ah sorry about that she took it down after i looked at it... here it is again.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pandakacks/7977501845/in/photostream/

Heres a screen snap

Gregor Samsa

30", f3.5, ISO1600, 18mm on any camera should be showing a lot more than a black frame under any circumstances where there's even a little bit of light. A clear night should show plenty of stars.

I've tried a few scenarios myself there with my A77 and those same settings, both outside (although it's too cloudy for stars) and inside with all the lights off, and the only time I get a black frame is if I leave the lens cap on.

I feel bad suggesting it, but any chance it was left on? (It's happened to us all )

Edit: You say in your OP that she did get some of the brightest stars (which would rule out the lens cap), but I'm not even seeing those in the pic posted above. There appears to be nothing in it at all. Are there other photos that show the couple of bright stars that she could post?

Iancar29

I know ye, thats what shocked me the most, like if anything i was expecting to see at least a sky and a good few stars!

Hahaha , ah no it was certainly off, of 6 images i looked at on photoshop in RAW they all had at least one star in them... that one has a few actually , you need to view the large format one to see them.

If your interested i could forward you one of the RAW files to ur email ?

Its just very odd ... would it be a problem with the lens perhaps?

inkedpt

Exposure compensation... your friend could at some stage before this night shoot change the settings of the Exp Comp to a lower value and because of that you can only almost see the brightest ones

Gregor Samsa

Years ago my Dad, who was a fairly experienced photographer, took a whole roll of film at one of my school concerts with the lens cap on. So I always keep that in mind in situations like this

I'm reading his on an iPad, which might account for me not seeing any stars - small screen and all.

I'll PM you my email address, and you can try sending me the RAW file, but it might be too big. If it comes through, I'll take a look at it it tomorrow.

Gregor Samsa

Ok, on my PC, I can see a few stars. By bending the heck out of the curves in Photoshop I can see a few more. So we have an exposure of the night sky.

I don't think Exposure Compensation is the issue. It merely adjusts the exposure *indicated* by the camera's exposure meter, as opposed to the exposure capability of the camera itself. We know the exposure settings used, and we know that similar settings on a different camera will provide very different results. f3.5, ISO 1600, 30", 18mm is what it is regardless of Exposure Compensation. anyway, exposure bias is shown as 0 EV in the Exif data. And the camera seems to be in manual exposure mode.

I wonder could noise reduction be a factor? I've heard some Nikon cameras, with noise reduction turned on, referred to as "star eaters" in astrophotography circles: the claim being that aggressive noise reduction (even on RAW files) mistakes some stars for noise pixels and removes them. But I thought this was limited to fainter stars or fine detail, not 99.9% of the visible universe! But it might be worth seeing if noise reduction can be turned off on the camera (or try the solution mentioned in the article linked to above), and trying again.

Iancar29

Ah ye noise reduction could be something! I remember on setting up my D7000 all the landscape blogs said to turn it off. Ill tell her to do that and try again tonight

Kenny Logins

Even with the cap on I'd expect to see some noise... Looks like the camera cleaned it all up.

dave66

I have found that occassionally on my Sony A550, when I format a memory card, the first shot I take after the format I end up with a "blank" pure black image. So now, I will format and immediately shoot of a shot of anything so that if the blank image happens I have it out of the way.

andala

I have a D3100 so I wanted to see what I'd get with the same settings. The photo looks terrible, but it definitely isn't black. Have a look



I hardly ever use the kit lens so they're not very clean


Sorry, the hosting site cut out exif data, here's a link to flickr