Year: 2023
Sept 20 2023 Theme: Critters
The UCSD Photography Interest Group met via Zoom meeting Wednesday Sep 20 2023 at 2pm. The theme this month was “Animals/Insects/Birds/Wildlife/Pets/Critters”. Everyone shared several images that followed the theme – critters are a pretty popular photo subject. Photo sharing started around 2:15 and went till 4:10. Integrated into the photo sharing were discussions about the new Photoshop 2024 generative fill AI; Lightroom shadow & highlight masking; Topaz DeNoise & SharpenAI; cell phone macro photography. Here are the photos that were shared & discussed:
Astrophotography Gear & Software
Some members of the UCSD Photography Interest Group are interested in astrophotography. This can be a challenging genre to master. Here are some tools & information that may help photographers create better images of the night sky.
Night sky photography requires a fast lens to help keep the ISO & shutter speeds as low as possible. Star movement or streaking occurs if the shutter speed is too long for the focal length. One tool that helps with this is a star tracker. I use a MoveShootMove Star Tracker and it allows minutes-long exposures (I use 2mins, ISO 1600, f4) with no star movement when properly align with Polaris. This is a very compact, affordable, simple to setup and use rechargeable device you attach between your camera and tripod. There are several affordable star trackers but it’s also possible to layer multiple shorter exposures and composite a night sky image.
If you do not use a star tracker, then image stacking software can help improve the image quality by reducing the noise. Image stacking software can also improve star-tracked image quality even further. Programs like Sequator will overlay and align several images to improve the resolution & noise of the night sky & stars. But if there is a foreground subject, it will require a separate single exposure to merge with the Sequator starry sky image.
- Sequator for Windows PCs is a free program that’s fairly easy to use plus there are a variety of tutorials available online especially on YouTube.
- Starry Sky Stacker for MacOS is a buy-once app popular for Macs. Similar to Sequator, it will stack and auto-align multiple night sky images.
- StarStaX for Windows or MacOS is a free program for image stacking and blending primarily for Star Trail Photography.
- StarXterminator & NoiseXterminator are paid plugins for Photoshop or PixInsight from RC-Astro.com. They can improve your processing of Milky Way images by separating the stars & Milky Way into separate layers. See this tutorial for more info: https://ucsdphoto.group/2024/05/processing-starry-images/
- StarNet++ is a free executable that can remove stars from your astrophotography image. Like StarXterminator, it results in a starless 16bit tiff of the Milky Way. This allows the starless Milky Way tiff to be imported into Photoshop as a layer and processed independently from a stars layer.
- Siril – is a free, popular technical night sky image processing suite for Windows, Mac, & Linux. But it requires watching some YouTube tutorials to understand how to get the most out of this powerful, free program designed by astrophotographers. You can add StarNet++ star eliminator as a scripting option.
- Links & info to other programs like DeepSkyTracker can be found here: https://www.startools.org/links–tutorials/free-image-stacking-solutions
- Other information on how to set your digital camera for astrophotography can also be found online at links such as https://www.startools.org/links–tutorials or on YouTube.
Aug 16 2023 Theme: Black&White
This month’s UCSD Photography Interest Group’s photo theme is “Black&White”. Here are the photos sent by participants in August’s meeting. Note that any photographs that members want to share are welcome even if they do not fit the theme.
Cathy
Barbara
Jerry
Sharon
Gary
Jim
John
Mikky
Dealing w/ iPhone Photo Moire
Problem: iPhone camera photo moire – I was photographing the ‘Vegas-like’ riverside signage at Osaka’s Dotonburi and discovered a terrible moire pattern in the iconic Glico Runner sign (photo 1). My Olympus digital camera did not have this problem but I preferred the glassy reflections of my iPhone photos. My Olympus photos were long exposures so the reflections were muted.
Solution: iPhone Live Image Long Exposure – since I had iPhone live photo ON, I created a long exposure (photo 2). That eliminated the herringbone pattern but also muted the color reflection like my Olympus camera long exposures. I loaded the two iPhone photos – the moire image & the long exposure – as layers into Photoshop. After aligning the layers since the long exposure crops a bit. I masked the long exposure image completely, setting it as the foreground layer. Then I erased everything on the long exposure layer, revealing everything from the short exposure except the Glico sign. I exported this combined image as a jpg with non-moired sign and glassy river reflections (photo 3).
Perhaps, if I manually adjusted the shutter speed in the iPhone camera, the problem may have been avoided. But I did not notice the issue until the next day so this was the best solution.
Cell phone camera technology & AI are outpacing standard digital cameras by miles. But a digital camera in the hands of a competent photographer can still generate phenomenal photographs beyond the scope of a cell phone camera. At least for now in mid-2023 – think wildlife, birds, sports, and astro photography as examples. Still the adage ‘the best camera is the one you have at hand’ is true and that tends to be your cell phone camera. But even with the latest iPhone digital imaging technology, great weather-sealing, and manual camera apps, sometimes the cell phone camera falters.
