"Play Misty For Me" by Steve Rengers

"Play Misty For Me" - Moonstone Beach - Cambria California ~ © Steve Rengers (click to enlarge)

Steve Rengers took our Photo of the Day at about 90 minutes before sunrise with his Nikon D800, using a Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 prime lens. His exposure was for 10 seconds at f/3.2, ISO 1600, in full manual mode. He also added foreground lighting with an off-camera Nikon SB600 speed light, fired by hand from approximately six feet away from the camera position, with the strobe on the lowest power setting.

Challenges: Steve often asks himself, "Why is it that the best composition always dictates that your tripod will be placed in the most precarious spot possible?" Despite having the waves splashing up over the rocks, and creating a salt mist that required a lens cleaning every 30 seconds, this is the type of challenge Steve loves! He often finds he needs to reorder his priorities so as to not let complicated situations get the best of him.

"It helps to know what you want to achieve from an image and use that as a starting point," says Steve. Getting the desired water movement became the biggest challenge, and a 10-second exposure turned out to be the ticket. From there he went down a stop to improve the sharpness. Then it was just a matter of ratcheting down the ISO until the histogram was in the sweet spot.

Adding the light painting presented the next challenge. Once the shutter was activated (using a shutter delay), Steve would raced off to get a position for his speed light. He had ten seconds to jump a dozen or so slippery rocks in hopes of landing in a suitable spot to fire his speed light manually. "This process went on a while and after 20 or so attempts I finally got the correct lighting in conjunction with the correct water motion."

Equipment and Priorities: Steve went through the lens buying and hardware acquisition phase, blaming that for his shortcomings. After a few years, it started to become apparent to him that composition and understanding light was most important. He sold a dozen lenses and settled on three that he uses for all his landscape work. Those are the Nikkor AF 17-35mm f/2.8, a 14mm f/2.8 manual prime (Rokinon) and a Nikkor AF 50mm f/1.4. A headlamp to keep his hands free at night, and a sturdy tripod that spiders out close to the ground, with nice rubber feet to keep it firmly planted, rounds out his collection.

Steve currently lives in Bakersfield, California. He started his photographic ventures long ago, during the age of film. "I firmly and happily embraced the digital era, with its instant satisfaction advantages, coupled with the ability to see what you are doing wrong on the fly and make the needed corrections before you leave the field."

Passion for the night: One successful night shoot at the Trona Pinnacles, in the Mojave desert, on a perfect night, was all it took for Steve to become hooked on night photography; and that is what drives his passion today. He often finds himself alone in the dark. His friends call him "weird" because of his passion for night photography, and more so for staying up all night waiting for these precious moments to materialize. "I get a huge amount of self-satisfaction from shooting at night, because whenever I find myself alone at 2:00 am, staring up a blanket of stars, I know I am capturing something uncommon; and to me, everything looks so much better at night."

"Pinnacle Party" - Trona Pinnacles, Mojave Desert ~ © Steve Rengers (click to enlarge)

More of Steve Rengers' images can be seen on his website.

Royce's 2014 Workshop, Lecture & Video Conference Schedule: NightScapeEvents.com
   -  25% OFF savings on select "IMAGE10" workshops booked before April 1, 2014  -

Foreground is Everything

"Who Needs TV?" ~ © Michael Shainblum (click image for EXIF info)

In good Milky Way landscape photography, the right foreground makes the shot. It determines whether the photo is truly memorable, or just another another pretty night sky photo.

A pretty starry night sky is not enough: When I take my workshop attendees on their first attempt to photograph the starry night sky, they are blown away with what they can see on their LCD monitors. However, by the second night they begin to expect much more from their instructor and themselves. Even a beautiful capture of the Milky Way with a simple silhouette of the horizon line is not enough. They soon realize that it is the relationship with the foreground and the sky that really makes the shot. It is what they choose to put in that foreground, where they place it in relation to the sky, and more often than not, how they choose to light that foreground that determines how successful that photo will be in satisfying themselves and their viewers.

Photo of the Week (POTW): Michael Shainblum was able to bring all those elements together in this unique perspective that speaks volumes. Concerning this photo, he said, "Who honestly needs to watch trashy television programs or garbage commercials and advertisements, when right out our doorsteps are some of the most incredible viewing experiences…"

An interview with Michael and a time-lapse video of his home town, San Diego, was recently featured on the Roger Hedgecock Show. He is is currently pursuing a degree at Brooks Insitute of Photography in Santa Barbara. More of Michael Shainblum's photography can be seen on his website.

Night Focusing the Rokinon 14mm Lens

MilkyWay over String Lake, taken with the Rokinon 14mm lens ~ © Royce Bair

Many have purchased the Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 lens for starry night photography, at my recommendation, and then have written to me about their difficultly in focusing this lens for night photography.

Focus Frustrations and Fix: I must admit, that the first time I tried to focus this manual lens I was a bit bewildered. It seemed to stay in focus no matter what I did! This is due to the incredible depth of field of this 114º angle lens, even wide open. After considerable tests in the daylight and field testing at night, I can make the following recommendations: Don't focus on the infinity mark (some are even confused as to what position the infinity mark is located on the lens barrel).

Left: This is NOT the infinity position. Right: This is the infinity position.
HOWEVER, I recommend the following focus position below:

This is the focus position I recommend when shooting 'NightScapes':
Shoot at f/2.8, and set your focus halfway between the 10-feet mark and the infinity mark.

Hyperfocal Distance correction: Some hyperfocal charts will recommend focusing on 7-feet (actually, 7.62 feet—saying that everything from 3.81 feet to infinity will now be in focus). I find that I get better infinity sharpness at my focus position, and I still get good depth of field in to about 10 feet. I think this is because most hyperfocal DOF charts are based on the sharpness quality of an 8x10 inch print, whereas I want 16x20 and even 30x40 quality. (Quoting the Cambridge in Colour website about hyperfocal distances: "... it's often helpful to use a more rigorous requirement for 'acceptably sharp,' or to focus slightly further and improve background sharpness.")

Best Ultra-Wide Lenses for Starry Night Photography: The Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 lens has incredible coma correction and quality for a lens of it's price (about $350). It surpasses the coma aberration correction (even wide open) of most lenses in its ultra wide-angle category. I find it has about 1.5 stops of light fall-off in the corners (vignetting), which is easily corrected in the Adobe Raw Converter (via Photoshop or Lightroom). It is also a little soft in the edges, unless you stop down to about f5.6 or smaller; however, I don't recommend doing that if you're using the lens for high-ISO night photography—just keep this lens wide open, and place important areas away from the edges or corners of your composition. When doing daylight landscape photography, I found this lens performed optimally at f/11, with the focus set at 7-feet (f/16 was also very good, but at f/22, I began to notice a little bit of diffraction).  If you're a Nikon user (and can afford to shell out about $2,000), the only other lens I'd recommend in this category is the Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. This lens is well-corrected in every area, and is sharper than most prime lenses. It is a little sharper than the Rokinon, especially in the corners. Some Canon users like it so much, they even have the Nikon mount adapted to fit their EOS bodies!

Full-resolution crop of the top photo. Enlarge or download this image to see for yourself the quality of the
Rokinon 14mm when used wide open at f/2.8—just keep in mind that you're also seeing the coarseness of an
ISO 6400 image that has had some noise reduction in the ARC software (which tends to soften shadow detail).

Milky Way from the bottom of the Grand Canyon

Milky Way above the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon ~ © Royce Bair

Because the Grand Canyon walls are so high and narrow, there is only about a one-hour window where the bulge of the Milky Way can be seen during the night. This photo was taken two weeks ago, at about 4:30 in the morning. The stars were starting to fade from view, because it was only about 90 minutes from sunrise. A few minutes later, and I would not have been able to capture this scene. I used the Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 lens on my Canon 5D Mark III because of it's ultra wide 114º angle of view, with minimal barrel distortion. This lens is well-corrected for coma aberration, so it is perfect for star photography (not to mention its under $400 price tag). The Mark III gives me one to two stops less noise than my older Mark II at the high ISO's needed for a "nightscape" like this (ISO 5000 • f/2.8 • 30 seconds).

In order to show the walls of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River by starlight, it is necessary to produced a second exposure (4X or 120 seconds) and combine it with the sky exposure.

Here's a panorama of my camera position, taken with my iPhone 4s, two hours later.

Sand in sleeping bag from night storm

Photographing the Milky Way from the bottom of the Grand Canyon was a dream fulfilled when Western River Expeditions asked me to photograph one of their 7-day trips down the Grand Canyon. Preparing for this trip took considerable planning since all equipment had to be protected from the sand and water using small plastic bags, dry bags, and Pelican cases. (Changing lenses during a sand storm is NOT a good idea.) All my batteries had to be recharged several times, so a portable power station had to be devised. Here is some of the key equipment I took on this trip.