Ooops – wrong format – learn your Camera!

This last weekend I had a problem that I haven’t had for some time. I changed a setting on my camera without noticing it and ended up with less than optimum photographs.

View of Tucson from a viewpoint on lower Mt. Lemmon

I was up at the ski resort on Mt. Lemmon, just north of Tucson, Arizona. Who would think that there’s a ski resort there? But there is; located near the 9,159 foot summit, it claims to be the southernmost ski resort in the United States. And, there was some snow!

It was pretty chilly (by Phoenix standards anyway) with a gentle breeze. My Ford Explorer said about 37 degrees Fahrenheit. I got out of the car to reconnoiter the area for possible shots, taking my dog with me. I had him tucked inside my jacket and he was shivering. I found some shots I decided to take so I put him back in the car and grabbed the camera which was already mounted on the tripod after taking a few shots at a viewpoint on the way up the mountain.

I set up and took my first shots. I had my Nikkor 16-35mm f/4 wide angle lens mounted to my Nikon D610.

Looking at the histogram, I really wanted to move the curve to the right, brightening it up. I was using an f/9 aperature and didn’t really want to open it up any more in order to try to keep as much depth of field (DOF) as possible. And, I was already shooting at 30 seconds.

I decided to increase the ISO. I always have the camera at ISO 100 and thought I’d bump it up to 400. On the D610 you have to push a button on the back of the camera and change the main command dial.

I was working in the dark and didn’t have a flashlight with me. I thought I pushed the correct button but nothing happened when I changed the dial. So naturally I pushed other buttons and changed the dial, observing through the view finder any changes. I finally got the correct button and dial combination and bumped up the exposure. I liked what I was seeing on the histogram.

It wasn’t until the following day when I imported the images and started processing them that I found out I had changed the format to JPEB FINE / SMALL. When I saw that the images were JPEG and only 3,008 x 2,008 pixels in Adobe Lightroom, I knew immediately what I’d done and that the images were not going to be able to be adjusted as much as if they were RAW format.

I hopped up from my chair and verified the setting on the camera. I also verified my sinking feeling and disappointment. The camera was indeed set on JPEG FINE / SMALL. I switched my mode dial from my U2 setting and back again to reset everything.

I’ve learned that I need to keep my skills a bit more polished. I was pretty sure the ISO button was the bottom button on the left side of the back of the D610, and it is. I must have hit the button above it at first and then, in my confusion, just started hunting and pecking instead of taking the time to know for sure what I was adjusting.

Looking north from Ski Valley on Mt. Lemmon

One of the 3 books I’ve got on the D610, probably the Thom Hogan book, said you should learn the camera so that you can adjust it in the dark. I worked on that because I seem to gravitate towards shooting at night. I’ve been pretty good. I think that in this case I had been using Live View a bit to try to focus, zooming in and out. This requires the use of two different buttons on the back of the camera (different than the ISO button).

The zoom in button, which is the one right above the ISO button, and which I’d been using with Live View, also doubles as the QUALity button, meaning that when I changed the command dial with that button pushed in I had changed the format to JPEG. Darn darn darn.

Don’t let this happen to you! You really should learn all of your cameras controls well enough to operate them blindfolded, especially if you are going to take night shots. This means you don’t need a flashlight. Flashlights ruin your night vision and if you’re shooting with other people nearby, a flashlight can ruin their shot or their night vision as well.

My first Milky Way Picture

The Plan

On Saturday, 6/20/2015, a fellow photographer invited me to try shooting the Milky Way from the Superstition Mountains which is about 40 miles east of Phoenix, by Apache Junction. He had seen a great picture on Facebook and wanted to try it too. I always like going to the Superstitions so it was a man date! (He had his wife along so it wasn't quite that weird.)

We decided to meet at the gate to the Lost Dutchman State Park which is at the north-west end of the Superstition Mountain range at around 8:00 PM.

I decided to look online for additional information about shooting the Milky Way so I'd hopefully be more prepared. I found a number of images such as this one on Flickr by Beth Myers. I noted that she used a Nikon D610 (YAY) with apparently the Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. She shot hers at 3:02 AM on 5/3/2014. She used f/2.8 at 30s and ISO 1600 with a 14mm focal length. Since the full size image is 6016 x 4016 pixels (the size of the full images) I think she was fairly close to the mountain.

Stellarium Screen Shot from the Stellarium Website

Next I wanted to see what time the Milky Way would be visible. I found out about Stellarium, a really slick and FREE (for desktop use) application that not only shows the stars from the location you enter, but it has a real time simulator that you can control the speed of to see how the moon, planets, and stars and constellation move across the sky. 

Using the information from this application you can find out what time the Milky Way will appear vertical, for instance. It roughly shows the location, displaying the major compass coordinates on the screen. It's really slick - I also paid for a version to install on my Kindle Fire HD, which I took with me to help visualize where the Milky Way should appear.

Mice and Men

We met at the park gate as planned, or there about. I got there early and had wandered into the park and took some pics while waiting. Spoiler alert - I liked these earlier pics as much as or more than the Milky way pic. Here's one of them:

Dusk over the Usery Mountains

I really like the gold of this picture with some subtle green. This is pretty much Straight Out Of the Camera (SOOC) with the saturation bumped, some burning, etc.

When it got dark enough we started taking some pictures. They just weren't very inspiring. We could see the Milky Way in the pictures a bit, but one thing I'd read was that you really should be able to see it with your naked eye (or eyes) in order to capture it well. And we couldn't. 

I believe the issue was that it was pretty hazy. Normally I can see the Superstitions from Phoenix itself. On the drive out I could not see them from Phoenix but had to get closer, maybe to where I was within 15 miles or so, to see the mountains through the haze. I think that caused two issues: 1) it reduced visibility of the Milky Way, and 2) it captured "light pollution" in the atmosphere which also reduces the contrast of the Milky Way to the dark, empty space.

Here's my best picture, and this was edited quite a bit at this point:

Milky Way over the Superstitions #1

Post Processing

I found a good, succinct tutorial video that I watched (I really don't like videos much because I have to turn on a lot of other gear that I use for my recording studio in order to play audio from my PC). I watched it because the guy also offers some FREE presets for Adobe Lightroom specifically for processing night / sky / Milky Way images. The guy's name is David Kingham and his tutorial / presets page is http://www.davidkingham.com/night-photography-lightroom-presets. I used his advice and presets to get the picture above to the point it's at.

I wasn't very happy with it, though, compared to the Beth Myers image mentioned above, or others I'd seen. So I decided to try playing with it some more. Basically I took a copy of the above image (easy to do in Lightroom with a [CTRL][']) and tried to mainly bump up the exposure so that it wasn't so dark. Well, that lightened up everything too much so I used some filters to darken the sky above and below the Milky Way. I'd also used David Kingham's "star de-focus" preset on the upper and right stars but I thought it blurred the stars too much so removed most of that effect. Here's the final version which I like better:

Milky Way over the Superstitions #2

This was with my Nikon D610 and Nikkor 16-35mm f/4 lens. Exposure is 25 seconds at f/4, ISO 1600, and focal length at 16mm.