Posts Made By: Jeff Hapeman

Be-yoo-tiful!

How do you get the metering right when they are against the sky?

Jeff

Nice picture, though, Robert...I love his beady eyes. He is checking you out. 8O

Jeff

Very nice, Ty--tack sharp. Was this taken with the 200mm macro?

Jeff

Oops, I just saw that you asked me what it might be...

Mayflies are tough. Even getting the family right requires looking at things like wing venation.

Mayfly works for me

Jeff

Really nice...I love the bright yellow of the eye.

Jeff

Really nice composition. I hope to get some Sandhill shots this summer. There are several that nest near my house.

Jeff

Jose,

Nice image, and a couple of people are right on track with the color comments. Let me toss a few comments in here.

With regards to processing, do *not* use DDP on the color channels. Because you almost always are going to get different S/N on the different colors, using DDP will end up distorting the color balance. Usually, depending on the CDD, it skews the green or the red. With the ST2000's QE response, it is going to skew the green, like it did in your image.

As for the VLT image, what they mean by "approximate true color" is really that it conveys "true information" about the nebula based on the spectral line emissions. They do not mean it approximates some standard of what the "true" color of the nebula is.

The subject of "true color" is really open to a lot of debate. Don Goldman's site goes into a lot of detail on this, and he does a good job. There was an article on this in S&T a number of years back, and Al Kelley's book "Astonomical Image Processing" covers the topic in detail. (http://www.willbell.com/aip/index.htm).

Al actually details a now commonly-used standard for color balance based on calibration with a G2V star (which is the same spectral class as our sun). The main problem with this technique is one of the points that Don Goldman elaborates on--some of the color line emissions from nebula really don't fit this model.

In the end, it sort of comes down to accepted standards and personal taste.

Keep up the good work--imaging is a lot of fun!

Jeff

Super! Metering is dead-on and composition is nice.

He looks cold.

Jeff

Great shot, but I think that is a Caspian Tern based on the stout red bill with no distinct black tip, and generally white underparts. If it was a big bird, about like a ring-billed gull, that would clinch it. The Common Tern is smaller, has a more slender bill with a black tip, and distinctly gray underparts.

Jeff

Very nice!

Jeff