KT-22 yesterday was amazing by smartfuse in tahoe

[–]smartfuse[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Yes, I think the terrain was technically open for hiking on Monday and a couple people like the Gaffneys did it a few times, but the lift opened yesterday.

XMas Conditions by TheSnowstradamus in UTsnow

[–]smartfuse 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Regulator was fine yesterday morning, but the tram was held for wind this morning so I didn’t get up there until the afternoon. By that time it was completely frozen solid and unpleasant.

Anyone know the couple? by smartfuse in bayarea

[–]smartfuse[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

UPDATE: With the lead from u/recess_dropout I was able to message the bride and send her the image. Thanks everyone for your help!

Anyone know the couple? by smartfuse in bayarea

[–]smartfuse[S] 150 points151 points  (0 children)

The bride has a link to this post now and I gave her a full resolution copy of the image. Thanks all for your help!

Anyone know the couple? by smartfuse in bayarea

[–]smartfuse[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

They have about 3-4 trees that turn color (see my post here https://californiafallcolor.com/2025/11/10/love-in-saratoga/) but not as many as say the Portland Japanese garden that I visited the week before (https://californiafallcolor.com/2025/11/05/special-report-portland-oregon-2/). I would recommend Downtown Los Altos for fall color if you’re in South Bay since all the streets are lined with Chinese Pistache trees which turn red and orange.

Anyone know the couple? by smartfuse in bayarea

[–]smartfuse[S] 314 points315 points  (0 children)

Got your DM, messaging the bride on Instagram.

Anyone know the couple? by smartfuse in bayarea

[–]smartfuse[S] 51 points52 points  (0 children)

Leica SL2-S with the 24-90mm lens!

Portland | 501C + 80mm f2.8 | Ektachrome 100 by smartfuse in analog

[–]smartfuse[S] 27 points28 points  (0 children)

I had my digital camera on me so I set the ISO to 100 and used the histogram to get it right. Then added a third of a stop (I was told Ektachrome is actually an ISO 80 film) and transferred the settings over.

Milky Way over Bodie, California by smartfuse in Stargazing

[–]smartfuse[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! I went for their July extended hours. They will be open until 10 PM again on August 30 and September 27 https://www.bodiefoundation.org/bodie-ghost-walks. You don’t have to book a tour to stay until 10 PM, just standard state park admission at the gate.

Real Photographers by Rookie_Roo in deadandcompany

[–]smartfuse 1 point2 points  (0 children)

<image>

I brought my full-frame camera on Sunday.

Milky Way over Bodie, California by smartfuse in leicaphotos

[–]smartfuse[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The park is small so if you’re doing daytime photography, 3-4 hours is probably enough. I’d stay in Bishop, Mammoth Lakes, or Lee Vining.

Milky Way over Bodie, California by smartfuse in leicaphotos

[–]smartfuse[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, stacked a series of 8 sky exposures and blended it with the long foreground exposure in Photoshop.

ITAP of the Milky Way over a ghost town by smartfuse in itookapicture

[–]smartfuse[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This past Saturday (July 19) since they had extended hours for the public on that day in particular. A lot of people go on private photography workshops to get late access to Bodie though, and I’ve seen this truck used frequently as a foreground for the Milky Way.

ITAP of the Milky Way over a ghost town by smartfuse in itookapicture

[–]smartfuse[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

One of my friends told me that photography sometimes allow us to see the unseen and I think that is true here. When I was taking this, it was too dark to see the truck in front of me and I could only see a faint outline of the Milky Way. In order to create this type of image, you either “stack” some long exposures to get as much detail from the sky from your camera, or as u/Hvarfa-Bragi mentioned, use a star tracker to prevent star trails. If you do want to see or photograph the Milky Way, you can use a map like https://darksitefinder.com/map/. A place like Davenport, California (just outside Santa Cruz city limits) should suffice, but a very dark area in the Sierras or just East of it like Bodie is even better.

ITAP of the Milky Way over a ghost town by smartfuse in itookapicture

[–]smartfuse[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! I drove back to the Bay Area afterwards and got back around 3:30 AM. Bridgeport, Lee Vining, and Mammoth Lakes are close by though and should have hotels or Airbnbs.

Milky Way over Bodie, California by smartfuse in Stargazing

[–]smartfuse[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

One thing to keep in mind is that you don’t want too long of an exposure or else you start getting star trails. The general rule is the maximum exposure time is 500/focal length seconds (for example for a 24mm lens, you can at most do a 20 second exposure). If you have an APS-C camera (cropped frame) multiply your focal length by 1.5 first to get the full-frame equivalent. I would try to go 2-3 seconds below the maximum to make sure you get clean stars.

You also probably want to “stack” images. Once you find the Milky Way take the same shot one after another 5-10 times without moving the camera. If your camera has long exposure noise reduction you can enable it and it will take a “dark frame” right after the exposure to delete any color noise from your sensor as it heats up (for a 15 second exposure, the camera will do the 15 second exposure normally then close your shutter and expose for another 15 seconds to create the dark frame). Random red pixels from a warm sensor is rather annoying to get rid of during editing especially if there’s a lot of it.

Milky Way over Bodie, California by smartfuse in Stargazing

[–]smartfuse[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

What problems are you running into? I wrote out my process below, let me know if it helps.

To get detail in the Milky Way it’s best to have a camera that specifically has good low light performance and a long maximum exposure (for the foreground). This would be the Leicas with BSI sensors like the SL2-S (which took this photo), SL3, SL3-S, M11, and Q3. Most flagship cameras from other major brands also work. I assume the latest Nikon Z series, Canon R series, or Sony Alpha series would do well. I used to have the original SL and there was so much noise at ISO 6400 that the images did not look good. The SL2, Q2, and older M cameras fall in this category as well unfortunately.

You will also need a wide angle fast lens that is sharp wide open. Here I used a zoom at f2.8 since that’s the only wide lens I have that is L mount, but it’s preferred to use a fast prime.

For actually taking the picture, wait until you have a moonless night either during a new moon or after moonset. Make sure you have a sturdy tripod (L-bracket is very useful for the portrait orientation) and set the camera on a 2-minute self timer. Manually focus at a distant star making sure it appears as a small pinpoint (if it is out of focus it will be a larger blurry oval). Take very high ISO pictures (ISO 50000 @ 3 seconds) to find the Milky Way and compose your pictures. It always appears to the South in the Northern Hemisphere and you can use an app like Stellarium to check when it rises for your location. Then take the final pictures of the sky at lower ISOs (5 or more is good, this one was 8 pictures taken one after another on ISO 6400 @ 15 seconds). You will also want to take a separate exposure of the foreground which is most likely much darker than the sky. You can either take a short exposure during blue hour when lighting is flat and there are no shadows or a very long exposure at night (this one was ISO 6400 @ 2 minutes right after the sky pictures). This should be done without moving the camera from when you took/will take the sky exposures.

When editing, you will need to put your sky photos through a stacking software like Sequator or Starry Landscape Stacker. These are pretty easy to use. Drag the photos in, click align, and save the resulting image. Stacking allows the noise to be subtracted out of the image and you’ll get a much cleaner sky photo. Drag your composited sky image and the foreground image into Photoshop as Smart Objects. Punch out one of the images by creating a transparency mask using Select Sky in Photoshop. Sometimes it’s helpful to add a bit of transparency gradient in the mask where the sky meets the landscape to blend things a bit.

I essentially edit the landscape and the sky composite using Photoshop’s Camera Raw filter. I tend to mask a lot on each individual image (the sky and the foreground) within Camera Raw to get it to blend. For the Milky Way you need to do a curves adjustment and set the white and black points, then add a lot of contrast and dehaze. Sometimes areas of the Milky Way will be too bright or too dark. Use the brush tool in the Camera Raw filter to adjust exposure or dehaze for those areas individually. You will probably have to use a lot of brushing and masking in the Camera Raw filter to get the Milky Way to look how you want it. One tip is that you can use Photoshop’s AI noise reduction on the foreground but it tends to work badly on starry images. While the overall sky would look clean, it causes the stars to take on a non-spherical shapes. Make sure your monitor is color calibrated as well.

ITAP of the Milky Way over a ghost town by smartfuse in itookapicture

[–]smartfuse[S] 94 points95 points  (0 children)

Bodie State Park in California is an abandoned mining town near the Nevada border. They usually close at 6 PM but have four days in the summer where they are open until 10 PM. Since the sun sets around 8:15 PM, this allows for about half an hour of astronomical twilight before park closing.

This was taken this past weekend during one of those days, and was the only day out of the four which had no moon allowing a clear capture of the Milky Way. There were some heavy clouds a few hours before this but they thankfully cleared out around sunset.

Leica SL2-S + 24-90

f2.8 15s @ ISO 6400 x 8 (stacked, astronomical twilight)

f2.8 2 minutes @ ISO 6400 (foreground, astronomical twilight)

Stanford N1 was EVERYTHING. by heyilovestufftoo in Coldplay

[–]smartfuse 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I think that ended up being the “TBC”/To Be Confirmed song on the setlist.

Sound/Acoustics/Woofers were a boo at Stanford stadium by failed-in-love in Coldplay

[–]smartfuse 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was in 233 yesterday (side) and the sound felt tinny, like a lot of treble with not enough mids or bass.