Aurora Photo

ThierryD · Mon Oct 12, 2015 8:31 am

This one has been rejected on appeal but I'm not yet ready to give up on it, so any feedback/advice is much appreciated:

Aurora photo

Cheers,

Thierry

ZSOFN · Mon Oct 12, 2015 3:19 pm

Looks stunning, Thierry.

As someone who's got an aurora shot accepted here (below, albeit 8 years ago too), I'd say the main issue you have is noise reduction. Whatever you've done in processing gives a result that looks a lot like jpeg compression; particularly apparent across the upper surface of the wing.

Hard to know without seeing the original but from memory with the shot below I had to be very selective with noise reduction and limited it to certain areas of the shot. I would imagine that perhaps this sort of shot warrants a more lenient approach to noise by the screeners but that's not for me to say...

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Photo © Tom Collins

vikkyvik · Mon Oct 12, 2015 6:38 pm

Quoting ZSOFN (Reply 1):
I'd say the main issue you have is noise reduction. Whatever you've done in processing gives a result that looks a lot like jpeg compression; particularly apparent across the upper surface of the wing.

The wing looks very "smeared", and details are totally gone.

Thierry, if you want to send me the original (hopefully RAW), I'd be interested in giving it a shot. That's a heck of an Aurora.

ZSOFN · Mon Oct 12, 2015 7:00 pm

Just to add to what I said above - I know how hard it is to capture this from inside a lit cabin in a turbulent night sky. As I recall I had to cover the whole window with a blanket and poke the camera through - and with a 30 second exposure, the shot I linked to above was the only one that didn't come out a completely blurry mess.

ThierryD · Tue Oct 13, 2015 9:03 am

Thanks so far Tom and Vik!

Yes, noise was one of the rejection criteria, along with blurry/soft though imo the blurry/soft issue should not play too much of a role for such a photo. I'll go ahead and try to decrease the noise impact and try another upload.
Vik, thanks for your proposal of helping with the edit, I might get back to it if I don't succeed in editing it to an acceptable level myself.

Kind regards,

Thierry

ThierryD · Fri Oct 16, 2015 1:52 pm

I did a complete new edit of a shot slightly later in the sequence:

https://www.airliners.net/addphotos/b...03149.1257lxvciinflight190915y.jpg

I think the noise is quite a bit better now and it is sharper also.

What are your opinions?

Regards,

Thierry

ZSOFN · Sat Oct 17, 2015 8:33 am

Hi Thierry,

To be honest I think it suffers the same issues as the first shot (whilst sharing the same beauty!). It's hard to tell whether the NR you've run it through is causing more problems than it's trying to solve; any chance of seeing the original / pre NR edit?

Tom

[Edited 2015-10-17 02:12:21]

vikkyvik · Sat Oct 17, 2015 8:58 am

Quoting ZSOFN (Reply 6):
To be honest I think it suffers the same issues as the first shot (whilst sharing the same beauty!). It's hard to tell whether the NR you've run it through is causing not problems than it's trying to solve; any chance of seeing the original / pre NR edit?

Agreed.

You might try using less NR. I don't think some more noise is going to hurt the shot.

ThierryD · Sat Oct 17, 2015 2:39 pm

Quoting ZSOFN (Reply 6):
any chance of seeing the original / pre NR edit?

Hi Tom, Vik,

here's a version without any NR, all I did was crop and resize:
https://www.airliners.net/addphotos/b...ady/e1445092687.2498aurorashot.jpg

Cheers,

Thierry

trevisan26 · Sat Oct 17, 2015 8:13 pm

Thats a hell of a shot Thierry! I'm worried about the wing blurriness, the two most recent shots of Aurora inflight I've seen looks way sharper. For me a.net have more tolerance with grainy than blurry in difficult conditions like yours. Maybe try to use noise reduction and sharp only on the sky and wing respectively. Reducing to 1000px wide could help a little too.

Very beautiful, hope it makes it.

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Click here for bigger photo!

Photo © Xiang Ren

View Large View Medium
Click here for bigger photo!

Photo © Ben Cooper

Cheers,
Thiago Trevisan

airkas1 · Sat Oct 17, 2015 9:28 pm

Hi Thierry,

I can understand how special the moment was and how badly you'd like to get it accepted. I'd certainly go far in it if I ever experienced the same. I know how difficult it is to take such a photo, because I always do as well when on a night flight. But truth be told: your photo is very blurry, out of focus, 'smeared' etc., I just don't think the quality is there to warrant it being accepted, sorry.

Cheers,

[Edited 2015-10-17 14:30:46]

ThierryD · Mon Oct 19, 2015 9:07 am

Thanks for your feedback, Kas, it is much appreciated.
I know there are some quality issues but it's got to fall under the 'rare" category and hence deserve some screening leniency, so I will try my luck in the queue.

Regards,

Thierry

ZSOFN · Mon Oct 19, 2015 10:47 am

Quoting ThierryD (Reply 8):
Hi Tom, Vik,

here's a version without any NR, all I did was crop and resize:
https://www.airliners.net/addphotos/b...t.jpg

Hi Thierry,

Not wanting to rain on the parade but I think realistically this one's unlikely to be accepted - there's just too much blur.

I can totally relate as it's such a special scene to capture, but frustratingly for you in this case I think the quality's just not there. From memory I was very lucky to have one passable shot from the whole sequence of 20-30 photos (the rest were far worse in quality than all of yours).

It's inevitable given the required long exposure coupled with the fact you're doing over 900kph through potentially turbulent air! Even if the camera was held perfectly still, movement in the wing alone will result in a blurred shot.

All the best

Tom

ThierryD · Sun Oct 25, 2015 8:56 am

https://www.airliners.net/addphotos/r...03149.1257lxvciinflight190915y.jpg

Somewhat harshly rejected now for quality, blurry, grainy, soft, compression, oversharpened, dark.

Thanks for your inputs though.

Thierry

vikkyvik · Sun Oct 25, 2015 8:04 pm

Quoting ThierryD (Reply 13):
https://www.airliners.net/addphotos/r...03149.1257lxvciinflight190915y.jpg

Somewhat harshly rejected now for quality, blurry, grainy, soft, compression, oversharpened, dark.

Thanks for your inputs though.

Sorry Thierry, but I don't find that a harsh rejection at all. Unfortunately the photo just doesn't have the technical quality for A.net, though it's still a beautiful photo.

ThierryD · Tue Oct 27, 2015 1:27 pm

Quoting vikkyvik (Reply 14):
Sorry Thierry, but I don't find that a harsh rejection at all. Unfortunately the photo just doesn't have the technical quality for A.net, though it's still a beautiful photo.

I did not mean the "technical" aspect of the rejection but rather the way it was brought across. During my time as a screener, when I screened a photo which I thought was taken at a unique occasion for the photographer and I had to reject it for some reason I always made sure to leave a personal comment instead of just throwing a ton of rejection reasons at the uploader as I know from personal experience that it is frustrating if such a photo is rejected. I think it is a nice touch to leave a personal comment in such a case. So the 'harsh' comes from the 'how' and not from the 'why' of the rejection.

Regards,

Thierry

ZSOFN · Tue Oct 27, 2015 2:35 pm

Quoting ThierryD (Reply 15):
I think it is a nice touch to leave a personal comment in such a case.

+1

Quite frustrating too sometimes as the generic rejection reasons don't give you an indication as to whether it's only narrowly below par or not worth a re-upload (although arguably this is where this forum helps).

[Edited 2015-10-27 07:37:55]

vikkyvik · Tue Oct 27, 2015 6:40 pm

Quoting ThierryD (Reply 15):
I did not mean the "technical" aspect of the rejection but rather the way it was brought across. During my time as a screener, when I screened a photo which I thought was taken at a unique occasion for the photographer and I had to reject it for some reason I always made sure to leave a personal comment instead of just throwing a ton of rejection reasons at the uploader as I know from personal experience that it is frustrating if such a photo is rejected. I think it is a nice touch to leave a personal comment in such a case. So the 'harsh' comes from the 'how' and not from the 'why' of the rejection.

Oh, gotcha. Sorry, I assumed you meant the rejection reasons.

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