Stephen Bay's Photography Blog

The Making of a Photo #2 – Crescent Moon Photography

This is the second in a series of “making of” articles where I cover the creative and technical choices behind a photo that I’ve been working on. This is intended to give an overview of the important decisions in a short and easily digestible manner. Crescent moon setting behind the California Tower in Balboa Park, San Diego on 4/21/23. Planning This photo of the crescent moon was taken on 4/21/23 which is two days after the new moon.

Read more →

Star Stacking With Kandao Raw+

I recently tried out a new software program for star stacking called Kandao Raw+. Up to this point I had been using Starry Landscape Stacker which has worked very well so I was a bit skeptical as to whether Kandao Raw+ could actually bring anything new to the table. But I was pleasantly surprised and the short summary is that Kandao Raw+ works extremely well and even handles problematic cases which cause difficulty for programs like Starry Landscape Stacker and Sequator.

Read more →

How Many Images Should I Stack for Noise Reduction (in Starry Landscape Stacker or Sequator)?

With programs like Starry Landscape Stacker or Sequator image stacking for noise reduction has become very easy to do. The one question I get is how many images should i stack? This question can actually be answered analytically with math. If you recall your stats class, the variance of the sum of n variables is the sum of their covariances. Therefore… Ok just kidding. I won’t go into the math. But if you want to dig further look at the Wikipedia article on variance and assume that the photons have a Poisson distribution.

Read more →

Comet C/2020 F3 Neowise From the Heart of San Diego

For some reason I like taking photos of astro subjects from the middle of the San Diego. Usually this results in a lot of pain because the objects are so dim and the light pollution from the city tends to wash everything out. To some extent, one can bring out these subjects with post-processing but there is a limit because the data (and information contained in the data) simply isn’t there.

Read more →

Equipment for Tracked Panoramas of the Night Sky

Probably the most technically difficult shot to achieve in landscape astrophotography is a tracked panorama. But if you can successfully pull it off, it will yield the ultimate in image quality. I’ve done a few when conditions allowed (i.e. I had extra time for setup and I was able to carry of all the required gear) and thought I would share my equipment setup.

Read more →