Darkroom image manipulation:
This photograph was shot on 5X7 Tri-X film using a Deardorf view camera in the middle of the day. The negative was processed into three 'channels' with selective masking using Kodalith film. The channels were registered with pins on a light box and the image was reshot using helium-neon and argon laser illumination. It took ten hours in the darkroom to complete the final images shown above, a 11X14 Cibachrome 'original'.
Last evening in the Galaxy:
Jupiter's still looking good as it recedes. The giant planet is now nearly twice as far (3 AU) from us as it was at the beginning of February.
Gamma Leo, also known as Al Geiba, is a tightly spaced (about 5 seconds of arc) double star featuring a second magnitude yellow star (K type) and a third magnitude white star (F type). The magnification of this picture is about 1150x on a 90 dpi monitor; the air turbulance is obvious.
My first deep sky object had to be M-13, the same globular cluster I drew many years ago. M-13 shines at sixth magnitude and is 25,000 lightyears away.
Much of the 'dark current' noise was supressed by comparison with a blank picture, and the resulting image was contrast-stretched, followed by additional noise reduction. The colors of the stars are due to image processing, and do not represent the spectral types of individual stars.
Evan Kirchhoff writes about traditional uses of Photoshop (as opposed to newfangled uses, like putting an elephant with a tower on its back on stilts over water.) Photoshop makes things that could be done in a photochemical darkroom requiring hours of time and exposure to chemical vapors, doable in less then an hour in a clean environment. But some pretty manipulated photos are possible in a traditional darkroom, so aren't these same effects allowed in 'straight' Photoshopping?
Evan's blog is called 101-280, which is pretty cool in itself, and 101 there refers to the (extended) Pacific Coast Highway in California (as does this blog.) Check out the graphic in the header - nice.
