Can someone debunk this Peter Lik picture... PLEASE!!!

[drummstikk]

Re: Just for fun! How did I do this????

I see a lot of people having a crack each way. Here's one of mine. This is a full 360 degree panorama done in the southern hemisphere. Star trails done with stars intact and real. Done with 17TS-E. 2hr Exposure. No fisheye used! To my knowedge, this is the first time a full 360 pano with star trails has ever been made without the use of a fisheye lens.

Simply a knockout photograph. Van Gogh could never have seen a photo like this during his lifetime, but one can imagine it inspiring his "Starry Night" painting.

 

[Sunnystate]

Obvious lie in my opinion, and there is no good moral either in this whole story, considering fact that people are paying for this type of "artistic" BS all the time.

 

[5D Freak]

This is certainly more than just a double exposure. (Obviously it can't be a single exposure since the moon is so much brighter than the stars and the shaded part of the moon is never darker than the sky beside it). It is clearly a composite of at least two separate images (with different composition, not just different exposure). This scene cannot exist.

Let's review the problems with it compiled from various people's comments.
[list type=decimal]
[*]The moon is in front of the clouds in the background.
[*]The shadowed part of the moon must be opposite of the sun.
[*]A full moon is always in the opposite part of the sky the sun, not in nearly the same direction.
[*]The orientation of the moon is wrong. (It is rotated relative to how it would appear in reality.)
[/list]

The moon was shot in a different part of the sky and then pasted into this image.

Those that think it is a single exposure - keep it real. That is curtainly not. Totally agree with the above. I have more to add:

-dark side should be the same colour of the sky or slightly lighter;

-depth of field issues regarding taking of a photo of the moon - sorry can't get tree and moon in focus at the same time at 1200+mm focal length at the scale of the tree. I think someone has already pointed this out.

-the moon has been taken at 1/500s (ISO200) at probably the native focal length of a reflector (not refractor) telescope at F11 (Celestron C14 or equivalent Meade). Larger the diameter, the less effect atmospheric abberations have. The moon shot is probably a composite of four images. Stars don't show at these short shutter speeds - only Jupiter, Venus, Sirius, Mars, ect. Not 8 magitude stars as depicted here.

-If that part of the sky is that bright, why are the rocks/tree so dark. Late gibbous phase with the lighting angle would implicate a strong twilight with the sun less than 5deg below the horizon - no stars at that point.
Hey, we can go til the cows come home. This is a dead set composite. Great work still as you can expect from Peter Lik. Love his wide format film work too!

 

[5D Freak]

If he aquired the necessary shots himself, so what if its a composite. It's not fake. Maybe some of us would have gone about the merging in a different way ( I know I would have). Would have been a pretty easy selection in photoshop! At the end of the day, it's his work, and he earned a great picture! I bet this one sells well! Just think - would you hang that up on your wall? I would (if I didn't display my own).

 

[wickidwombat]

ROFL

Ok for starters this is the same guy that stole trey ratcliff's HDR of time square and claimed it was his
http://www.stuckincustoms.com/2011/03/31/peter-lik-your-thoughts/

it happens to be the exact photo that trey goes into great detail of the processing of it in one of his ebooks

SOoooo. I would take anything on the peter Lik site with a bag of salt... it might not even be his!

 

[lol]

Even if you accept a double exposure, I think there is a question of how much editing can do you on a photo or photos before they stop being photos and are better classified as some other form of digital art. In this moon shot, I think we're stepping outside photography.

 

[5D Freak]

ROFL

Ok for starters this is the same guy that stole trey ratcliff's HDR of time square and claimed it was his
http://www.stuckincustoms.com/2011/03/31/peter-lik-your-thoughts/

it happens to be the exact photo that trey goes into great detail of the processing of it in one of his ebooks

SOoooo. I would take anything on the peter Lik site with a bag of salt... it might not even be his!

Peter Lik only deals with high res for his work for sale. Not sure about this one. Did this person in question just give Peter his full res 21MP 16bit tiff file. Got to be joking aren't you? So now, you are saing Peter's a fraud. Duuuude, Peter isn't that much into HDR. Although he does shoot digital these days, his work is mainly 617 medium format film

 

[Flake]

Sorry people, but a double exposure is something we used to be able to do with film, expose the same frame twice, hence its name. What is being described is two entirely seperate individual different exposures blended together to make a single image - this is called exposure blending, three images & it becomes an HDR. If mutliple exposures of the same exposure are blended, then the result is a composite.

Sorry to be pedantic, but to some of us it's confusing when the wrong terms are used.

Smite away if it makes you feel better!

 

[5D Freak]

Flake, valid point. Also, you could dodge n burn in the film days too. I know my old man experimented with double exposed film with mix success. No smiting from me.

I do use expsoure bracketing and blend exposures for my dawn n dusk work to manage dynamic range, just like using a grad ND filter. Auto HDR is a different animal that I haven't found a useful tool yet, though I am having a crack with it my new work. I have even stacked and averaged shots to simulate ISO6, 12 & 25. Don't bother with that much these days. I can get a long exposure anytime I want with an ND400 filter and dark frame subtract for exposures longer than 2 minutes. Just need to know your gear and what you can do with it. Just use your gear to get the shots!

The 360 degree pano star trails that I did actually consisted of over 200 individual exposures. Lots of work, but got there and stoked with the result. Jugging a one shot pulling into a nice barrel with the UW housing can be just as satisfying. It's all fun I think.

 

[MazV-L]

Sorry people, but a double exposure is something we used to be able to do with film, expose the same frame twice, hence its name. What is being described is two entirely seperate individual different exposures blended together to make a single image - this is called exposure blending, three images & it becomes an HDR. If mutliple exposures of the same exposure are blended, then the result is a composite.

Sorry to be pedantic, but to some of us it's confusing when the wrong terms are used.

Smite away if it makes you feel better!

There is a way to do multiple-exposure in-camera with digital. All you need is a black piece of cardboard, the bulb setting, and low-light, Just place cardboard over lens between each "frame" you want in that exposure. It's crude but I have tried this, so I know it works!

 

[jimmy156]

Judging by the fact its mentioned its a "double exposure" and there is no 800mm 2.8 lens that i know about, i would say that the moon was shot at 800mm (possibly with a teleconverter), and the background/sky/tree was shot at 2.8 with a normal or wide lens, and the two shots merged in Photoshop.

That is the simplest explanation as to how this shot could be achieved, and therefore IMO the most likely.

 

[Flake]

Two exposures give the possibility that the lens wasn't pointing in the same direction for each exposure, thus the moon might have been photographed when it was much higher than it seems. For me the lighting on the moon doesn't look right especially bottom left, but that might just be how it looks in a different part of the world.

 

[sbolover]

i agree with uper comment ;D

 

[Octavian]

That purple haze is of our atmosphere...
If the haze is not in front of the moon then the moon is about to collide with Earth!!!! :O
It (the moon) is actually already within our atmosphere!

I like the image though.

I also like the image posted on by 5D Freak - Coolum Dawn in Time Panorama - S.jpg
Astounding image was it taken on the equator? how was 2 trails achieved?

And the OP is correct he is good at marketing... hes got us all talking and looking at it!

 

[Patrickfoto]

Why bother to try to debunk the image at all? It is a cracking shot, one I'd like to see hanging on my wall after I'd shot it. Whether it was a single shot straight from the sensor with no post production or a carefully constructed montaged / blended / HRD'ed image which spend lots of time in Photoshop being groomed before it was published makes no difference to the enjoyment of seeing it. To me (my opinion only!) the only time it is important to avoid manipulation as much as possible is in forensic photography - and even then the choice of focal length and framing is a form of manipulation.
The camera ALWAYS lies, as a photographer I recognise that...and I choose what the camera records and how that recording is expressed.

 

[Canon-F1]

Why bother to try to debunk the image at all?

they have lied to you so often that you don´t care anymore if someone is telling the truth or not... that is what you are saying?

 

[richy]

Nothing hugely complicated about this shot to debunk. Its shot with a long lens just after moon rise or just before moonset when the moon appars largest (a deathstar sized moon has nearly shocked me off the bike a few times), the size of the moon is just exaggerated by the atmospheric conditions and the tree.
Not sure you would need to double expose, you just need to position yourself right. Re 800mm 2.8, likely a 400 2.8 with an offbrand tc?
Replicating this shot wouldn't be insanely difficult, just very time consuming. Peter has the time, money and skills to do it, he also usually gets access whereever h wants to go. His ego may be large format but he does have some skills and does plan a lot.
The relatively high brightness of the moon also helps keep the shutter speed and iso vaguely sane.

 

[Canon-F1]

Nothing hugely complicated about this shot to debunk

:

the size of the moon is just exaggerated by the atmospheric conditions and the tree.

the size of the moon is more or less the same. it only depends on the distance earth <-> moon.

the moon does not suddenly jumps closer to the earth when it´s near the horizon.
it´s an optical illusion that makes the moon APPEAR bigger to us humans and has nothing do to with the atmosphere. that´s 5 grade

http://science.howstuffworks.com/question491.htm

Re 800mm 2.8, likely a 400 2.8 with an offbrand tc?

again physics is your enemy....
800mm will not produce a moon that big.
as was written before you need around 2500mm to fill a fullframe sensor with the moon.

 

[jimmy156]

Nothing hugely complicated about this shot to debunk

:

the size of the moon is just exaggerated by the atmospheric conditions and the tree.

the size of the moon is the more or less the same .. the moon does not suddenly jumps closer to the earth when it´s near the horizon. it´s an optical illusion that makes the moon APPEAR bigger to us humans and has nothing do to with the atmosphere.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/question491.htm

Re 800mm 2.8, likely a 400 2.8 with an offbrand tc?

again physics is your enemy....
800mm will not produce a moon that big.

Furthermore if this was a single shot with the moon exposed as it is, the sky would be black w/out any detail. That sky and that moon cannot have been shot with the same exposure, or IMO the same focal length. Its two shots, its not better or worse for being so, but it is.

 

[Flake]

Nothing hugely complicated about this shot to debunk

:

the size of the moon is just exaggerated by the atmospheric conditions and the tree.

the size of the moon is more or less the same. it only depends on the distance earth <-> moon.

the moon does not suddenly jumps closer to the earth when it´s near the horizon.
it´s an optical illusion that makes the moon APPEAR bigger to us humans and has nothing do to with the atmosphere. that´s 5 grade

http://science.howstuffworks.com/question491.htm

Re 800mm 2.8, likely a 400 2.8 with an offbrand tc?

again physics is your enemy....
800mm will not produce a moon that big.
as was written before you need around 2500mm to fill a fullframe sensor with the moon.

Not true! You can with enough MP shoot the moon at 300mm all you need is the crop tool and magnify! You're making an assumption that no post processing has been done, and of course if that was the case you'd be right.