A 49-minute exposure almost 2000 feet above "Mile 0", the origin and starting point for rafting down the Grand Canyon. Clients are nearly always awestruck silent when they finally see this grandest of scenes, seeing over 40 miles of the canyon going off in the distance all the way to the North Rim (in the far background). We had incredible light, lightning/thunderstorms heading over the North Rim, straight toward us. My camera, on tripod, shot in continuous mode, about 110 - 30 second images, until the storms got too dangerous and we fled. Averaging those exposures, in the Smart Object "mean" mode, in Photoshop, gives the same effect as a long exposure, but with absolutely no noise! And you can choose to average as many or as little frames as you want, controlling total exposure time! And you almost never miss a lighting strike!
A pretty impressive image Mark! Lots of details on the ground. You picked a good day to have a sky like this. Looks like a good image to print big. How big was the processed file?
jm10_former wrote:
A pretty impressive image Mark! Lots of details on the ground. You picked a good day to have a sky like this. Looks like a good image to print big. How big was the processed file?
jacob
Thank you, Jacob!
I shot this with the Leica SL2. So it was 47 megapixels. I have not taken it through my proprietary sizing/detail extraction techniques yet (this is something I’ve worked with some amazing tech geniuses to create over the last couple of years - that no one I can find, except those I’m teaching or mentoring, is doing) but it’s going to be absurdly detailed! When done immaculately it can look more like a window into reality. Sometimes it really makes the brain think it’s seeing the real thing.
Also, when the tripod doesn’t move and you average that many photos together, you can actually do a manual pixel shift (I don’t think I will end up doing that on this one) and the noise will be absolute zero even in the darkest pixel and at about 4X the detail.
I’m confident that I will be able to get approximately 16 times the megapixels, at around 64 times the detail (of the 47MP file) new literally native file that can be sized up or down after that) without the use of Generative AI, which will be a massive/hyper detailed new file to work with, for any enlargement or smaller size. The new native file will be upwards around 800 megapixels. And that file, is not the enlargement! It’s literally a new native file. This is something I expect many people to not to believe (until they see) or be skeptical about. My clients over the last year know about it! And that again, will be the new starting point for any size print, but with tremendously more real detail.
With this sort of NASA/science based stuff we have been pioneering, I’ve been regularly making the highest quality fine art prints (either 300ppi or 600ppi) 180 inches or 150 inches, and also every standard size downward to whatever the smallest size my clients want or sell. Every one of the sizes is a new quality not seen before. That’s the daily normal stuff.
So far the biggest I’ve done (the less normal stuff I do for clients) that have incredible pixel peeping detail is 30 feet. And I’m doing a 15 foot or 20 foot fine art print right now. It was shot with a Nikon Z camera, and its of the California Hills during a bloom, and it’s a cropped panorama. And you can literally see the bugs that are in the grass almost like you shot it with a macro lens and stitched thousands of photos together. But again, it’s not generative AI. It’s real detail extraction.
I shot this with the Leica SL2. So it was 47 megapixels. I have not taken it through my proprietary sizing/detail extraction techniques yet (this is something I’ve worked with some amazing tech geniuses to create over the last couple of years - that no one I can find, except those I’m teaching or mentoring, is doing) but it’s going to be absurdly detailed! When done immaculately it can look more like a window into reality. Sometimes it really makes the brain think it’s seeing the real thing.
Also, when the tripod doesn’t move and you average that many photos together, you can actually do a manual pixel shift (I don’t think I will end up doing that on this one) and the noise will be absolute zero even in the darkest pixel and at about 4X the detail.
I’m confident that I will be able to get approximately 16 times the megapixels, at around 64 times the detail (of the 47MP file) new literally native file that can be sized up or down after that) without the use of Generative AI, which will be a massive/hyper detailed new file to work with, for any enlargement or smaller size. The new native file will be upwards around 800 megapixels. And that file, is not the enlargement! It’s literally a new native file. This is something I expect many people to not to believe (until they see) or be skeptical about. My clients over the last year know about it! And that again, will be the new starting point for any size print, but with tremendously more real detail.
With this sort of NASA/science based stuff we have been pioneering, I’ve been regularly making the highest quality fine art prints (either 300ppi or 600ppi) 180 inches or 150 inches, and also every standard size downward to whatever the smallest size my clients want or sell. Every one of the sizes is a new quality not seen before. That’s the daily normal stuff.
So far the biggest I’ve done (the less normal stuff I do for clients) that have incredible pixel peeping detail is 30 feet. And I’m doing a 15 foot or 20 foot fine art print right now. It was shot with a Nikon Z camera, and its of the California Hills during a bloom, and it’s a cropped panorama. And you can literally see the bugs that are in the grass almost like you shot it with a macro lens and stitched thousands of photos together. But again, it’s not generative AI. It’s real detail extraction.
Beautiful image Mark! I absolutely love the composition. I have experimented with these "synthetic long exposures" a bit and I agree with you on the incredibly low noise floor that is achievable. Given your 30s exposures, I'm assuming you used a rather dense ND to achieve this in daylight?
It's often difficult to convey how majestic some landscapes are in a photo, but you've managed so well here.
I must say, the superlong (total) exposure time and complex editing techniques make me wonder whether it's worth persisting with "just" 60 MP files edited in Lightroom...
