I need to tell you about the absolute brutal shit I went to get through to get this picture.
Four exposures, stacked and bracketed at -2, -1, 0, and +1. Doing an exposure at 2 would have made me bring out the bulb and since I don't have a remote shutter, I gotta do it with my phone, and I wouldn't wish CanonConnect on Stephen Miller. So that said, I stood there at Kerry Park in Seattle, amongst seventy or a hundred other people, and they were all trying to capture this with their terrible little phone sensors, and I had my actual real shit, I was the only one with an actual camera.
So I took my exposures and some extra ones on the side, came back home to Portland, and set to work. My +1 was slightly off, just a little windblown. Darktable doesn't give a shit, it's not aligning nothing. I had Hugin stack up my control points and try to align it, told me it was a success, but every last point of light looked like AI circa '22, so that was a no-go.
In the end, I just edited the 0 exposure and just went with that. Dammit.
Thanks for seeing my frustrating work.
Oh also @nothingcorporate@lemmy.today, eat your heart out, here's a space needle.
Hugin! That's a name I have not heard in a long time. I got a ton of use out of that software in the aughts.
On modern(ish) bodies I haven't really had the need to exposure stack. Most sensors have enough DR out of the box, especially if you're able to keep ISO down. What promoted you exposed stack? Were you being proactive, were you looking for super dynamic range, ...? I'm genuinely curious and do not mean to sound like I'm questioning the technique.
Nice photo btw!
Here's my original exposure stack, edited and finished, at the same 1800x1200 size I post everything else at:
If one doesn't glance too hard at it, they might be inclined to say "wow, neat photo," and carry on. However, because cities fuckin' twinkle a little bit, because the space needle revolves, because the wind is moving my camera about just a bit, and because I physically pushed the shutter button with a two-second timer before each long exposure, any sustained look at the lighting just falls apart on the spot. Buildings have an echo, support struts are blurry, and no individual detail stands out or is anything approaching perceptible.
Basically, I made AI slop by hand, by my craft, outside, in public.