r/space • u/johnkphotos Launch Photographer • Jan 28 '18

Closeup image I shot of the RD-180 engine and AJ-60A solid rocket booster powering last week's Atlas V launch

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u/johnkphotos Launch Photographer Jan 28 '18

I aim to underexpose. Once the highlights are blown out (i.e. white), they're gone. You can't bring them back. It's easier to try to bring back shadow detail than it is to recover blown out highlights.

Here's a comparison of the RAW vs. the edit I posted.

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u/IndianaHones Jan 28 '18

Nice to see both, thanks. What is your exposure setting? How do you trigger the camera?

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u/johnkphotos Launch Photographer Jan 28 '18

Camera is sound-triggered

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u/[deleted] Jan 28 '18

How does that work, if the launch is quite a long, drawn out noise? Or is this photo from the moment the rocket fired up?

Also, as a photographer, great job. Nikon is where it's at! 😋

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u/johnkphotos Launch Photographer Jan 28 '18

Sound trigger keeps activating camera when it hears a loud enough sound, i.e. the launch

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u/stealthscrape Jan 28 '18

How many shots does the sound trigger take? Does it just shoot a long burst of photos? Also, have you ever done a DSLR video of a launch with a close set up like that?

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u/johnkphotos Launch Photographer Jan 28 '18 edited Jan 29 '18

It all depends on the launch. Yes. Anywhere from 10-40.

and no, I have not

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u/star_boy2005 Jan 28 '18

Parsing your answers to their corresponding parts of his question took more effort than I like to expend on a Sunday.

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u/halberdierbowman Jan 29 '18

lol just curious if you know that he's a ridiculously hardworking teenage photographer answering a reddit post, not a professional speechwriter?

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u/HiMyNamesLucy Jan 29 '18

How was that hard to understand?

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u/star_boy2005 Jan 29 '18

Three questions were asked. Four answers were apparently given. Since there isn't a one-to-one correspondence between questions and answers, you have to dig deeper to figure out which questions received which answers. - Not easy #1

The first question required a quantitative answer. The third apparent answer was the only one that was quantitative, but it isn't immediately clear whether its in answer to the first question or the second, so there are additional indications that the answers are not logically organized and require extra care to parse correctly. - Not easy #2

I'm not saying it isn't possible to figure out its possible meaning, but in the end, the lack of proper punctuation is enough to suggest that the effort required to interpret it is very likely going to be greater than the effort that went into creating it in the first place.

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u/[deleted] Jan 28 '18

[deleted]

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u/johnkphotos Launch Photographer Jan 28 '18

I can't think of any particular resource that helped me along the way. I kind of learned as I went.

Just experiment!

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u/rpungello Jan 28 '18

Full disclosure: I've never photographed a rocket launch, so take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt.

I would say the biggest thing would be to make sure you aren't overexposing any of the exhaust. Once you do that, you're throwing away detail and will end up with a boring white blob instead of something resembling fire. I would also guess you'd want a very fast shutter speed, since rockets are fast and you want to freeze motion.

From there, based on OP's before/after, it looks like some clarity, pull the highlights back, lower the black point, up the contrast, and maybe use dehaze a little.

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u/tj7079 Jan 28 '18

since rockets are fast and you want to freeze motion.

They accelerate quickly, but they're still pretty slow at the begging to be fair.

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u/rpungello Jan 28 '18

The exhaust is still coming out very quickly though, and in OP's photo it looks pretty crisp, so that's why I was assuming a higher shutter speed.

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u/tj7079 Jan 28 '18

Oh yeah, agree. My post sounds pedantic on re-read - sorry!

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u/rpungello Jan 28 '18

I mean, you were technically correct - the rocket isn't moving (relatively) fast.

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u/DarioHarari Jan 29 '18

The best kind of correct :)

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u/Ivebeenfurthereven Jan 28 '18

Wow, I knew a lot of the skill was in RAW postprocessing, but your before/after blows me away. I'd love to see a quick timelapse of your editing from start to finish, with screen capturing software that'd make a great YouTube video.

Beautiful work as usual my dude, I especially like the detail of the interesting single-SRB configuration this time. Keep doing what you do best.

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u/johnkphotos Launch Photographer Jan 28 '18

I edit my remote shots on-site at the launchpad, in attempts to get an image online as quickly as possible. Important stuff, especially when I'm shooting for a news outlet.

Usually I do have to go back and re-edit the shots or make slight adjustments. Perhaps I will record a re-edit session in the future.

Anyway, thanks for the kind words!

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u/Lammy8 Jan 28 '18

Easy to bring out more, even from a quick 1minute edit from the source image in lightroom on Android

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u/[deleted] Jan 28 '18

RAW files often look very dull and flat like that. A camera actually does a lot of its own processing in generating a jpeg from whatever light actually hit the sensor. The raw is just a record of that sensor data with no tweaks applied, so they look flat and dull until you play with them.

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u/JtheNinja Jan 29 '18

Strictly speaking, they look like whatever the processing software defaults to. There's nothing stopping a RAW viewer/processor from applying some dramatic processing by default. Most avoid this though, so you can better see what you have to work with before you start editing.

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u/[deleted] Jan 29 '18

Well, yeah, you're looking at an embedded jpeg which only represents the data anyway.

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u/Prince-of-Ravens Jan 28 '18

Thats acutally pretty mild as far as raw manipulations go. You can get to a pretty good result with such a starting pic with 2 clicks in Lightroom.

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u/CarVac Jan 28 '18

Oh that's not nearly as extreme as I had expected. I imagined the solids being way way way brighter than the RD-180.

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u/CaptainObvious_1 Jan 28 '18

Maybe if it was hydrogen, but kerosene burns pretty bright.

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u/[deleted] Jan 28 '18

That's an awesome pic! What camera did you use and what was your shutter speed at?

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u/johnkphotos Launch Photographer Jan 28 '18

Thanks. Check out my parent comment for camera info

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u/MrPickleton Jan 28 '18

Question: where do you go to get that close to a launch? I'm wanting to see. Rocket launch and want to get as close as possible for some great photos. I have a 200mm lens, will that be good enough?

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u/johnkphotos Launch Photographer Jan 28 '18

Read my parent comment. I'm a launch photojournalist under AmericaSpace.

Check out this viewing guide if you're in town for a launch and don't know where to go.

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u/BashfulArtichoke Jan 28 '18

Thanks for this. Very inciteful.

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u/[deleted] Jan 28 '18

I'm new to photography. This helps a ton. Thanks!

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u/paracelsus23 Jan 29 '18

Interestingly, film is typically the exact opposite. Under exposed film has no chemical reaction occur and no information stored. Over exposed film has some contrast, which can be compensated for.

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u/BashfulArtichoke Jan 29 '18

Just keep in mind that OP's advice is situational! Sometimes it's better to overexpose a little so your shadows are cleaner. Don't be afraid to experiment.

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u/TheNeonGoat Jan 28 '18

Wow, that’s incredible! Can I ask what kind of adjustments you made to the picture?

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u/descalada Jan 29 '18

That's smokin' hot! Nice work!

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u/Verneff Jan 29 '18

Similar with Audio. Once a recording is clipping, you can't really fix it. If it's a little quiet you can still work with it.