Back in the Saddle With a Wonderful Sunset
NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.
Ridgeline By the Numbers 13,781 meters away 8,000 ISO sensitivity 21 minutes after sunset 500 mm focal length 33,765 th photo taken with my D700 -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2010 Jeffrey Friedl, https://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 500 mm — 1/250 sec, f/8, ISO 8000 — map & image datanearby photos
Ridgeline By the Numbers
13,781 meters away
8,000 ISO sensitivity
21 minutes after sunset
500 mm focal length
33,765th photo taken with my D700

In the large version, you can see individual branches on the trees. Not too bad for almost 14km away, handheld.

I was gratified not only to be able to pick up the camera today, but to actually remember how to use it. Kyoto had a mild version this evening of the sunset described in my November 2008 post “Today's Sunset: the Deepest, Truest Orange I Have Ever Seen”. Like then, I was at my condo and just ran up to the top floor to catch the view.

Early View 9 minutes after sunset -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2010 Jeffrey Friedl, https://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — 1/200 sec, f/9, ISO 1400 — map & image datanearby photos
Early View
9 minutes after sunset

The picture above represents the true experience of what you'd see at that time, but to get the photo to that point I had to do a lot of processing in Lightroom to make the buildings less dark and the sky less yellow (there wasn't the slightest trace of yellow, but it comes across as yellow in the brighter areas due to limitations with camera sensor technology that I don't have enough skill to work around).

The color in the first picture, taken 12 minutes later, is accurate, but it gives a somewhat false impression of the overall scene because by the time the color had deepened to that level, it had faded from most of the sky, but you can't see that because it's not in frame. (The sunset from a couple of years ago was that deep even when the whole sky was that color, so it was much better, but today's sunset was the best since then.)

Less Post Processing Less Realistic ( More Beautiful ) -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2010 Jeffrey Friedl, https://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 50 mm — 1/200 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — map & image datanearby photos
Less Post Processing
Less Realistic
( More Beautiful )
Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2010 Jeffrey Friedl, https://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 210 mm — 1/500 sec, f/6, ISO 8000 — map & image datanearby photos
Trapped -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2010 Jeffrey Friedl, https://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 500 mm — 1/500 sec, f/6.3, ISO 8000 — map & image datanearby photos
Trapped

The gargoyles or whatever line the roof of the private Chinese museum next door would have been great in silhouette if it weren't for the netting they have over the whole thing (to catch, I would think, any part of the aging roof that might fall, before it lands on a pedestrian).

Inverse Waves sunlight skips off the bottom edges of cloud ridges -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2010 Jeffrey Friedl, https://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 95 mm — 1/500 sec, f/5, ISO 5000 — map & image datanearby photos
Inverse Waves
sunlight skips off the bottom edges of cloud ridges

UPDATE: Cool, Nils has posted short video of the sunset.


All 7 comments so far, oldest first...

Some gorgeous silhouetting and great performance at such a high ISO!

— comment by Andrew on June 25th, 2010 at 5:15am JST (14 years, 4 months ago) comment permalink

Love the photos! How is the weather in Japan now? Any family outings picture? Love those! please take more when you go around. I love Japan and miss it very much. It makes me feel like i am really there/touring around japan when i see you photos!thanks!

Been sort of busy of late, so no family outings since last month’s visit to KidZania, but I’ve got plenty of fodder from that outing and many more in my queue to impose on the world 🙂 —Jeffrey

— comment by Candice on June 25th, 2010 at 12:47pm JST (14 years, 4 months ago) comment permalink

Wonderful pictures, great sunset!

I guess you’re using Lr3 😉 The noise level is impressively low for being 8k ISO

Actually, I forgot to pay attention to that… by default there’s some color noise reduction, but no luminance. Maybe I should give that some attention and push a new copy…. —Jeffrey

— comment by Gianluca on June 25th, 2010 at 5:00pm JST (14 years, 4 months ago) comment permalink

Most excellent: Nils has posted short video of the sunset.

— comment by Jeffrey Friedl on June 25th, 2010 at 10:08pm JST (14 years, 4 months ago) comment permalink

Welcome back Jeffrey, we|I missed you … well your photos & commentary really. ;-}

— comment by parv on June 26th, 2010 at 7:23pm JST (14 years, 4 months ago) comment permalink

Quite a sunset: I like them all but especially ‘Early View’.

On my Windows XP system, some of these, especially ‘Trapped’, show distinct posterization in the brighter parts of the sky in Firefox 3.6.4, but not in Chrome or IE8. If I copy and paste that image from FF into a graphics program the posterization is there, but if I save it, then open it in the same program there is no posterization. Does this indicate that Firefox is struggling to render it properly ? Haven’t noticed it before.

Hope you can now get out and about for more photography.

I’ve noticed horrible posterization on Firefox for years. Firefox is sufficiently good in other areas that I put up with it, but yeah, it’s pretty bad. —Jeffrey

— comment by Peter in Wales on June 26th, 2010 at 8:05pm JST (14 years, 4 months ago) comment permalink

All I can say is, “Wow!”. These photos are extraordinary! I only wish I could take photos like this let alone being able to do some post editing to make them look like this. Great job. Absolutely fascinating.

— comment by Earnest Barr on July 5th, 2010 at 7:53pm JST (14 years, 4 months ago) comment permalink
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