My summer (south. h) season (updated!)

[dzso.bacsi]

Hi Kolec,

English is my third language, and as such it is far from perfect. I apologize if the words were not proper. But I do not seriously think that my thoughts will stop Carlos' own development or make him blind to his technical imperfections. Beside that, visual impressions are different to every one of us...

Regards

[Carlos Milovic]

Of course not. It is nice to hear some compliments, but I'm fully aware of the flaws of my capture and processing. This is a never ending road. There is always room for improvements, and much more to learn. I'm very happy to have reached a point where my works generate such reactions in the viewer (calling it "art" really touched me, because this is how I see this... and I aspire to create new forms of art), and this is also involves a new challenge to me: both to keep/improve the current level of development of this work, and also to look for new things to try.

Also, critics are always highly welcome, since they make us learn from our mistakes. But, sometimes, critics are arise when people is faced with new/different things. That's why I asked what Kolec meant by a nice background. Paradigms shape our perception of beauty. If we see something new, it may shock us at first, and most probably we'll dislike it. Takes time to assimilate those new ways to interpret the universe. For example, many years ago people were accustomed to see white, flat, saturated stars... now this has changed, and colourful, gaussian shaped stars are perceived as nicer. Something similar happened with noise reduction techniques. Some people like to see some noise in there, because they believe that it yields a more natural look. For others, noise is just a degradation of the image, and has to be completely removed (but not at the expense of real structures). You may call that different "schools" of image processing. Even geographically "divided", people in Europe tend to saturate less the colours than those in the USA.

So, the bottom line... critics are always welcome, but I also have to weight them against what is "my" paradigm of astrophotography, or to what is my intention as an artist to show with the data.

[gvanhau]

Some nice images in here.
I like most SMC, LMC and Orions Belt (tast picture).

Regards
Geert

[Jules]

Carlos

Lovely images, I love the browns!

Regards

Julian

[Carlos Milovic]

Thank you both

[Carlos Milovic]

Added the four last images of this season
Thanks for viewing and your coments!

[Jan]

Hi Carlos, actually I think some of the images are overprocessed and it turned out as the medium scale artifacts, for example in the region of Ha in m78. Looks like you have a very nice skies, so I am sure you do not have to push the processing that much. As the golden rule I would say "less is sometimes more". I know there is this temptation to process further and furtherr to get more and more, but sometimes it is necessary to stop, go step of more back, or even restart the processing again, otherwise the images loose their aesthetic quality. I am sorry for the critique, it is meant to help, not to hurt you:)

[Geoff]

Interesting comments Jan. I know that I am often guilty of  trying to  push things a bit to far, but it really gets down to what you are trying to show.  Should you push to reveal something that would otherwise not be seen at the risk of introducing an appearance of artificiality? I suppose it also depends on what you are used to seeing in an astrophotograph. As techniques, processing and technology get better we see images that look quite different from previous versions. They seem strange and perhaps wrong because we are not used to seeing such astroimages.  After a few years they start looking normal because everyone is doing the same thing. I am certainly more accepting of the processing of Carlos's pics than I would have been before starting with PI.
Geoff

[Jan]

Hi Geoff, you might be right, but I see I have to write more to explain how did I mean my comment.

Do you remeber when HDR came into wide use with normal photographs? Meny people were using the HDR technique expensivelly. But it is over now, because it was just a kind of fashion, technically based method of processing showing that IT IS POSSIBLE TO GO FURTHER, but results were finaly not always pleasant to the eye because of the lack of natural look.

This is exactly what I meant by my comment - the opportunity to stress processing even more does not necessarilly mean the result is better. It is just showing how much processing is possible, but does not mean that it is pleasant to the eye and the reality is not screwed just too much, over the good taste.

Of course there is another aspect of astrophotography - do we want it REAL or CREATIVE? Real I mean properly calibrated and linear stretched image, which would look too flat with lack of detail in faint nebulae and so on. Most of us therefore go creative way, majority of us uses kind of HDR methods and we push details and saturation to where it is not in reality - just to show pleasant image for human eyes and brain. The improving sensitivity of the sensors, better optics and mounts, better processing software, all this helps to show more of faint stuff of course - but still it is not the reason to introduce artifacts by overprocessing, which I am affraid I see on some of the above images. For me the better electronics and software work in the oposite direction - to reveal more we need even LESS AGRESSIVE processing to reach BETTER results.

I am not sure that exagerating the processing is the correct way to show that you are different from other people making all the similar pictures. There may be many similar shots of same objects, but still you can say who has really mastered his work - if you look closer, this is obvious without need of beeing strikingly different.

I really hope I was not too tough on the author! By my experience, it is always nice to have some ovation, but only the critical comment may make you think about if it might not be true, think about where the edge between GOOD and TOO MUCH is, and move forward in your work.
 
Jan
http://astrofotky.cz/~Oko1/
 

[Carlos Milovic]

Hi Jan

As Geoff pointed, this has a lot to do with what the authot (me) wants to show. I deliberaty "overprocessed" the medium/large scales. Why? First, I do want to make something different, not just because I can, but because AP would be too boring if everybody just tries to mimic what others are doing. This is my seal, my thumbprint. Second, my intention is to be aggressive. Provoke the viewer, with a more dynamic view of the object. I create that by enhancing local contrast. I don't believe that these are artifacts, in the sense that this is not "information created" by the algorithm, but rather is real information that was lost below that poor local contrast.  I agree that images loose "linearity", and there is no more a true intensity correspondence between objects... but this is all about perceptions, not about doing scientific photometry. I do not aim for a truthfull/accurate representation of the universe. I want to exploit the images, to create something new.

What makes an image pleasant to the eye? I think that this is tough, because we cannot generalize. Most people are accustomed to some representations of the universe, and anything that deviates from that is not pleasant. Just as an example, I dislike a lot Hubble's palette, since the colors are so alienated. I have my paradigms, and other people have others. And this is what defines what is beautiful for each one.  Once we change our paradigms, or understand the paradigm of the author, we may begin to appreciate or understand the message. This is not about mastering the work. It is about being truly creative, and releasing some chains. Some people will like it, and some won't. But if this leaves no one indifferent, I succeeded.

[chris_todd]

Very nicely stated, Carlos!  And I like the new pictures as well, especially the Eta Carina nebula.  Was that taken with the refractor or the 135mm lens (I'm guessing the refractor)?

[Carlos Milovic]

Thanks Chris. Yes, it was done with the Megrez.

[jeffweiss9]

Carlos-
  Thanks for the clear exposition what you are attempting and also for posting the beautiful and interesting crop of images.  Your exposition strikes a chord with me since I have certainly found that if your creativity leads to images that don't resemble strongly what people expect to see of well-known targets, they are, in my case anyway, usually not received well.  I take your position as encouragement for trying to be a little different and hopefully creative in showing things as you see them.
   Also I agree about the Hubble pallette.
Clear skies,
Jeff

Hi Jan

As Geoff pointed, this has a lot to do with what the authot (me) wants to show. I deliberaty "overprocessed" the medium/large scales. Why? First, I do want to make something different, not just because I can, but because AP would be too boring if everybody just tries to mimic what others are doing. This is my seal, my thumbprint. Second, my intention is to be aggressive. Provoke the viewer, with a more dynamic view of the object. I create that by enhancing local contrast. I don't believe that these are artifacts, in the sense that this is not "information created" by the algorithm, but rather is real information that was lost below that poor local contrast.  I agree that images loose "linearity", and there is no more a true intensity correspondence between objects... but this is all about perceptions, not about doing scientific photometry. I do not aim for a truthfull/accurate representation of the universe. I want to exploit the images, to create something new.

What makes an image pleasant to the eye? I think that this is tough, because we cannot generalize. Most people are accustomed to some representations of the universe, and anything that deviates from that is not pleasant. Just as an example, I dislike a lot Hubble's palette, since the colors are so alienated. I have my paradigms, and other people have others. And this is what defines what is beautiful for each one.  Once we change our paradigms, or understand the paradigm of the author, we may begin to appreciate or understand the message. This is not about mastering the work. It is about being truly creative, and releasing some chains. Some people will like it, and some won't. But if this leaves no one indifferent, I succeeded.

[Jan]

Hi,
Actually I think you are not completelly right about the artifacts. How can I know these are artifacts? Because formerly, I have ended up with same look as your images do by using extensivelly some local contrast enhancement+ other functions. And even if it was not artifacts, the level of these fainter parts of the nebulae is as low as the level of backround, and than it looks TO ME (not pushing anyone into the same opinion!) like holes in the actual hydrogen (or whatever else) cloud - and this is not true. 

ANYWAY - if this is your intention to be different, then everything is ok. Unfortunatelly i was born so that I do tell things openly, whether I think something is good and even bad to me, apologies is I touch somebody, but I did not mean to hurt.

Nothing more to say to this topic, so good luck with imaging!

Hi Jan

As Geoff pointed, this has a lot to do with what the authot (me) wants to show. I deliberaty "overprocessed" the medium/large scales. Why? First, I do want to make something different, not just because I can, but because AP would be too boring if everybody just tries to mimic what others are doing. This is my seal, my thumbprint. Second, my intention is to be aggressive. Provoke the viewer, with a more dynamic view of the object. I create that by enhancing local contrast. I don't believe that these are artifacts, in the sense that this is not "information created" by the algorithm, but rather is real information that was lost below that poor local contrast.  I agree that images loose "linearity", and there is no more a true intensity correspondence between objects... but this is all about perceptions, not about doing scientific photometry. I do not aim for a truthfull/accurate representation of the universe. I want to exploit the images, to create something new.

What makes an image pleasant to the eye? I think that this is tough, because we cannot generalize. Most people are accustomed to some representations of the universe, and anything that deviates from that is not pleasant. Just as an example, I dislike a lot Hubble's palette, since the colors are so alienated. I have my paradigms, and other people have others. And this is what defines what is beautiful for each one.  Once we change our paradigms, or understand the paradigm of the author, we may begin to appreciate or understand the message. This is not about mastering the work. It is about being truly creative, and releasing some chains. Some people will like it, and some won't. But if this leaves no one indifferent, I succeeded.

[Carlos Milovic]

I said that the local contrast enhancement "destroys" intensity correspondence in the image. This is true for any spatially dependent intensity function, specially those used in HDR processing. If I would be absolutly faithfull about every intensity in the image, nebulaes would have very little contrast, and stars would be twice or more their size.

BTW, critics are highly wellcome. Don't worry, no ofense taked, or anything. Discrepanses/discussions like this one make us think, and elaborate on our own views of our work.