Sky Diffuser
Description
Compare these three Milky Way photos above Brittany of France, all taken nearly at the same time and with the same setting but the photographer had used a star diffuser filter on the lens for the middle one and a normal diffuser for the right image. Diffuser filters are used to create soften images in portrait photography but they also diffuse light sources without affecting much the sharpness and contrast of the image, so it is different from the effect of out of focus. For wide-field night sky photography they are occasionally used to make more clear views of constellation by enlarging the image size of brighter stars. This way they also help in better recording star colors.
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comments (2)
An amazing tip Laurent. I wondered how this was accomplished. Thank you very much.
May 22, 2010 at 1:18 pmHi Chip Porter,
May 25, 2010 at 12:44 pmthe technique is explained in the caption. Each picture is a panorama of (almost) the same star-field:
– left image: no filter (the star are sharp and rather small, even the brightest one).
– middle image: “star” filter (for the cross around the bright stars, the constellation are easily visible)
– right image: diffuser filter (the brightest stars are the bigger, the constellation are easily visible)