Tag Archives: #Vignetting

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Orion in the evening sky.

The other night, I used my Nikon Z7-II to capture the constellation Orion in the evening sky.

Although an amazing camera, when fitted with the Z-series 24-70mm lens, this picture making combination suffers from vignetting when used at the widest aperture.

I needed an 4.0 aperture to picture the starry sky while keeping my total exposure time to just 30 seconds, when set at ISO 200.

To minimize the effects of the vignette, I converted the NEF RAW file to a PNG file using DxO Pure Raw software. Once converted, I imported this file into Lightroom to make a few corrections.

Below is both the adjusted file direct from the NEF RAW, and the adjusted PNG file to show the advantage offered by converting the RAW using Pure Raw.

The light streaks moving through the image are from an eastward Amtrak Keystone bound for Philadelphia on the old PRR Main Line. Please note that in both versions, the images have been compressed by the Word Press platform used by Tracking the Light to display the photos via the internet.

Scaled JPG made from the NEF RAW file without DxO Pure Raw conversion. Note the constellation Orion in the sky toward the top center of the photo.
This is the same NEF RAW file as above, but following conversions to PNG format using DxO Pure Raw to denoise the image, and more importantly, eliminate the effects of vignetting inherant to the 24-70mm Nikkor lens at f4.0. Notice the more uniform rendition of the night sky, especially in the corners of the frame.

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