OutSTANDING photography . . .

daveB110 wrote:
For those not familiar with the area, this volcano stands beside another, that does not erupt. That one is sometimes hiked. The one pictured would be off limits.

Yes, that view is right outside my office window. I support a manufacturing plant in Colima. The areas around the volcanoes are considered unsafe by the locals.
mm49

We overnighted in Colima last year in January (hotel) and in the morning as we headed east, there was a lenticular cloud over this same mountain. RYV

For those not familiar with the area, this volcano stands beside another, that does not erupt. That one is sometimes hiked. The one pictured would be off limits.

There is a small gain to be made in image loading time by stripping out the metadata.
My guess is the the DailyMail strips out the metadata and does anything else they can to their web page images that will reduce server load and speed up their page load speed.

Image: M-a-2_1427970366256.jpg has some serious luminance noise in the sky portions of the photo. You can also see some movement/streaking in a few of the stars in the peripery of the same sky/image (I don't think it is lens chromatic aberation)...

As for "finagling". . .absolutely! Personally, I shoot in RAW format and every image is imported for post-processing with minor color, noise reduction, lens correction, etc, filters.

Sure; me, too. Very minor color correction. I tend not to do noise reduction (always use a camera with low noise over your entire ISO range of interest), because it severely distorts the base image no matter how you try and minimize the invasive nature on digital images with noise reduction algorithms; even the best "photographers denoiser tools" will degrade the raw image (I also correct satellite imagery/data used in scientific analysis using 3D transform shrinkage; K-lld; etc...).

...but looking at those images, either the photographer (or, some post-processor digital lab) have done some SERIOUS modifications to the original capture (probably using Lightroom, or some such).

So, when we try and evaluate the photographer's exceptional skills at "being at right place, at right time", and getting those precise qualities one-off from the lense real time, for sure there was a digital post-processing production crew involved. Not just the photographer. Not to say that this is a bad thing, I would LOVE to see the metadata audit trail leading to those highly-processed images (unless the post-process is classified as a trade secret, by those involved, of course) :B

silversand wrote:
. . .
I download the photos, and opened the EXIF header, and everything was stripped out (ie. no way to determine what equipment and settings and digital effects he used to photo....OR video??) the sequences (ie the image forensics). . .
. . .All the above because I can't find ANY technical info on how/what he made the images with...

The publishing company may have stripped out the EXIF metadata.
Or, the photographer is an amateur. . .and if he's doing post processing then he may be stripping out that information inadvertently simply by not having his software setting put right.

As for "finagling". . .absolutely! Personally, I shoot in RAW format and every image is imported for post-processing with minor color, noise reduction, lens correction, etc, filters.

Certainly the dailymail.co.uk did some post-processing. . .and probably stripped out the metadata as a matter of course.

The lighting is odd on the side of the volcano, stars are pinpoints (no time lapse or open shutter) The plume is very small too. As beautiful as it is there may have been some finagling.

Interesting.

I download the photos, and opened the EXIF header, and everything was stripped out (ie. no way to determine what equipment and settings and digital effects he used to photo....OR video??) the sequences (ie the image forensics).

Also, the eruption sequence (shot from a fixed tripod) time interval can be calculated by observing the locational position of the stars, as they change from image to image.

I'm wondering if he had a video camera (a high quality 3CCD progressive frame video camera, shooting 1080P) trained on the volcano for hours or, days, and just took the stills from the video footage (not luck, but patience!) ??

All the above because I can't find ANY technical info on how/what he made the images with...

This is just awesome!!!