Night time photography - any hints and tips?

[Hickster]

Quote: Originally Posted by wibbly

You may consider it to be cheating yam yam, its called technology, and it plays a MAJOR part in nearly all digital pics nowadays to get the best out of them (or so I'm told)

but where do you draw the line between a picture of something real and a piece of graphic art?

[wibbly]

Hey, I'm just reporting the facts...

If you speak to some of the illustrious names mentioned here for their photography and others on M2 and ask them if they use photoshop to bring out the best in their pics, I'm sure they'd all own up to using it

[Cooperpot]

I wish i had photoshop!

[wibbly]

You can download things like picasa which offers free software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC.

http://picasa.google.com/index.html

Try it, its actually quite good

[hafid]

Quote: Originally Posted by wibbly

And don't forget Photoshop.... 50% picture.... 50% photo manipulation so I'm led to believe...It's very difficult to get that quality of picture without manipulation

I disagree...all the pics I took were 85% photo at least. To say that you can't achieve high quality without manipulation is misleading. You need to learn to utilize your environment or find one that will give you what you want to perceive from a picture. I have some shots that are taken in extremely low light situations but I still tried to come up with something.









I wish I would have turned off the fog lights in this one.

[wibbly]

Quote: Originally Posted by hafid

I disagree...all the pics I took were 85% photo at least. To say that you can't achieve high quality without manipulation is misleading. You need to learn to utilize your environment or find one that will give you what you want to perceive from a picture. I have some shots that are taken in extremely low light situations but I still tried to come up with something.

I bow to your superior knowledge I've seen a lot of your pics and they are stunning...

I'm only quoting what I've read on a lot of other forums, including the one you frequent a lot of the time

[MGB Boy]

Speaking as a previously self-identified curmudgeonly film user, I can say my pics aren't photoshopped at all. That may be a good thing or a bad thing depending on what one thinks of the pics, but it is what it is...

-Ricardo

[Tazminia]

Howdy all. First off, I'd like to thank Paul for this thread (starting and combining,etc) since I have wanted to dabble with night photography since recently getting my Canon D30. I've been using it mostly in Auto/ PHD mode (push here dummy). I now plan on using a boatload of these tips everyone has been offering to see if I can pull off some of the shots seen in here.
I'd also like to throw my two cents into the ring on the subject of Photoshop use. I use it whenever I get the chance and sometimes it falls on both sides of correction or digital art. I don't think it's cheating when I use it to correct a screw-up on my part-usually lousy choice of light settings. (I find that the Auto Contrast makes almost all of my pictures look better) I would hope anyone who does use PS would at least own up to it. Of course, they have to go to sleep at night knowing they lied about using/not using it, but that's on them.
Until such time as I get as good -if ever- as a hafid or scottyb, then I may not use it as much, but for now I'll use it (and annotate it accordingly) to either correct my mistakes or to enhance it for dramatic effect-like digital art- and hope no one thinks less of my work for it.
Thanks to MGBboy for that lighting list he made. I plan on trying those as a starting point and will (hopefully) adjust as needed for my camera. At least I have a rough idea of where to start now, so thanks mgbboy.
Maybe I can get a few decent night shots soon and hopefully get some posted.
Keep up the great tips and ideas people..us newbies can always use more!!

digitally yours,
Taz

[snid]

If you're using digital, life is much easier. You take a wild guess at some settings, then check to ol' histogram on the back of the camera (for the digital rebel / Canon 300 / 350 anyway). There's vertical lines marking segments on the histogram. You want things pretty much centered on the histogram. To move things one segment to the right, you double the exposure (double the exposure time, double the ISO, or open the lens up one stop - smaller f number). To move the histogram one segment left, half the exposure time, half the ISO or close the lens one stop (bigger f number).

Digital "noise" will be an issue. Using a high ISO will create noise, but so will keeping the shutter open a long time. I guess there's a sweet spot somewhere, but I haven't mastered that.

Photoshop, or whatever program you want, will be almost mandatory with digital. Fix the white balance in post processing - most apps let you click on something that it supposed to be white, and it will make it white. You can also try doing some noise reduction via software, but it usually winds up making the image too soft.

f/6.3 - 390 seconds


This one was something like 16 minutes:


I don't have any good night MINI shots yet, though.

[hafid]

snid, that's a gorgeous shot of the earth's movement over time!

[Paul]

These are a few quick shots I took outside my house and down the lane just outside last night.

They seem better already, so given some time to play I'm feeling more confident already.

The compositions are quite poor, but I was just wanting to try a few different artificial light settings.

Oh, and wonky one of the xmas tree (using ony it's lights as a light source)....

[xtremepsionic]

Wow, excellent pictures Paul, these are loads better than the ones you posted a while back!

[Paul]

Been taking a few more shots with the Canon 300D, generally much better.

HOWEVER, around here there's loads of sodium lamps all over the place, and my nights shots pretty much all look yellow. I've tried auto white balance and one that's preset for fluorescent bulbs, neither made much difference.

[Haggi]

paul there should be a tungsetn light seeting on that one and that should help its not soo much to do with the white ballance but on the cannons when set in full manual mode you can eneter the RGB set up and redcue the ammount of yellow manualy and then set on iso 100 for night and the exposure should be between 4 and 2 seconds and no flash tri pod a must

[Paul]

Here's some of my recent efforts. You can tell the ones under the (overwhealming) sodium/orange lights of Milton Keynes. Sure I can take out the saturation, but I'd like some colour!

Also need to find some nice locations!