your best nightshot advice?

[Synergy]

The nearest I’ve ever attempted to a night time landscape shot is of a castle in Cornwall UK called St Michaels Mount . I was staying in a place nearby, with the castle in the distance across the bay. I was taking pictures through my telescope of the stars but out of interest I took half a dozen of the whole bay with just the street lighting to light the coastline and castle. As I recall, I set aperture wide open, focusing to infinity and with shutter speed I bracketed between about 1 –5 seconds. The results where not great…

Cheers

Yuk! light polution! :evil:

 

[luckydog]

Night photography is (i believe) best mastered by practice. All the advice regarding shutter speed, aperture settings are all correct but only for particular type of shots.

This is not my best shot but i will use as an example anyway

This skyline shot was taken about 700 metres from the opposite shoreline.

The settings will depend on what sort of shot/effect you want. If there is lots of light in the subject, keep the shutter speed down (this one is only 3 seconds). To long a shutter speed will obviously cause the lighting to blow out, and a too brief exposure will give dull lighting.

Like i said it's all trial and error. If you intend on using film to do the work, maybe play with a digital camera first and note the settings etc before using up rolls of expensive film.

 

[Dew]

im using digital.. i can shoot it 100 times and not give my hubby a headache

 

[Bob_McBob]

I tried for years to get a decent picture of a full moon. One day a pro photographer told me: speed 1/ISO, f8 for 100 speed film, f16 for 200. I took it as gospel and it did work! I have an 11x14 print of a beautiful full moon! How he came up with that, I have no idea. Most likely years of experimenting. Hope this helps.

This is actually a general rule of thumb, like the sunny 16 rule. 1/film speed, f/8 for the moon, 1/film speed, f/16 for a sunny day. Some people call it the "moony 8 rule"