Manaheim's Ultimate Guide to Night Photography

D-B-J · Jan 8, 2012

I would also suggest shooting some HDR's of the location. Even if you don't make an HDR from the three, five, seven, or nine images, it is still nice to have the bracketed photo's in case only single point has hugely blown highlights. Having bracketed, you will be able to mask in the un-blown photo, thus rendering your photo even better. Still, great list Manaheim!

manaheim · Jan 8, 2012

iresq said:
Although every shot is unique, could you share your settings just so we can get sense for how you captured? Thanks.

They are probably on the iexif info on each, but generally I shoot at f8ish or around 30 seconds. Iso 200.

WesternGuy · Jan 8, 2012

Thanks manaheim for a most valuable post. Great info for those of us who have wondered how to even start in Night Photography. :thumbup:

Cheers,

WesternGuy

Garbz · Jan 10, 2012

One thing to mention is that the camera shake due to shutter slap has a very limited useful effect. Usually it's shutterspeeds between 1/4 and 1/30th as the camera shake only lasts 50-100ms. So if you're taking a 9 second exposure the shutterlockup function won't change a thing.

iresq · Jan 10, 2012

Garbz said:
One thing to mention is that the camera shake due to shutter slap has a very limited useful effect. Usually it's shutterspeeds between 1/4 and 1/30th as the camera shake only lasts 50-100ms. So if you're taking a 9 second exposure the shutterlockup function won't change a thing.

Useful effect? Can you explain or did you use the wrong word?

manaheim · Jan 11, 2012

Oh, I hadn't considered that, Garbz... good point.

Though... is it NO effect, or effectively so little as to be none? If the latter, and going for perfection, even that hairs breath of extra slick sharpness seems like it wouldn't hurt.

bratkinson · Jan 12, 2012

Many, many thanks for sharing your techniques for outstanding results at night! I can't wait to get out there and expose some pixels!

Beast95 · Jan 16, 2012

Very very helpful. I actually found this entertaining to read

thanks for sharing!

davesnothere11 · Jan 16, 2012

Thanks for the tips.
I didn't realize you could do the star patterns around the lights naturally as such.

BZSPhotography · Jan 16, 2012

Thanks a lot for this, really helpful

Garbz · Jan 16, 2012

iresq said:
Useful effect? Can you explain or did you use the wrong word?

Wrong word. Camera Slap has a very limited time range where it can affect your photos would be the correct way of saying it.

manaheim said:
Though... is it NO effect, or effectively so little as to be none? If the latter, and going for perfection, even that hairs breath of extra slick sharpness seems like it wouldn't hurt.

Depends on the photo and the duration. If you have bright point sources then you could effectively still have slight problems down to the 1 second range. But you can judge exactly hhow much of an effect this would have on your photo by trying to take a photo with all settings the same except with a 1/5th shutter speed. See how much light is effectively contributed to your final image.

Also remember that if you have bright points, the longer the exposure the more the bright points tend to bleed out of their point of origin, so even if you do get a few bright spots at 1/5th shutter speed, they would unlikely appear to be any different with mirror lockup engaged vs disengaged at 2 or 3 seconds.

To visualise what I'm doing a horrible job of explaining: Think of a photo of the moon at 1/100th shutter speed, ISO 100, f/8. It is likely to be a smooth sphere. If you misfocus slightly it can blur the moon by a pixel or so and it would be noticeable. Yet take a 1 second photo of the moon and it turns into this bright nova with absolutely zero definition. A slight blur of a few pixels makes no difference as the object has no edge. Effectively even when going for perfect sharpness if the exposure in the seconds range then the mirror slap won't have any relevant effect.