Night HDR

[awilsh2]

Hi
I hope to go to Madeira shortly and I hope to use HDR for night shots of the Xmas lights. I am assuming that they will be the same as many such illuminations, and the lights will follow a sequence. Has anyone any advise on how take the initial shots? In daylight, lighting levels will be fairly constant, but these night shots could vary wildly.

As you may gather, I have never tried HDR to date, and while I could easily work out how to take the bracketed shots, this may be a little too taxing for a newbie.

Any help or advice appreciated
Allan

 

[jono46k]

Hi,
HDR can produce great night shots,
I'd recommend shooting in RAW, with exposure bracketing. And for the exposure bracketing, it's going to have to take some experimentation with the shutter speed. A low aperture might not be a bad idea either, perhaps 3-4.
So when you arrive and wish to take a HDR, set the camera up with a tripod, and increase the shutter to say 15 seconds, and see what the result is. If it's too bright, lower it, and vice versa.
Try to avoid a high ISO in my opinion, it simply ruins the photo with noise, so keep that fairly low, and play around with the shutter instead.
I have a HDR tutorial on my blog, but that doesn't have night help on there, but i'll try and come up with a night one!
18-55mm Perspective.

Good Luck!
Jonathan

 

[ann]

use your histogram to determine the exposures, go from shoulder to shoulder.

 

[awilsh2]

As the light for the illuminations may vary from shot to shot in the bracketed photos, will it adversely affect the HDR process?

I have read a little on HDR already, and shoot in RAW when faced with tricky lighting situations, and also take a bracketed shot for insurance.
Thanks for your patience so far
Allan

 

[ann]

donot change your fstop for those changes, only shutter speeds. HDR technique is meant to be used with serious contrast ranges.

I would also suggest that you not make serious correction in RAW, except for any CA correction and dust. After merging make all other adjustments. Yes you can in the bridge options of PS apply any and all changes to the number of exposures taken for a specific scene as you can the CA adjustments and dust, but many feel you will have better control after the fact.

you might just test various methods to determine which works best for you.

 

[Provo]

night shots I highly recommend a sturdy tripod a sand bag helps to secure it more
and a remote trigger to avoid camera shake. When firing your shot you will notice one of the shots will leave the shutter open more then the others this is the critical exposure any little shake and it will be a blurred shot. Good Luck

 

[ann]

also, if you have mirror lock up use it!