Night photography - highlights blown - HELP needed!

LaFoto · Feb 14, 2008

Earlier this year and once again on Saturday (last) I tried my hands on a bit of night photography once more, and I NEVER seem to get the highlights right - ever. What am I doing wrong? I go for a very narrow aperture (f22 or f29), low iso (but not as low as 100, maybe that is the mistake?), and adequate exposure (so I think), but ...

1.

This was taken at DUSK only in order to still have a nice sky ... but the face of the clock always disappeared, for example! No matter how I tried (and I measured OFF the face of the clock, which did not help a lot, either)

2.

Same evening, time has passed, the sky grew darker ... but I really don't like how the traffic lights and trails came out (would have done without any car but that situation was not to be had). The only thing I do like about the traffic lights is that I captured them in all three colours within one exposure --- plus I like the star in the sky. So I kept this photo.

On to the ones I took on Saturday, and in the first just about ALL the highlights of the petrol/gas station and of the company next to it (flood-lit company sign) blew ... why?

3.

f29 at ISO400, 4 seconds ... maybe I should have gone down to the camera's lowest 100 ISO and done an 8 second exposure?

More light overall, better result, I think:

4.

Still makes me wonder how Mohain got is all unblown light trails in London, for example!?!?!?

Alex_B · Feb 14, 2008

LaFoto said:
Still makes me wonder how Mohain got is all unblown light trails in London, for example!?!?!?

Re-read his recent thread! He mentions software to fix the highlights later

Also, in your case, the surroundings are very dark, not strongly illuminated (unlike London at night)!

Big Ben gave me exact the same problem with the blown out clock. I mean the white is ok blown out, but the structures often get totally lost.

Helen B · Feb 14, 2008

I think that you have done well with both the exposure and the compostion.

The brightness range of urban and suburban night shots is often beyond the capabilities of the sensor, and exposure blending may be the only answer for static objects if you want to avoid blown-out areas. Shooting Raw and using exposure and contrast controls to recover as much highlight detail as possible will get you as far as you can go with a single digital exposure. Raw is better for highlight manipulation both because it works on all the data available (main reason), and because the Raw format has better tonal resolution in the high values. Most other formats have a tone curve applied that compresses the highlight data, so it's better to do highlight work in Raw.

In 2 you have directional sources (car headlights and traffic lights) pointing directly at the camera. It's difficult to avoid having them blown out, and it's also difficult to apply exposure blending to moving sources.

Best,
Helen

DragonHeart · Feb 14, 2008

#4 is My favorite. I havent tried nighttime shooting yet as I just got My DSLR, but will try some soon.

Tennessee Landscape · Feb 14, 2008

Not an expert here, but all my night shots have been at ISO 100, never higher.....don't know that exposed for much shorter than 15 sec either....JMTC

Ronman · Feb 14, 2008

I really like the first picture a lot.

You can see in my Fla photos I have the same problem, only I figured the dynamic range of the setting was too great for my camera and I was OK with it. I'll be much more critical of my blowouts now. Thanks a lot. :sexywink: