Night Sky - Long Expose

[docphysics]

I had fun playing with the nice long exposure times of the D90. I captured some planes in the night sky last night.

 

[Samanax]

You might want to use a lower ISO setting to reduce the amount of noise you're getting in your images. For long exposure shots I use ISO 100.

 

[TJ K]

Nice shots but I would like them much more if you brought the ISO down to 100 the pics would be much better! These pics are too bright imo. GL and keep shooting.

 

[docphysics]

OK, cool. I'll bring the ISO down tonight, and shoot some more. Thanks!

As a side note, in general, when is it a good time to raise the ISO?

 

[McNugget801]

OK, cool. I'll bring the ISO down tonight, and shoot some more. Thanks!

Mix it up a bit .. stars will start moving around 30 seconds so depending on the brightness of the sky you will want to adjust your ISO. If its dark out you can get some awesome shots with a high ISO.

This shot was 30seconds f/2.8 ISO1600

 

[docphysics]

whoa! nice shot! :thumbup:

 

[bigtwinky]

That is great summit! Very awesomeness

As a side note, in general, when is it a good time to raise the ISO?

I am of the mind that the ISO should stick to 100 as much as possible. I raise it when I am unable to get a fast enough shutter speed for a required aperture and I dont have a tripod.

Ex: I want to shoot at f/8. But due to the light conditions, I get a shutter speed of 1/30 at ISO 100. For whatever reason, I believe this is too slow (subject moving,..), so I might up the ISO to 400 so that the shutter could be up to 1/120 (ISO 200 = 1/60 shutter in these conditions, still too low), keeping the same aperture.

On my XSI, while it goes to ISO 1600, I pretty much try to avoid even shooting at ISO 800 unless really necessary.

 

[McNugget801]

When I first started doing night photos everyone told me not to use a high ISO... but high ISO shots with correct (shorter) exposure time and post noise reduction have yielded the best results...... mostly due to the fact that you can see the more stars.

This shot is also shot at ISO1600 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/summit42/3864934742/
Its about 15 back to back 30 second exposures stacked together. I removed the all the saturation from the sky and boosted the contrast... end result was pretty cool.
The fun thing for me with long exposures is experimenting .... don't limit your self based on other peoples advice just go have fun and bring lots of beer.

 

[bigtwinky]

See, there is always a reason why rules are meant to be broken... you just have to find the right way to break them :thumbup:

 

[beala]

Some beautiful shots guys!

And for those using film, don't forget about reciprocity failure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_failure#Reciprocity_failure

Because of that, lower speed films are often faster than faster films in low light conditions (So lower speed films are often better than higher speed films for night photography).

 

[docphysics]

Thanks for the advice everybody! I'll see what tonight brings!

 

[512]

the firs one looks quite good, the second one is too noisy :meh: