Christmas Lights Photos and another bluring question

For some background, I just started in the hobby back in August and am working with the Canon T6 and kit lenses that came with the package (a 18-55mm f4.5-29; and a 75-300 f5.6-40).

 

Q1. My wife and I are going to be heading out this coming weekend to look at the lights around town and I'd like to get some shots.

 

Are there any specific exposure settings I should work towards. Although I have a general understanding of the Holy Trinity of exposure settings (shutter, aperture and ISO) I haven't mastered playing with them quite yet.

 

Q2. My other question relates to trying to blur water falls and rapids. Each time I've tried to blur water coming over rocks or some other item by lengthening the shutter speed (slowing it down), I end up blowing out the exposure. The result is something that is way over exposed.

 

Again, are there specific settings I should be working towards? I have not yet figured out how to stack exposures or use gradient filters if that's the answer and I'm not even sure my camera will automatically take multiple exposures that could be stacked later.

 

Thanks in advance for any help.

I was out photographing Christmas lights on Saturday.

 

They can be tricky to expose for because a scene tends to be mostly dark areas with very bright highlights-I ended up using the spot meter on my camera(partial meter on a Canon) and still dialing in -1 to -2 stops of EC for most photos.

 

In my case, I was shooting aperture priority and had the ISO set at 12,800. In looking back over them today, my shutter speeds were high enough that I could have easily used ISO 3200 and still had a perfectly hand-holdable shutter speed. That's just how I did it, though.

 

As far as blurring water in waterfalls-I suggest parking the camera on a tripod(you really need shutter speeds 1 second or better, and ideally even longer than that) and turning the ISO down the ISO as low as it will go on your camera. Use aperture priority(Av) and pick an aperture as small as the lens will allow you to-usually this will be f/22 or f/32-usually you want to avoid apertures this small as they kill sharpness, but in this case it's inevitable. In many case, the shutter speed still won't be long enough and you need to use something called a neutral density filter to block light going into the lens. In a pinch, a polarizer will work as roughly a 2 stop neutral density filter, although for big fluffy plumes of water you want something even stronger than that so that you can get shutter speeds several seconds long. Once again, a strong tripod is critical, and it's also a good idea to avoid touching the camera right before or after the exposure-a cable release/remote control is the classic way to do this, but you can also use the self timer(you should be able to go into the menus and set it to something like 2 seconds rather than the standard 10-this is why cameras allow you to do this).

Q1 No specific setting, but use raw files. Do not crank ISO higher than 400. Star effect filters mey help to make it more attractive. To make it even more attractive you need a high grade prime lens and a tripod.

Q2 You need a good (b+w or Rodestock, Zeiss) ND gray filters with 4 or 8 factor and a tripod.

It is a good idea to shoot Christmas lights during dusk when it is not too dark out. Otherwise you get a black scene with just a string of bright lights showing. Evening may also be a good time to get blurred falls and rapids. With the camera on a tripod you may need 2 or 3 seconds of exposure to lighten up a dark scene and that will give you the blurry water you want. Or get the neutral density filters in order to shoot at any time.

Thanks, guys. This is helpful. Keeping my fingers crossed.

The Xmas lights question has been answered by the replies above.

 

WRT blurred water (a bit passe and overdone IMO), you're looking at exposures of at least one second, and at a mid aperture to get good depth-of-field. In 'average' daylight @ 100 ISO, that needs a 5 or 6 stop ND filter, even more if you want a shallow depth-of-field too.

 

You might possibly get away with using a variable-grad filter, but a fixed 6 stop or 64x filter would be better.

 

Unless your camera has good Live view gain, you'll struggle to see anything through such a filter, so you need to compose before adding the filter, and of course you need a tripod.

 

You do not need to overspend on those German filter brands mentioned above. Hoya filters are equal to anything else made - they are, after all, the biggest specialist manufacturer and seller of filters in the world, as well as being a major manufacturer and supplier of optical glass.

 

In fact you can probably get away with a cheap eBay filter, since any colour cast can be fairly easily corrected from a RAW file. It depends how dedicated to this kind of long-exposure work you want to get, because a good quality ND filter isn't going to cost peanuts. Especially if you have a lens with a large filter thread.

Edited November 27, 2018 by rodeo_joe|1

There is a thread on pictures of buildings at night, which isn't so different.

 

As above, exposing for both lights and foreground is hard.

 

For white lights, you can mostly overexpose them until the rest of the image looks good.

For colored lights, if you overexpose them they will tend to white by the time the rest of

the picture is close to the right exposure.

 

As noted above, if you do it when it isn't completely dark, you often get better results.

 

Not exactly the same, but not so long ago, we were at Butchart Gardens on Vancouver

Island (BC, Canada). Some days they stay open at night, with lights in the gardens,

and I tried some different combinations of ISO, aperture, and shutter speed to get the

right effect, starting just about at dusk.

 

Those were either handheld, or with the camera setting on or leaning against something.

 

There are also lighted fountains, which have some of the same problems as waterfalls,

though without the need for an ND filter.

Are there any specific exposure settings I should work towards

 

As with any photography of both very bright and very dark in the same picture, different exposures will produce usable, but greatly different results. Expose for the lights, for dark background, etc.

Re bluring water: since you are just starting out, let's go back to the basics underlying the answers you got.

 

If you haven't yet, you need to learn about the "exposure triangle": shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. If you use a longer shutter speed, you are letting in more light, so to avoid overexposing, you have to compensate. One way is to close down the aperture (higher f/stop number) to let in more light. You can also drop ISO to the lowest level you can to avoid amplifying the signal picked up by the sensor. (It's a good idea only to raise it from this base when you need to anyway. You will get less noise and more dynamic range if you keep the ISO low.)

 

The problem is that if it is reasonably bright, you probably can't get an aperture and ISO that will be enough to compensate for the longer shutter speed. That is why a few people suggested ND (neutral density) filters: they simply cut down light.

 

I end up between Rodeo Joe and Ruslan in this respect. IMHO, it is not at all necessary to spend the money for top shelf ND filters. Maybe once you are more experienced, but not now. (Full disclosure: I have been doing photography for many decades and only one of my ND filters has been one of the brands Ruslan mentioned. However, I wouldn't buy cheap filters on eBay. Cheap ND filters often have a color cast, and if that color cast is complex, it can be very hard to remove unless you shoot with a color checker. In fact, I had to return one fairly expensive one from a top brand because I was unable to correct the color cast. You can buy midpriced filters (screw-on, not square) that are very good in this respect. My current favorite is Marumi. They are reasonably inexpensive, and the ones I have are virtually free of color casts.