Casual talk about night photography

Here's some casual non-confrontational conversation! :-) When I was an apple-cheeked lad, shooting at night was a wonderful challenge--how to expose enough to get some shadow detail but then how to develop to keep from burning out highlights. It was really tough and a lot of fun. I went on a business trip a few years ago and took a digital SLR; just snapped some pix from my room balcony and I was amazed at the quality--with no work and no calculations and no zones. Amazing! Anyway, easy or hard, I love the look of night photographs.

This is Butchart Gardens, near Victoria BC.

 

Some days they stay open late, with lights on around the gardens.

 

This one is 4s, f/3.5, ISO 200. Tripods aren't allowed (and I didn't have one if they were),

so it is either handheld, or set against some solid object.

 

 

 

According to their website, Butchard Gardens bans selfie-sticks but not tripods, as long as you don't block the pathways.

 

Leavenworth, Washington at Christmas

Sony A7Rii + Batis 25/2, 1/60 at f/4, ISO 1250 (hand-held)

Here's an oldie, Union Pacific's 3985 overnighting in the rail yard when it was out on a goodwill tour nearly 10 years back. I don't generally have too much interest in doing night shots, but wanted something more than the everyday shots you see all over the place (I love operating steam locos). It's a long exposure; much of the light is ambient, but dressed up with multiple pops of a handheld flash that I carried through the scene, running along the side of the engine.

 

 

My understanding is that 3985 has been laid up in the UP shop for repairs since shortly after this. And that it's due to be back in service in 2 or 3 years, waiting in line behind one of the "Big Boys" currently being restored.

 

More info at. Challenger No. 3985

WOW! christmas lights and then Bill's reincarnation of Winston Link! :-) Gorgeous, both of them! Bill, the "running alongside with a handheld flash" reminds me of the couple of rolls of slide film I shot in my yard at night. I put the camera on "bulb," then ran around popping my 285 at myself--winding up with lots of "me" in the front yard and a deep -an understanding of how foolish I looked. ;-) Here's one I may have used before but I love it--a "grab shot" from a christmas tree lot, with the proprietor apparently sound asleep. :-)

Shooting at night has always been fun, certainly more challenging back in my film days. This one of the Herengracht canal in Amsterdam was captured with a D200 held tight on a window sill. I just put it in program mode and let it do its thing.

One way one showed ones versatility in the old film days was by shooting natural light images at night. Nowadays if you show a bit of "noise" (we used to have to tolerate 'grain') everybody piles on your images....

 

 

Then, you had to use GAF 500 film and a Nikkor-S 55mm f/1.2. Nowadays too easy to do to impress.:(

Edited May 11, 2019 by JDMvW

I still like noise - this is the phone camera variety.

I still like noise

 

For us old GAF 500 and High-Speed Ektachrome 400 users, we would have been glad to have 'noise' as low as this much-criticized image:

Cities can be much more appealing at night, especially after en evening shower. This is downtown Dublin, on the river walk with the old Customs Building on the right.

 

Sony A9 + Sony 24-70/2.9, 1/40 @f/5.6, ISO 51200

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If this were shot with digital, I'd be much more likely to bracket exposures. This was from the '90's, last century, overlooking Loyola University Chicago's lakeshore campus.

Those are nice train and Amsterdam photos, as well as the first post!

WOW! christmas lights and then Bill's reincarnation of Winston Link!

 

Thanks, I love those old O. Winston Link photos. But he did REAL work putting those together, planning the event, pouring on enough light to overpower those low-reflectivity machines in action shots. All I did was take an existing static scene, then dress it up a little.

 

As a note, when working with a little handheld flash like I was, it's hard to get enough light to work with a large low-reflectance surface. So I used the light at a glancing angle (making sure that the camera never sees the front of the flash) to get some specular reflection; your light delivers stronger results this way.

Bill, I love the Winston LInkstuff also--just amazing work he did. And we are seeing some fantastic photography in this thread! By the way, I was fascinated by your post on the "don't call me Shirley!" thread about quality control--speaking of amazing work. And Ed's Dublin and akocurek's chicago photo--this is just beautiful photography.

 

Since this is "casual conversations" maybe I'll be forgiven for taking this off-topic a bit but akocurek's great Loyola photo reminds me of a trip wifey and I took 20 years ago, chaperoning a bunch of high-school kids on a trip to Chicago (one of the best cities in America to visit!) We had a truly *terrible* tour guide, and ... you certainly know that part of the Manhattan Project took place at U of Chicago, right? Well, we went past Loyola, and the tour guide told us, "This is the University of Chicago, where America built the atomic bomb that we dropped on Tokyo in 1947." I just LOST it laughing, and said to wifey, "1947 Tokoy? That must have been Godzilla!" :-)

 

Here's a 2002 snowfall shot in my back yard, shot with the various back-yard lights and low snow-filled clouds for light. Shot on 35mm, either with a Nikon FE or a Ricoh SLR. I think it may have been C-41 B&W film but it's been so long I don't remember. I apologize for posting mediocre stuff but it's getting everybody else to post GREAT stuff. ;-)

Bill, I love the Winston LInkstuff also--just amazing work he did. And we are seeing some fantastic photography in this thread! By the way, I was fascinated by your post on the "don't call me Shirley!" thread about quality control--speaking of amazing work. And Ed's Dublin and akocurek's chicago photo--this is just beautiful photography.

 

Since this is "casual conversations" maybe I'll be forgiven for taking this off-topic a bit but akocurek's great Loyola photo reminds me of a trip wifey and I took 20 years ago, chaperoning a bunch of high-school kids on a trip to Chicago (one of the best cities in America to visit!) We had a truly *terrible* tour guide, and ... you certainly know that part of the Manhattan Project took place at U of Chicago, right? Well, we went past Loyola, and the tour guide told us, "This is the University of Chicago, where America built the atomic bomb that we dropped on Tokyo in 1947." I just LOST it laughing, and said to wifey, "1947 Tokoy? That must have been Godzilla!" :)

 

Here's a 2002 snowfall shot in my back yard, shot with the various back-yard lights and low snow-filled clouds for light. Shot on 35mm, either with a Nikon FE or a Ricoh SLR. I think it may have been C-41 B&W film but it's been so long I don't remember. I apologize for posting mediocre stuff but it's getting everybody else to post GREAT stuff. ;-)

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That is funny about the tour guide! I wonder if you went past Loyola's Water Tower campus off Michigan Ave?

Chicago has a lot of opportunities for nighttime photography - Navy Pier, the Museum Campus and Millennium Park, to name a few. Old Town is neat too, if you can find a parking place. Unlike the other places, night is when the traffic there picks up.

 

I don't go alone much any more. You need someone to watch your six (and vice versa). If you listen to someone from Chicago, it's always, "We're okay here. The bad neighborhood is two blocks away." That includes the U of C, where Obama's black suburbans aren't standing watch at the end of every block any more.

 

Loyola must be 5 miles north of U of C. Their downtown buildings (law, dentistry) look nothing at all like a university.

Night photography for me is about lights and how they transform familiar looking scenes.

 

 

 

 

This one more adventurous ...

 

 

 

Night also hides information, and let us fill the gaps with our imagination, and all the associated feelings that come with it.

 

Night photography for me is about lights and how they transform familiar looking scenes.

 

This is one of those - nighttime reflections in the St Louis Arch.

 

 

I was exploring the reflections, and that sort of thing, through the viewfinder with the intention of coming back with a tripod. When the shadowy figures unexpectedly appeared this was the shot.

I am interested in night and low light photography, and am enjoying the images posted in this thread.

 

Using smaller, pocket sized P&S cameras, I never got any really satisfying results when I attempted to shoot at night. I've moved up to an M4/3 system now and have a couple nice lenses- and now get much better results.

 

Fireworks At Moonrise, Mousehole, Cornwall, England, Nov 2017

Olympus EM-1, 12-40mm f2.8 lens, ISO1600, f2.8, 0.6 seconds

 

 

Set the camera at night setting, set the timer (use a tripod) and push the "go" button. Although the above image was timed on my own, not using the camera's timer.

 

Here's one, below, with tripod and timer.

 

Cabin Porch Late Evening, Sept 2017

Olympus EM-1 this time using the amazing little LUMIX G 20/F1.7 II lens

ISO 200, 20mm, f1.7, 1.6 seconds (EV value of -0.3)

 

 

OK so confession time:

These are easy enough, I used the settings in-camera to achieve reasonably satisfying results. Admittedly a nice camera and some nice glass as well... BUT... I am just now learning photography, sort of teaching myself so far, and have (as some of you may know by now) a Hasselblad 500CM, which I've bought a few lenses for.... I've done very little night or low light photography with it, totally experimenting... and of course, there's zero metadata recorded with each shot! I basically know darn little about photography, however. I'm finding my way and getting a feel for how things work, but my analog film work is pure guesswork based on what little I know about film speeds, light, aperture, and exposure times.

 

I sometimes work in Washington, DC. When I do, I get off work, more often than not, at times between 0100 and 0300- late at night. Perfect time for shooting some night shots, especially of popular tourist destinations or buildings. You can stand in the road, set up a tripod, hang out, whatever with not a lot of bother or worry. Although one may attract the attention of the police.....

 

Anyway, one night I thought I'd make an effort to shoot some night shots down there... I shot the Nation's Capitol, the "new" African American Museum Building, the Washington Monument, and from quite a distance, the Lincoln Memorial. All brightly lit. shooting closer to 3 AM, there were an amazing number of people moving about!

 

I set the camera at wide open aperture of 2.8 on the 80mm Zeiss lens. I timed the shots using my phone at varying lengths of exposure- ranging probably from 25 to 45 seconds, having absolutely no idea what I was doing or what I would get....

 

 

Well I was surprised to find the results weren't too bad... The above uncropped shot from a lab scan of "medium" size from a Noritsu scanner. I use my native Mac photo editing software to do basic editing (in all my photos, be they digital or analog), simply auto-adjusting light and color (for color images), levels & curves. SO with just a wee bit of adjustment in post, this image is decent enough- the low lights are fabulous (IMO) and the highlights aren't blown out so badly as to kill all detail. Sheer luck! I think this one was shot at 25-30 seconds. I'm guessing I could have gone to a smaller aperture and/or reduced exposure time and would have gotten much greater detail in the highlights?

 

SO here is one more example of a "blind squirrel finding the occasional nut"... a low light shot from my Nov 2018 trip to Europe... shot from inside a bar in Amsterdam, in late afternoon...

 

I believe this is the unedited version, straight off a download of a scan but loaded into my Zenfolio host pages... (for the record the two analog files Ive posted via links from Zenfolio but the 2 digital files I "dragged and dropped" from my Mac photo files)

 

Another from the Hasselblad 500CM using the awesome Zeiss 80mm f2.8 lens. Absolutely no idea what aperture or timing! Shot with the camera resting on a table top.

Pretty sure this one is unedited- the edited version reveals a bit more in the low lights... Not sure why I love this so much, but this image is one of my all time favorite photos from my experiments with film. I must say I'm not altogether comfortable with "street" style photography, at shooting people I don't know without their permission... I always feel like I have to "sneak" the photo... I guess this photo sort of falls into the category of "street photography"? Even tho it was shot indoors... ? I'm certain I was feeling a bit sheepish, since I was basically shooting straight at the couple sitting at the window table.

 

Inside Looking Out, Wester Cafe, Amsterdam, Netherlands in November 2018

 

 

Cheers, everyone! - and thanks for this great thread!

Edited May 14, 2019 by Ricochetrider

NYC is great for urban night photography.

Untitled by Barry Fisher

 

Untitled by Barry Fisher

 

Untitled by Barry Fisher

 

Untitled by Barry Fisher

Man, we are seeing some GREAT night photography here! :-) I particularly love Uhooru's shot of the woman waiting outside the lobby, and Ricochet's Washington photo--you're right, too, that 80mm Zeiss is just fantastic, isn't it? I'll throw one more into the mix, although it's just a quick "grab shot," my father-in-law sitting on the porch of my parent's house, Christmas lights reflected in his glasses.

This is one of those - nighttime reflections in the St Louis Arch.

 

 

I was exploring the reflections, and that sort of thing, through the viewfinder with the intention of coming back with a tripod. When the shadowy figures unexpectedly appeared this was the shot.

 

Its a very special view of an iconic monument. I also like the plasma like reflections and the tilted base of the arch that go well with the alien like shadowy figures, giving an unsettling feeling. lastly, the touches of red balance the cool grey/metallic tones of the arch. The image has a nice alien/scify feeling to it.

Here's one I shot during mid-November, 2018 in Times Square, NYC