Night Photography

[lukerossknecht]

<p>Eric Arnold speaks the truth, from my limited experience and reading about this subject on the internets.</p>

[robde]

<p>One other item to consider is trying to make your image at twlight instead of complete darkness. I always manually focus. HDR could also work if you are blowing out hot spots.<br>

I just posted three images in my gallery. <a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=899260">http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=899260</a></p>

 

[roger_smith4]

<p>You can get a sense of your focus by shooting and then zooming all the way in to check how it looks. I also use point light sources for focusing with my 20D.<br>

I also wonder if there isn't camera shake involved- the blur looks more like shake and less like a focus issue to me. Are you using a remote release? Are there any vibrations around the camera area? Is your tripod and head stable enough for the lens?<br>

I also would increase exposure slightly, even if it blows out the lights a bit. If you really want both, bracket under and overexposure and blend with photomatix or manually.</p><div></div>

[g dan mitchell]

<p><img src="http://gdanmitchell.com/gallery/v/HumanWorld/Cities/Seattle/SeattleNightPanorama20080102.jpg.html" alt="" /></p>

<p>Just for the heck of it, the above is a Seattle skyline photograph from West Seattle, a stitch of a half dozen or more 12MP full-frame images, shot on a 5D with a 70-200 zoom.</p>

<p>A general rule of thumb for most night photography is to shoot with roughly the same settings you might use for a daytime shot for ISO and aperture, and then compensate via exposure time. So I typically shoot at ISO 100 (though with a 5D II 200 seems fine) and my starting point would be f/8 - not a larger aperture which can reduce sharpness for several reasons.</p>

<p>For focus, try to autofocus on a bright object in the scene. In this photo your 70-200 f/2.8 should be able to AF one of the bright areas along the waterfront or on a building. Then turn AF off.</p>

<p>Pay little or no attention to how "good" the image looks in the LCD display. Pay a LOT of attention to the histogram display. You may get a bit of blown our highlight on some of the very bright lights - this is often OK if the spots are very small. Underexposure is bad news though - you'll end up with a fair amount of noise and even some banding when you correct in post.</p>

<p>Shoot in RAW. The dynamic range between the darkest areas and the brightest lights is huge in a scene like this, and you'll gain perhaps a stop or more of dynamic range that you can recover in post.</p>

<p>Dan</p>

[gordon_conger]

<p>Good evening,<br>

I just want to say how much I appreciate everyones advice. I wrote down the information and went out this evening even though it looked as though I would get dumped on with the rain but I didn't.<br>

I tried several of them and it seems to have improved the shots. I live in Tacoma so I found a spot where I can get a good shot of the city and I can see a big improvement. I am going to go out and try more possibly tomorrow night. Once I get where I think I want to be I will post a new one and see what everyone thinks and any further advice to yet improve it any further.<br>

Thanks again,<br>

Gordon</p>

[g dan mitchell]

<p>"Shoot 2-3 notches UNDERexposed"</p>

<p>Just reading through the thread. I do a lot of night photography, including quite a bit of urban photography including city skylines. In fact I was out last night photographing at the old Mare Island Naval Shipyard in the SF Bay Area.</p>

<p>I print the results, sometimes in versions many feet wide. Underexposing leads to a number of problems, most notably significant noise issues and the potential for banding, especially in the darker areas of the image. I don't post full size version, but I'll see if I can include a few small examples at the end of this post.</p>

<p>For me, underexposure means that the histogram display is chopped off at the left (dark) side. That is something to AVOID in almost all cases in night photography.</p>

<p>You are correct that avoiding blowing out the brightest lights in a city shot like that posted above is nearly impossible. But (with some exceptions) it is also unnecessary. There is not real issue with small points of light that blow out in this type of photography, and it is certainly almost always a trivial issue by comparison to the very real problems that happen when you have to try to recover very underexposed areas.</p>

<p>A good source of information on night photography techniques (and of workshops if you happen to live in the SF Bay Area) is <a href="http://www.thenocturnes.com/">The Nocturnes</a> , the SF Bay Area night photography group.</p>

>

<p>Dan</p>

<p>(Note: The panoramas are stitched from as many as a dozen or more 12 MP FF originals.)</p>

<p><img src="http://gdanmitchell.com/gallery/d/1780-2/MareIslandShopsNight20080322.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p><img src="http://gdanmitchell.com/gallery/d/1792-1/MINSYGreenWindows2007_03_03.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p><img src="http://gdanmitchell.com/gallery/d/364-2/SFEmbarcaderoTransAmXmas20071221.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p><img src="http://gdanmitchell.com/gallery/d/262-2/SFAndBayBridgeNightPano20071221.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p><img src="http://gdanmitchell.com/gallery/d/395-2/SeattleNightPanorama20080102.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p><img src="http://gdanmitchell.com/gallery/d/163-2/Racetrack3NiteRocks2007_04_02.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p><img src="http://gdanmitchell.com/gallery/d/803-2/ThousandIslandMoonCove20070727BW.jpg" alt="" /></p>

[davebell]

<p>Dan's advice and his example shots are spot one. Nice stuff!</p>

[g dan mitchell]

<blockquote>

<p><em>HDR</em> is eery, G. Dan. <em>Dusk shots</em> and night shots are not the same.

<ul>

<li>Not one of my posted photographs shots uses HDR. </li>

<li>Not one of the shots I posted is a "dusk shot." All were taken in full darkness, some with full moon.</li>

<li>What you call "blow outs" are specular highlights - for example the "star" around the light atop the Transamerica Pyramid is much more interesting than a small white dot and a noisy, muddy, underexposed image of the buildings. </li>

<li>The second to the bottom shot was included in this group, as was every other photo in the group, to show the breadth of the sorts of night photography I do

[dansutton]

<p>i really like your photographs. I also thought that the picture with the eerie green glow in the warehouse was HDR, so that seems like you nailed the dynamic range in a single (stitched) exposure, which is an enormous compliment in itself. Really like your night photography, so now i have to go out and try my hand at it again. </p>

[gordon_conger]

<p>Good Morning,<br />I would really like to say that when I first signed up for the photo.net that I would be able to get some good advice from fellow photographers who have been at this longer than I. I did take the information out and use it the other night and it did help.<br>

[g dan mitchell]

<blockquote>

<p>I normally shoot with an ISO setting of about 100 or 125 with the shutter open about 1 to 2 seconds and sometimes longer. As for the F stop its about a 3.5 or 4.5. I have tried various things but it just seems that I cannot get the sharpness that I know this camera and lens is capable of.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Anyway, in an effort to get back on track... :-)</p>

<p>Trying to think through all the possible causes of "blur" in a night photograph, including direct causes and some that might amplify a problem:</p>

 

<ol>

<li>Tripod - but you say you are using a solid tripod, so I'll more or less rule that out for now. (Though wind can be an issue - even with a solid tripod a bit of breeze can introduce enough camera motion blur over a long exposure. In addition, if you use a long lens this effect can be amplified.)</li>

<li>Mirror lockup (MLU) - Perhaps counter to intuition, this isn't likely the problem in longer exposures. The "mirror slap" issue is more likely to manifest itself in shorter exposures than you'll use at night. With exposures measured in seconds rather than fractions of a second, the duration of the mirror slap vibration is too short to make a difference - though you could see a small effect at the beginning of star trails if they are found in your photo.</li>

<li>Inaccurate focus - Focusing at night can be very difficult. With a city skyline like yours I would probably activate only the center AF point and place it over a bright subject in the scene. The center point should be able to AF on some of the bright lights along the shoreline. Then switch AF off so it won't change, and recompose your image without altering the focus. (With different subjects there are a whole bunch of other "tricks" that may prove useful: shine a bright light on the subject for focusing purposes and then turn it off before exposure; prefocus before the light is completely gone; manually focus; "guess focus" using indications on the lens barrel - best applied at smaller apertures. If your camera has "live view," you can often manage to manually focus in that mode even in very dim light.)</li>

<li>Aperture choice - There are several potential issues here. First, most lenses have sharper and less sharp apertures. For example, the largest aperture of your lens is almost certainly not its sharpest - in fact, on many lenses that are quite sharp stopped down, the image may be noticeably fuzzy wide open. Secondly, if you stop down too far (and this is, in a sense, more critical on a cropped sensor camera) you can lose sharpness to diffraction blur. In general, use the same apertures that would be sharp for a daytime exposure in most cases. Finally, when you use a very large aperture you get a very narrow DOF, and this can amplify any focus problems from difficulty finding focus in the dark.</li>

<li>Post processing (or in-camera post processing settings) - For best image quality (including wider dynamic range and more post-processing options) it is better to shoot in RAW mode. But when you shoot RAW you _must_ sharpen in post - unsharpened RAW images are far from living up to their ability to provide excellent detail and sharpness. If you shoot jpg you should use an appropriate in-camera sharpening setting.</li>

<li>Lens issues - I've forgotten what lens you used for your test shots, but some lenses are just plain sharper than others. If you are not using one of the sharper lenses you won't be able to get past that.</li>

</ol>

<p>Good luck.</p>

<p>Dan</p>

 

[gordon_conger]

<p>Thank you to everyone for the advice that has been given. I am going to continue giving them a try and see what works the best.<br>

I went out the other night and noticed some improvement but due to the weather I had to cut my time short. It doesn't look like the weather is going to cooperate with me tonight either so I will probably wait for a day or so since it is suppose to get nicer as the week goes on.<br>

Once I can I will then show some of my photos to see what what opinions are and what I can continue to try in order to improve my photography.<br>

Have a great rest of the day!<br>

Gordon</p>

[lukerossknecht]

<p>I'd also add that if you are having focusing problems, you could put your lens in manual focus mode and set it to infinity yourself.</p>

[dansutton]

<p>i read a neat little trick in another thread here as well, if you are focusing on a shorter distance. you can use a laser pointer that shoots a pattern to project an image on a surface giving the AF enough light and contrast to autofocus. probably will never be used, but still a neat idea to rattle around the noggin.</p>

[arhgabriel]

<p>here are some of my pictures and some info... XSi, kit lens 18-55mm IS, tripod, cable release, IS turned off, 10 sec delay, iso 100 or 200, aperture priority, 1,5-2 fstop stoped down from wide open, a bit underexposed, autofocus. the pictures are jpg strait from the camera.<br>

http://picasaweb.google.com/agjohndoe/Noapte#5311500410269384882</p>

[dansutton]

<p>just a quick thought, why do you use the 10 sec self-timer in addition to the cable release?</p>

[dansutton]

<p>picture looks great, but two critiques:<br>

make sure to level it as shoot, or later in post. also, the reflections look great, but composition-wise, is that horizon best in the center? otherwise that is an absolutely great picture.</p>

[dansutton]

<p>about the ten second delay, that doesn't delay the mirror flip up, so it doesn't reduce that slap vibration, only finger pushing the shutter release blur, if i'm not mistaken, which you've already mitigated with teh cable release. <br>

And i bring up the horizon placement, not actually disagreeing with where it is in your photograph, just to remind that composition is deliberate, and there shouldn't be a default position for it. otherwise, great results and happy shooting<br>

dan</p>

[christopher_blumenshine]

<p>Good answers. Glad to see we can all get along!</p>

[arhgabriel]

<p>thanks dan ! i am well aware that the compozition of my pictures is far from perfect. that was a quick answer to the problem raised by gordon, sharpnes of his pictures. quick look to the pictures and is obvious that at least the tehnique i use is better. i use the 10 sec delay to eliminate the vibration on the tripod i use, caused by the pushing on buttons to set the camera. even without mirror lookup, his gear (30D+70-200mm f2,8 IS USm L) will weight around 2200g vs 700g (XSI+18-55mm IS) , so the slam from the mirror should have almost no impact on picture sharpness.</p>

[g dan mitchell]

<p>If you are "pushing buttons on the camera" when doing the long exposures, using the timer is an OK solution, but it would be better to get a remote release if you can.</p>

<p>The vibration from mirror slap is said to have little effect on very long exposures where if lasts a very short percentage of the full exposure time. The effect would be more significant on exposures whose duration is about the same as that of the mirror vibration.</p>

<p>In any case, this would create a "motion blur" effect rather than an "out of focus" effect.</p>

[dansutton]

<p>either way looks good. but i'm still confused, if you use a cable release like you said (unless i'm mistaken) you don't need the 10 sec delay on top of that as you aren't touching the camera at the time of shutter actuation to begin with. oh well, keep it up because it looks like you have a good technique down that will give you the tools to get the exposures that you want.</p>

[tom_thumbnail]

<p>Protect the setup from wind and use a big hood or shade the lens to avoid flare from closeby light sources if required.</p><div></div>

[g dan mitchell]

<p>One other thing I didn't mention, but since it came up earlier in this thread I will now.</p>

<p>While it isn't exactly related to the sharpness issue, DO use long exposure noise reduction when you do night photography with a DSLR. Do to the nature of digital sensors, at longer exposures you will otherwise see amplified noise and "hot pixels" that are pure red, blue, or green. The effect is not a good one.</p>

<p>The long exposure noise reduction feature makes a second "dark frame" exposure after the "real" exposure. Yes, this does double the time it takes to capture each photograph. The dark frame contains only the noise/hot pixel data against a black background. The camera analyzes this and uses the information to subtract these artifacts from the final image.</p>

[dansutton]

<p>oh. is that what it does? i was so surprised/confused why it took so long to do that when i left it on. i turned it off assuming NX2 will do a better job post if i need it. is this actually not true? Can NX2 or ACR/photoshop do this noise reduction as well as the camera with that active information?</p>