5DmkII night photography and lenses.

[robert_campbell8]

<p>Hello Photo.net community,</p>

<p>I was hoping to grab some opinions of some more experienced photographers regarding doing some night time photography with my 5DmkII.<br>

I was having some trouble getting some nice clear low noise shots of the night sky.<br>

A few of the issues I was having:<br>

- Images not focused well<br>

- Noise<br>

- What lens should I be using from my stable? (I have: Canon 24-70 ƒ2.8L, 70-200 ƒ4L IS, 50 ƒ1.8II, Sigma 105 ƒ2.8 Macro)<br>

- Shooting wide open versus stopped down?<br>

- Trying to balance exposure and reducing trails from the stars (this is obv. related to the above question)</p>

<p> example image.</p>

[john_a5]

<p>Most lenses are going to be a bit soft wide open, defraction, and tighten up a bit as they are stopped down. Extremely long exposures have never been the strength of digital so very long and you will probably get noise you will have to deal with.</p>

<p>Stop down to at least f5.6 or so and then try to keep your iso vs exposure times in the lower end of things and you will probably get the best results--and use a good noise reduction software.</p>

[robert_campbell8]

<p>Hi John,<br>

Thanks for your response. One other thing I realized is that I wasn't shooting raw. I will remedy that tonight.<br>

Any suggestions for noise reduction? I have Lightroom on my PC and Aperture on my Macbook, if that gives a start.<br>

Thanks again.</p>

[arie_vandervelden1]

<p>Try your 24-70 wide open, long exposure noise reduction on, manual focus (focus on the moon or some other distant light source). Bracket iso from 800 to 3200 or so.</p>

[robert_campbell8]

<p>Thanks for your response Arie, I will try this.</p>

[paddler4]

<p>On the two Canon bodies I have used, the long-exposure noise reduction Arie recommends has been very effective, and it does not cause the loss of detail that post-processing noise reduction causes. Just be prepared: the camera will go dead for a second blank exposure for as long as your real exposure is. If you have to use noise reduction in postprocessing, Lightroom 3 is better than LR 2 in this respect. I use Noise Ninja for seriously noisy images and have been satisfied, but if you look, you will find endless arguments on the web about the pros and cons of this software and several others.</p>

[scott_ferris]

<p>The 50 f1.8 will give you good constellation images. The 24-70 could have been used for the image below, it was 31mm f2.8 for 30 seconds at 800iso. Wide open doesn't matter too much for this stuff, but accurate focus is a must, live view and 10x magnification is the only way I can do it. I use LightRoom and find the noise at 30 second exposures easy to get ride of. Obviously the longer the lens the shorter the exposure time before the trails start.</p>

<p>From a technical standpoint your 70-200 f4 at 200mm is your best point light source lens.</p>

<p>Hope this helps, Scott.</p>

<div></div>

[nathangardner]

<p>sa Dan says, turn Long Exposure Noise Reduction "on" in the camera. This is the easiest and best way to reduce noise on long exposures. Just keep in mind the camera will take another "dark" exposure after the original shot with the same exposure time. So if you take a 30 sec shutter, it will take another 30 sec to apply the NR. If you want minimal star trails, you'll have to bump up ISO so that the shutter isn't open long enough for them to streak. That shouldn't be a problem since the 5D is great at high ISOs. Its hard to focus in the dark so I would set the focus to infinity. Use a tripod, mirror lockup, and a remote or self timer. Also, you said some images aren't focused well, keep in mind that with long exposures any movement can cause blurring. For example if there is a breeze blowing and the trees sway back and forth, even a little, they will appear blurred. So its not always a focus issue.</p>

[robert_campbell8]

<p>Thank you everyone for your help. I will post some pictures of tonights success! ...or failure :(</p>

[model mayhem gallery]

<p>find at least some static object to focus on. Set camera on tripod, manual focus, open aperture wide open and use Live-View to zoom in 100% to verify good focus. once good focus is achieve without moving the camera stop lens down to F4-5.6 and take shot. You will be able to see things in the dark better the faster the lens.</p>

[robert_campbell8]

<p>No aurora borealis last night for me.. but some shots? The live-view focusing really helped. A great tip.</p>

<p>As a note:<br>

I ended up using my 50mm 1.8 wide open to do the focusing with live view zoomed in. High ISO and long exposure noise reduction were active. When shooting I stopped down the 50mm to around f 3.5-4.</p>

<p>I discovered some dead pixels on the sensor and the screen (no big deal).</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

[robert_campbell8]

<p>And another.</p>

<p>I really appreciate the help! The results are there :)</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

[model mayhem gallery]

<p>Damn Robert you learn fast. Both pictures look great, but I really like the lighthouse with the reflection in the water. I may have been as little wrong about one thing maybe you can confirm. If I remember if you are in Live-View Stills+Movie it activate exposure simulation which darkens as you stop down and shows color temp, etc real time on the LCD. But if you set to stills only it stays wide open even if you stop the lens down (no exposure simulation). In other words setting to stills only may eliminate the step to open aperture wide to get bright focus. Can anyone confirm this?</p>

<p> </p>

[robert_campbell8]

<p>M.P,<br>

Thanks for the comments!</p>

<p>I can say that I had my Live view in "stills only" with exposure simulation on. I do know that if I pressed the aperture preview button near the lens mount, the display did change.</p>

<p>Upon further inspection, just playing around with my 5D now yielded that when on "stills only" with exposure simulation off, changing the aperture did nothing until I pressed the preview button.</p>

<p>Furthermore, pressing the preview button with the lens wide open changed the display as well. I suppose that the camera may be increasing the brightness/gain on the sensor just to make it easier to focus when you're in live view regardless.</p>

[mars c]

<p>Try shutter priority between 20 to 30 seconds, Set the iso to 100 and let the camera decide the aperture, This works for me very well, The resulting image you'll get from this setting is much brighter , clearer, more natural, and more pleasing than using Higher ISO to get faster shutter speed. Don't forget to set the camera in a timer mode of 10 second or use a remote. With a tripod of course.</p>

[robert_campbell8]

<p>I've now ventured into the realm of tracking mounts for my tri-pod.. what have I done!<br>

Has anyone had any experience with Barn-Door style devices?</p>

 

[g dan mitchell]

First, I have short piece on hints for night photography that might answer some initial questions for you:

http://www.gdanmitchell.com/2009/02/11/hints-for-night-photography

 

A few basic ideas:

 

For highest quality generally you can shoot much as you would for daytime photographs of similar subjects. For example,

for a landscape or similar you might shoot ISO 100, f/8, and compensate for the low light with a (much) longer exposure.

 

You don't generally need different lenses than those you would use for daytime photography, unless you need to shoot at

larger apertures to shorten exposure times, in which you might need lenses with larger apertures. (But keep in mind that

this creates more focus issues via very narrow DOF.)

 

Focus can be tricky. See my link for some ways to deal with this.

 

When it comes to ideal exposure, do not pay much attention to how the capture looks in the LCD display. Instead watch

the histogram display. Learn about the "expose to the right" concept. It is generally better to have a capture that is overly

bright and needs to be darkened in post than one that is realistically dark - the latter will more likely be noisy and have

areas that are completely black and with no detail.

 

Exposure time can be a bit "loose" with night photography. Being off by a few seconds on a multiple-minute exposure is

usually inconsequential. In other words, you probably don't need special timer - just count the seconds to yourself.

 

For star trails, a good starting point is to shoot at ISO 100 and f/8 and make an exposure of perhaps ten minutes or so as a starting point. For really long star trails you'll likely want to use special software to combine many shorter exposures.

 

Shoot RAW. Turn on the camera's long-exposure noise reduction feature.

[robert_campbell8]

<p>Hi Dan,</p>

<p>Firstly, I wanted to thank you for the detail of your post and the link for more information. I'm going to be going out of town this weekend to a much nicer location for some astrophotography than I have had easy access to. I am going to play around with some of my current lens options and examine some of the results to see if I need to bother with alternative expensive solutions to achieve the results I wanted.</p>

<p>You're certainly right about the concept of "exposing to the right", I noticed I generally had to brighten my previous shots, which seemed to introduced a lot of noise. My use of the histogram before this upcoming experiment has been rather limited, I am kind of excited. I will as before post any shots to show progress for anyone interested.</p>

<p> </p>

[robert_campbell8]

<p>Two shots from the short weekend. Kind of sad, clouds were present.. not much shooting time.</p>

<p>First one is around ~400s, second is ~1560s</p>

<p>Needed more time to play around..</p><div></div>

[robert_campbell8]

<p>And the second.</p><div></div>