Night Photography

[Poison Jam]

Great stuff, Oldskool! Are those first 2 also wire wool?

 

[Oldskool]

Great stuff, Oldskool! Are those first 2 also wire wool?

Yea wire wool

 

[blueink]

I tried to see if my sony DSC-T70 could do anything at night but is very limited as you cannot adjust the exposure so no motorway shots for me the exposure is a max of around 1 1/2 secs tops. so here is a quicky of my tree.

Nothing on you guys but its my first go

 

[J4M35_UK]

Pretty trippy, cool!

 

[Misfit]

loving that first one

 

[Everyonefreezes]

Oldskool, you're night shots are bloody lovely =]

The first one looks like it's shot on film.
I don't suppose you go shooting with th3g or tourista da mancunia do you?
They have pretty similar wirewool shots of the same building

 

[GrannySmiff]

As this is the night pohotgraphy thread I thought I could just ask a small question here instead of starting a new thread.

I went to Battersea recently and here is one of my cutting room floor pics but notice the funny colour lines, what are they and how can I avoid them?

I wouldn't worry so much but this happend on a couple of my other better pics?.

Cheers guys.

 

[BenCooper]

They're flare from the bright lights. Do you have any filters on the front of your lens? If you do, take 'em off. Apart from that, there's little you can do to get rid of them.

 

[GrannySmiff]

No filters, just my cannon sx1 with non interchangable lens, good enough camera but should have researched more into its performance vs what I want.

Cheers for the reply am going to look on google for flare now seems to be a few results.

 

[Bunk3r]

^GSmith, using a smaller aperture (f/higher number) may help, at 2.8 (which you used) the lens may well be wide open or not far off (lets more light in but shallow depth of focus and generally soft performance). as for what aperture, well theres no set rule I'd go for f/8 as my lens works better here, some would go for f/11 or f/16. note for every stop (google the values as its not linear) you will have to expose for twice as long, but the results are worth it. Make sure your lens is clean. I cant be bothered googling but i think your camera is one of these new fandangled micro 4/5ths [edit just reread and its not, but the sensor is smaller so same still applies], in which case the sensor is a bit smaller so your equivalent aperture value (in terms of depth of field and lens performance) will be a bit lower, Im not sure how much etc, but if I had your camera (no insult from what i have seen they are good, and I think they will be very good for exploring, to many people feel they have to carry a big SLR everywhere) then I would probably go for f/5.6 (which is 2 stops above what you had so would require a 30 second exposure) the end result would be exposed the same but be sharper and may or may not solve the lens flair (and if the aperture goes very small you will get a more intentional flare of stars on the lights).

make sure you confirm the camera focuses on what you want, and use a remote or simply the 2 second timer to prevent shaking the tripod causing blur.

 

[GrannySmiff]

The problem is the maximum exposure is 15 secs, but I will have a play around with the F stops and see what happens, I do use the 2 second delay when on the tripod.

I find it very difficult to focus night shots especially a city shot as there are so many different points of focus, the AF box never goes green for these kind of shots.

Thanks, don't want to hijack the thread.

 

[zloty_dziecko]

I like it, even though it's a little over-exposed.
I've been looking for a bridge like that to do shots of a friend's car. Where is it?

It's in Birmingham chap, Lionel street just around the corner from Snow Hill Station.

 

[Bunk3r]

The problem is the maximum exposure is 15 secs, but I will have a play around with the F stops and see what happens, I do use the 2 second delay when on the tripod.

I find it very difficult to focus night shots especially a city shot as there are so many different points of focus, the AF box never goes green for these kind of shots.

Thanks, don't want to hijack the thread.

if your max is 15 secs then you can take 2 (or more) shots and add them together afterwards (by adding layers in photoshop or the gimp(free) or by stacking software (free) usually used for making uber long exposures of star trails).

for focusing can you alter the autofocus area so its a smaller single point and put that point over a light (actually you want light and dark in the focus area, but if its a street light far away that will be inevitable). failing that has it got some kind of manual focus? if the manual focus is done digitally like on many compacts then although thats a pain to use for most pictures but its perfect for ones like you showed, you just slide it all the way to infinity.

Also your white balance was on auto, for night shots its generally best to set it manually (see manual), if your in a rush set it to tungsten/incandescent Idealy shoot RAW(+jpg) and set the white balance perfectly when you get home.

 

[GrannySmiff]

I use the manual focus sometimes but at night its difficult to see the grainy little box where it shows my focus. Can't change the white balance when on long exposure, one of the letdowns is that the only time longer than 1 sec exposure can be selected is in a scene mode "long shutter" the manual and program modes do not allow for more than one sec exposure, although there is some kind of jailbreak software that I have been looking into. This is really my only disappointment with the camera is the lack of total control.

Still have a lot to learn though, really need to get photoshop but money is tight at the mo so will have to make do with picasa lol.

 

[Bunk3r]

^yeah for years I used a lumix TZ3 and on the long exposure you couldnt set the WB, pain isnt it. You have an advantage though, you cam can do RAW, this saves the image before the WB (or anything else) is applied so you can set it yourself. if you dont want to steal photoshop then download gimp and ufraw for doing the conversion, it will take a while to learn the ropes but theres plenty of info out there. Have fun! (and yeah if you can get the hack to do longer exposures that will be handy).

for the manual focus if its something far away just set it to infinity, it doesnt matter how small and grainy it is in the preview (and if its close, use auto and shine a torch on it!)