Night time photography
Lyn Taylor
| 23/03/2010 21:36
Night time photography is alot of fun... because even with a digital SLR, you get that excitement of waiting, testing and wondering if you getting out of your tent at 3am in the middle of the Australian Snowy Mountains for an hour was actually worth it! Once again, some effects you get are effects that you really can't reproduce with photoshop, and for that I love it! You can't beat old school photography.
I was asked recently what is the trick with night time photography is... and I can answer that question with one word. TRIPOD. Ok, maybe two words... the second being EXPOSURE.
Tripods are important, because with night landscape photography, you need the shutter to be held open for alot longer than if you were taking a pic in the daytime... you can't hand-hold the camera, as the shake from your body is enough to turn lights or stars into squiggly lines..
Now a tripod doesn't have to be expensive, dang it doesn't have to be a tripod! You could even use a tree stump! (however, if you have a REALLY expensive camera, I recommend a lovely Manfrotto tripod to hold it up)
If you are wanting to take a beautiful clean crisp night time scene, you have to be prepared to be patient, because it will take a long time. It's also a matter of testing, testing and more testing, but I'll let you know a few camera settings that will make the testing phase a little easier.
ISO
Now the ISO is a setting on your camera that determines how quickly the sensor reacts with the light being shone on it. In the olden days, ISO was the "speed" of film you bought.. the film with an ISO of 100 would react slowly with light, and best used outdoors. It delivered clean crisp images with very little grain. An ISO of 800 would be for low light situations, and the film would react quickly (allowing you to have a quicker shutter speed) However, the film delivers a grainy result.
It is much the same with digital. Low light, you put the ISO on 800 and you can have a better chance of getting non-blurry pics at that party. HOWEVER... in this situation, we are going to put the camera on an ISO of 160. I like my nightscapes to be crisp, especially when I'm taking photos of a cityscape.
Aperture
Once again, it's nice to have everything crisp, and with a large depth of field when is come to focus, so I narrow it down. Put your camera on an aperture of f16, and you're more likely to get a whole scene crisp and clear.
So coming back to the second "trick" of night time photography... time.
Shutter speed
Now this is the part where you have to experiment. The shutter speed can depend on what type of situation you are photographing.
The following image is taken with a 1 second exposure..
There is a fair amount of light pollution here, the lights of the concert, the restaurant behind the audience shining some light on them, so even though it's still a long exposure, you can still get the shot in a reasonably short period of time.
Unlike these images I took in the Snowy Mountains.
The first is an image I took when the full moon was still up... Even though there is no other light, the moon is still a source of light pollution.
This one has an shutter speed of 1 minute
This next one I took at 3am... yes I am proud of this one. it was a 27 minute exposure... this when it starts to get REALLY cool. Point the lens to south (if you're in the Southern Hemisphere of course) and you can start to see the movement of the earth in the stars. There was no light pollution, no moon, no buildings to interfere with the final effect that I was after.
With long exposures like this, it's best to have a remote shutter button, and you'll have to put the shutter on the "bulb" setting in manual. This will keep the shutter open till you press the button again to close it. All cameras are different, so look up "bulb" in your camera manual.
Now you can get crazy with this stuff... try setting it up and shining a torch on your self in different areas in the shot while the shutter is open. It'd be like photoshopping yourself everywhere, without photoshopping!
Have fun!
Drop me an email, or put a comment on my facebook page if you have more questions about this or anything photography related!
The Polarising Filter
Lyn Taylor
| 11/02/2010 12:37
"How do you get that really deep blue colour in the sky when taking landscape photography? What's the best ISO to set the camera at for the same?"
This was a question posted on my Facebook fanpage last week. There are a lot of tricks "in camera" to make a simple landscape scene into something a little bit special.
When you have a digital SLR (or a film SLR if you have one!) a way to do this is using different photographic filters that can be screwed onto end the of your camera lens.
The filter that I use in landscapes, and the answer to the above question, is the polarising filter. The cool thing about this filter is that it's generally one filter that really cannot be simulated with digital manipulation.
The polarising filter can be easily described as a filter that blocks out reflections and glares by cutting out polarised rays that are reflected on surfaces of shiny objects. In the case of a big blue sky, it cuts the polarised rays reflecting in the earths atmosphere.
Now, if you'd like to get technical, I encourage you to google "polarizing filters" and learn HOW it works, it's quite fascinating!
Now these polarised rays come at different angles, which is why you can rotate the filter till you get the effect that you are after. If you have a pair of sunlasses coated in a polarising filter (or polarised lenses), next time you're outside, or driving in your car, tilt your head slightly to see the the filter at work.
Have a look at this image below to see the effect of the filter. This was fairly high up in the atmosphere, with no pollution, so an already beautiful clear sky becomes quite dramatically dark blue. This image has not been retouched, and is directly "out of camera"
As for the second part of the above question from the Facebook fanpage, ISO is probably a lesson I will leave for another week, but I will tell you this: the lower (or slower) the ISO, the more detail you get. So if it's a bright sunny day, put it on an ISO of 100 and shoot away!