Forgot Password
Pentax Camera Forums Home
 

Reply
Show Printable Version Search this Thread
03-13-2012, 06:48 AM   #1
Veteran Member




Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Somewhere, USA
Photos: Gallery
Posts: 458
Night Photography Techniques

Trying to expand my abilities as a night shooter. Generally is just shoot for long exposures with the fstop at 8 to 11. Problem is that highlights bloom and give huge stars. Is there a way to compensate? I'm thinking that the only way around this is to stack exposures with photomatix and just take a huge range to expose for the highlightss, but again from my experience, flare and blooming still appear in the hdr when it is stacked. I could also take the blown parts and stitch in pieces with photoshop, but that is time cosuming and not really "straight" enough for my liking. Any ideas? I am shooting with a k7. I didn't have this problem as badly with my bridge camera...so I'm thinking its the glass I'm using too. It seems to blow worse with the tamron 28mm I've been using. Is it the coating that is failing me too??

03-13-2012, 09:39 AM   #2
Veteran Member
Na Horuk's Avatar

Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Slovenia, probably
Photos: Gallery | Albums
Posts: 11,186
What are you taking photos of? The night sky or landscapes? If you are shooting stars, look up astrophotography or something like that, there are good tutorials out there. If you take shots of landscapes and the sky simply becomes too bright, you can try the HDR method you already mentioned or a graduated ND filter.
Try a lower f-stop with ISO 200-800 and a shorter time. You might have to make a sacrifice, though - blown out sky or dark shadows.
Also, did you try the in-camera shooting modes of Night and Night-HDR and other night-related ones? They might surprise you.
03-13-2012, 03:29 PM   #3
Veteran Member




Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Somewhere, USA
Photos: Gallery
Posts: 458
Original Poster
Ok. I'm sorry I posted this in the morning and wasn't exactly the most awake. Basically I am talking about night shooting of city landscapes. So...for instance...anywhere there is a sign on a building its blowing out pretty bad. Like max saturation of whatever color it is. Its not pure white, but there is a loss of detail and the dreaded (and sometimes desired) starbursts around every letter. Is hdr going to be my only means of combating this? My bridge camera didn't bloom quite like this. It also had a pretty advanced leica lens that had vld elements. Its almost like the older lens are causing worse diffraction and do not seem to have the ld elements needed to combat ca on digital. Stopping down seems to almost eliminate ca, but not entirely. Its easy to remove in lightroom though. Would more modern lens designs give me better results at night with specular highlights? Please forgive me, I am certainly a newbie when it comes to night shooting. My main technique is to stop down to my limits of abberation on the lens and take a meter reading with the camera. Theni usually double the exposure and work from there. Stopping down further just increases the starburst effect. Any ideas would be useful.....
03-13-2012, 03:33 PM   #4
Veteran Member




Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Somewhere, USA
Photos: Gallery
Posts: 458
Original Poster
I also would like to add that the most effective way to go would probably to use a remote and trigger a 5 shot bracket at +/-1 ev with the mirror up somehow....maybe in live view? I know that you cannot lock the mirror and bracket at the same time via the drive menu........I just don't understand how to control the extreme flare. Also I would prefer to keep car lights and whatnot and unfortunately merging them into a stack takes a bit out of their punch compared to a single exposure if that makes any sense....

03-13-2012, 03:39 PM   #5
Veteran Member
twitch's Avatar

Join Date: Nov 2009
Posts: 4,571
QuoteOriginally posted by zosxavius Quote
My main technique is to stop down to my limits of abberation on the lens and take a meter reading with the camera. Theni usually double the exposure and work from there. Stopping down further just increases the starburst effect. Any ideas would be useful.....
I'm unclear on what "double the exposure" means.

Typically the camera meter will get in wrong for night scenes and will over expose. Depending on what you are shooting you could either use -EV compensation (a stop or more), or meter in manual mode with the aperture & ISO you want, then increase shutter speed by a stop or more. If you don't do this then you will blow highlights to smithereens.
03-13-2012, 03:42 PM   #6
Veteran Member
twitch's Avatar

Join Date: Nov 2009
Posts: 4,571
QuoteOriginally posted by zosxavius Quote
I also would like to add that the most effective way to go would probably to use a remote and trigger a 5 shot bracket at +/-1 ev with the mirror up somehow....maybe in live view? I know that you cannot lock the mirror and bracket at the same time via the drive menu........I just don't understand how to control the extreme flare. Also I would prefer to keep car lights and whatnot and unfortunately merging them into a stack takes a bit out of their punch compared to a single exposure if that makes any sense....
Unfortunately there's no way to keep the mirror up for bracketed shots, the mirror will keep flipping down before raising again for the next shot. The work around is manual bracketting.
03-13-2012, 03:51 PM   #7
Veteran Member




Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Somewhere, USA
Photos: Gallery
Posts: 458
Original Poster
Yeah I just tested this.....the mirror flips even in timer mode. It does NOT in live view though. Brilliant! A 2 second timer should be enough to dampen the settling after the shutter moves. Generally I've found that if you use the meter at 0 ev, your shot will be underexposed by at least a stop. In film the rule of thumb was to double the time the meter gave you, so I generally shoot for ovexposure to bring up shadow detail, otherwise everything is way too dark and you get a dark print. This might be desireable, but I generally want to use long exposure to create more light.

03-13-2012, 03:55 PM   #8
Veteran Member




Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Somewhere, USA
Photos: Gallery
Posts: 458
Original Poster
Generally bright lights will blow out, but I really want to avoid the starbursts around lettered signs on buildings somehow. I'm ok with streeet lamps doing this and opening up the aperture is not really a desirable solution.
03-13-2012, 04:00 PM   #9
Veteran Member
Na Horuk's Avatar

Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Slovenia, probably
Photos: Gallery | Albums
Posts: 11,186
Sounds like the only thing available to you is to shoot an evenly exposed raw image and then post-processing it to brighten the dark bits. It might bring out a lot of noise, though, so shoot at low iso to begin with.
03-13-2012, 04:09 PM   #10
Veteran Member




Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Somewhere, USA
Photos: Gallery
Posts: 458
Original Poster
I think I will try seeing how the photomatix deals with the highlights. The camera is on a tripod. It is painless to take more shots. Back to the drawing board....

For me the problem with raising shadows is that the k-7 is quite noisy in the shadows. I could go back to stacking and averaging exposures, but that is problematic too, and can easily lead to a lack of sharpness if all your photos in the stack aren't critically sharp. Night shooting is a real challenge with a need for a large dynamic range. I think the coating on this lens is interfering though. I need to do some tests with the kit lens (my only modern lens lol), the smc 50mm, and my tamron and compare how the coatings deal with highlights. In the meantime, let me find an illustration for you....
03-13-2012, 04:14 PM   #11
Veteran Member




Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Somewhere, USA
Photos: Gallery
Posts: 458
Original Poster
Here is the tamron 28mm at f11 and 15 seconds. Did I do ok? I did push the shadows a bit on this one....

<img> http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7199/6964905625_01c5831f94_b_d.jpg </img>
03-13-2012, 04:22 PM   #12
Veteran Member
westmill's Avatar

Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Stoke on Trent
Photos: Gallery | Albums
Posts: 1,146
The star bursts are obviously just a characteristic of the lens. the only thing you can do is use a different lens.
if you use a filter like a UV you could try it without. Or if you dont use one, try one with. who knows ? it may have an efect.
my prefered method of night cityscapes was to put the camera on its B setting and use the second finger on my watch.
My starting point was 8 seconds at F8 at 200ISO. Times are hardly critical since an extra full stop is then 16 seconds.
After a while you get to judge scenes pretty damm good.
I never bothered with multi exposure since it would make a mess of light trails, which I kind of liked.
03-13-2012, 04:26 PM   #13
Veteran Member




Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Somewhere, USA
Photos: Gallery
Posts: 458
Original Poster
Yeah, I've found a difference of say 5 seconds to be marginal on say a 30 second exposure. Generally I start at say 15 seconds @ f8 or so. I've found f8 to be around the sweet spot on this lens anyways. I think you are right it is the lens. I just was curious if my technique was lacking. I'm pretty much self taught when it comes to photography.

Oh and I wanted to add that I agree with you fully about wanting to keep light trails. I've always been a mostly straight shooter. I only like to use techniques like hdr or averaging to cancel noise or improve the image somehow, but both go against my philosophies, I've only turned to them out of desperation at times.
03-13-2012, 04:26 PM   #14
Veteran Member
westmill's Avatar

Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Stoke on Trent
Photos: Gallery | Albums
Posts: 1,146
QuoteOriginally posted by zosxavius Quote
Here is the tamron 28mm at f11 and 15 seconds. Did I do ok? I did push the shadows a bit on this one....

<img> http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7199/6964905625_01c5831f94_b_d.jpg </img>
I realy like the image, and i dont think the starbursts are unatractive, but I can see how it would poss get a bit
repetative if they are in every shot. Lovley composition by the way
03-13-2012, 04:29 PM   #15
Veteran Member




Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Somewhere, USA
Photos: Gallery
Posts: 458
Original Poster
QuoteOriginally posted by westmill Quote
I realy like the image, and i dont think the starbursts are unatractive, but I can see how it would poss get a bit
repetative if they are in every shot. Lovley composition by the way
Awww shucks. I do try to take the best shots I can. Thanks.
Reply

Bookmarks
  • Submit Thread to Facebook Facebook
  • Submit Thread to Twitter Twitter
  • Submit Thread to Digg Digg
Tags - Make this thread easier to find by adding keywords to it!
camera, exposures, night, night photography, photography
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Night Photography kyteflyer Pentax SLR Lens Discussion 12 03-18-2011 03:47 PM
It's night time and I'd like to take my little girl out for some night photography Student Pentax DSLR Discussion 9 02-17-2011 12:20 AM
handheld night photography with K-x macky112 Troubleshooting and Beginner Help 17 03-16-2010 04:44 PM
Help! k-x night photography HoBykoYan Troubleshooting and Beginner Help 9 02-22-2010 11:10 PM



All times are GMT -7. The time now is 02:31 PM. | See also: NikonForums.com, CanonForums.com part of our network of photo forums!
  • Red (Default)
  • Green
  • Gray
  • Dark
  • Dark Yellow
  • Dark Blue
  • Old Red
  • Old Green
  • Old Gray
  • Dial-Up Style
Hello! It's great to see you back on the forum! Have you considered joining the community?
register
Creating a FREE ACCOUNT takes under a minute, removes ads, and lets you post! [Dismiss]
Top