[DeadJohn]

For the blue light effect (and everything else) I use raw. As I showed in the above link, the camera does the white balance and strips the blue channel so with an auto -white balance you won't be able to restore the blue even if you want it. But if you set the WB to daylight, I imagine you'd get a pretty good blue in blue light.

My experience with raw and auto WB has been more positive, on K-1 as well as K-5. The blue usually shows fine in Lightroom and on exports. I wonder if there's a difference in our camera settings or software that responsible.

Both of my samples above started with auto WB. Any adjustments in Lightroom were minor.

[normhead]

My experience with raw and auto WB has been more positive, on K-1 as well as K-5. The blue usually shows fine in Lightroom and on exports. I wonder if there's a difference in our camera settings or software that responsible.

Both of my samples above started with auto WB. Any adjustments in Lightroom were minor.

The camera WB doesn't affect raw... only the jpegs. In my test I shot raw on the front card and jpeg on the back.

[mattb123]

For the blue light effect (and everything else) I use raw. As I showed in the above link, the camera does the white balance and strips the blue channel so with an auto -white balance you won't be able to restore the blue even if you want it. But if you set the WB to daylight, I imagine you'd get a pretty good blue in blue light.

That would be true with jpeg, but shooting RAW you can have the WB anywhere. I usually shoot RAW with AWB, blue hour or noon or anywhere inbetween. If AWB misses the mark I can always fix it later. I find the AWB does pretty well for me with blue hour and sometimes even makes it a little too blue in my experience.

My favorite blue hour shots usually involve water which can bring light back into what might be a very dark foreground plus it's easy to capture some water motion in the low light too.

[normhead]

Some moderator should turn this into a thematic thread.

[mattb123]

The real magic happens during blue hour, I like it more than the golden hour.
...

Those are beautiful photos. Nicely done! I agree with your advice too and do things similarly when I have time.

[BrianR]

Enter location and date and this site gives the morning/evening blue hours (plenty of other info on the site too): Welcome to Blue Hour and Night Photography | How to learn tutorials | bluehoursite.com | Blue Hour and Night Photography | How to learn tutorials | bluehoursite.com

There's a good deal of info about the different light phases in the next link, including the blue hour. It is a website for a pay app that might help you plan this sort of thing (I don't have the app, but I think the info page about light phases is straightforward, especially the chart with sun angles): Understanding Golden Hour, Blue Hour and Twilights | PhotoPills

[normhead]

Enter location and date and this site gives the morning/evening blue hours (plenty of other info on the site too): Welcome to Blue Hour and Night Photography | How to learn tutorials | bluehoursite.com | Blue Hour and Night Photography | How to learn tutorials | bluehoursite.com

There's a good deal of info about the different light phases in the next link, including the blue hour. It is a website for a pay app that might help you plan this sort of thing (I don't have the app, but I think the info page about light phases is straightforward, especially the chart with sun angles): Understanding Golden Hour, Blue Hour and Twilights | PhotoPills

Look at that, it really is thing....
Where are all those white balance enthusiasts now?

Some think gloating is beneath me... they're wrong.

[biz-engineer]

Here is one of the exposures captured last Sunday. That one was captured 40 minutes (17:55) after the official sunset time, corresponding to sun being about 8 degree below the horizon (but there is a chain on mountains blocking the sunset light in the west direction), so it was getting darker than the sunset time found on website (17:15).

Also, I think the good photography window during blue hour is a lot darker than many realize. This darkness can bring it's own challenges if your landscape elements aren't producing or reflecting any light.

I noticed that. [ BTW, you have here fantastic blue hour shots ] . To achieve a decent amount of blue, I had to wait as it was getting darker and darker, my desire to taken more exposures was fighting again the cold that pinched my fingers. The challenge is to wait long enough to have the blue, but at the same time not have the details completely sunk in shadows.Here I had to pull the shadows otherwise the face of buildings, trees and river would be too dark to my taste. There is also the problem that if I waited longer, the sky would be darker and the highlights would be burned.

---------- Post added 13-02-19 at 08:16 ----------

I usually shoot RAW with AWB, blue hour or noon or anywhere inbetween. If AWB misses the mark I can always fix it later. I find the AWB does pretty well for me with blue hour and sometimes even makes it a little too blue in my experience

. I'm surprised of this. For me, AWB reduces the amount of blue, so maybe I exposed too early after sunset. I've set the white balance to daylight (I believe for Pentax the color temperature for the daylight WB is around 4800 Kelvin) , and noticed that CTE renders much more blue but too much to look realistic.

---------- Post added 13-02-19 at 08:18 ----------

So IMHO, I go there before sunset to scout location and I don't wait, I capture everything from early golden hour to early night. And try long exposure during blue hour too. I love long exposure of car or people walking during blue hours.

You're sharing really amazing shots here, that's inspiring. Your cityscapes renders beautifully with the mix of lights and blues. Thank you for sharing. One advantage blue hours exposures is the time of the day, a magical time typically after work :-)

---------- Post added 13-02-19 at 08:22 ----------

Here couple of shots

All I can say is, wow!

---------- Post added 13-02-19 at 08:23 ----------

They are from a series of about 15 that I got by chance. No planning for this, the cruise boat just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Yep, you were lucky to be there at the time and place for the framing. Great shots.

---------- Post added 13-02-19 at 08:24 ----------

.I normally reckon to get a blue sky for up to about 45 mins after sunset between 60 mins and 30 mins before sunriseThis was was sunset + 40 mins

Thanks for giving some times relative to sunrise , sunset, very useful.

---------- Post added 13-02-19 at 08:26 ----------

Here's some more...

Some are blue hours, some others not (more like sunsets) :-), but that's ok.

[mattb123]

Here is one of the exposures captured last Sunday. That one was captured 40 minutes (17:55) after the official sunset time, corresponding to sun being about 8 degree below the horizon (but there is a chain on mountains blocking the sunset light in the west direction), so it was getting darker than the sunset time found on website (17:15).




I noticed that. [ BTW, you have here fantastic blue hour shots ] . To achieve a decent amount of blue, I had to wait as it was getting darker and darker, my desire to taken more exposures was fighting again the cold that pinched my fingers. The challenge is to wait long enough to have the blue, but at the same time not have the details completely sunk in shadows.Here I had to pull the shadows otherwise the face of buildings, trees and river would be too dark to my taste. There is also the problem that if I waited longer, the sky would be darker and the highlights would be burned.

---------- Post added 13-02-19 at 08:16 ----------

. I'm surprised of this. For me, AWB reduces the amount of blue, so maybe I exposed too early after sunset. I've set the white balance to daylight (I believe for Pentax the color temperature for the daylight WB is around 4800 Kelvin) , and noticed that CTE renders much more blue but too much to look realistic.[COLOR=Silver]

Thanks! Here is one more from last night. I was XC skiing and out for sunset which I didn't really get a good shot of. It was nice but the color was at a place in the sky that was hard for me to use in a compelling composition. I did find a nice enough composition for a blue hour panorama so I settled for that instead. It was pretty chilly at 7 degrees F so I got the shots and got skiing again. It's about 2 Miles from the parking lot here and it was full darkness when I got to the truck.

I could have waited longer for deeper blues but I wanted to catch that last little bit of light on the rocks too so I shot this at 5:53 which was only 11 Minutes after official sunset but because of the mountains, it was probably more like 25 minutes after the sun had been visible from here.

AWB was at 4850/+4 for this and in post I used Color Efex Pro to enhance detail and color contrast a little.

K-1ii & A* 300/4 x 4 shots

[normhead]

Thanks! Here is one more from last night. I was XC skiing and out for sunset which I didn't really get a good shot of. It was nice but the color was at a place in the sky that was hard for me to use in a compelling composition. I did find a nice enough composition for a blue hour panorama so I settled for that instead. It was pretty chilly at 7 degrees F so I got the shots and got skiing again. It's about 2 Miles from the parking lot here and it was full darkness when I got to the truck.

I could have waited longer for deeper blues but I wanted to catch that last little bit of light on the rocks too so I shot this at 5:53 which was only 11 Minutes after official sunset but because of the mountains, it was probably more like 25 minutes after the sun had been visible from here.

AWB was at 4850/+4 for this and in post I used Color Efex Pro to enhance detail and color contrast a little.

K-1ii & A* 300/4 x 4 shots

That's great use of a 200mm lens to get you a shot you wouldn't get any other way. People often use panos for wide angle shots, but you also get images with framing that isn't available any other way with long lenses. If you start walking down the hill for a wider single frame image, the background ridge will appear to be lower, and overall a less effective images. Nice balance of red rock and and blue background in that one. It's all about the colour.

Another from Whitney
Across the bay from the Couple's Resort.

[acoufap]

I don't know if it already was official "blue hour" but there's a lot of blue in the pictures ...


Blue @ 70mm


Blue @ 210mm

Both KP • DA55-300PLM

[swanlefitte]

Here are a couple from way back. They are really compressed from back in the day when Flickr was young. I tried to reload them from my older computer but I can't pass the "I am not a robot test"

This is really the end of golden hour but the blue came in just enough to make a nice pallet.


This was in the morning.

[aaacb]

handheld, waiting for the train to go home

[clackers]

Yeah, standing around in the cold it might just seem black, but a long exposure reveals the remnant light is very blue …

[Take-5-JB]

I am in Matt123's camp and I will adjust my exposure after a test shot. Also, I cheat and use a CirPol and bring some blue highlight by removing glare. Underexposing helps particularly when there are clouds, hills or mountains, and layered trees or rock to provide edges for light interactions not possible in flat featureless topography. As Matt123 mentioned, moving water can give those interactive edges for the light.

JB