After Dark

Online Photo Course for Perfect Picture School of Photography Instructors: Kevin Adams and Donna Eaton

Lesson 4 Sky Text and Photos © Kevin Adams (All rights reserved)

We’ve been having fun over the past three weeks photographing all kinds of subjects at night and trying out some cool techniques. For our last week together, the fun is going to continue and we’re going to push our and ourselves to the limit.

My definition of is taking pictures of anything outdoors while the is below the horizon, but my first thought is always toward the sky. I remember well all those clear spent outdoors when I was shooting film. I’d gaze up at the in awe of the view, but irritated that I could not it. Sure, I could shoot trails, but what I really wanted to do was take a picture of the sky full of , just like I saw with my eyes. You just couldn’t do that with film. With today’s digital cameras, we can have our night sky and photograph it, too!

Stars as pinpoints of light: ISO 1600, f/2.8-f/4, 25-30 seconds with a wide-angle lens at a dark site. Star trails: ISO 200-400, f/4, multiple exposures of 4 minutes at a dark site.

Adjust settings for both according to light pollution (more pollution requires lower ISOs or shorter speeds), temperature (warmer temps cause more noise in the image), and (with speeds longer than 30 seconds, lenses longer than 17mm will show obvious trailing in the stars).

If the lesson ended here, I’ve given you enough information to explore the world of night-sky photography. I love to see the excitement on people’s faces when they learn for the first time that they can point their digital cameras at a dark sky and make a good photograph at ISO 1600, f/4, and 30 seconds. Nothing special required. Of course, we won’t be satisfied with a good photograph, will we? We want our images to be great. So unless you are striving for mediocrity, read on.

I’m going to do something a little different in this lesson. The lesson covers five main categories: Star trails, stars as pinpoints of light, planets, , and meteors. However, I’m only going to discuss the last four here in the actual lesson. The reason is because I recently wrote a very detailed treatment about shooting star trails for another project and rather than condense it to fit the lesson, I thought it would be better to provide it for you in its entirety. It is included it as a supplemental document. Some of the information in it is redundant to material we’ve already covered in the lessons or other supplemental documents, but I left in in place so you would have a comprehensive guide for star trails that you can refer to as needed from now on.

Stars as Pinpoints

When I refer to stars as pinpoints of light (or static stars), I mean they do not show any streaking, as with star trails. In other words, we’re talking about a night photograph that approximates what we see with our eyes. This is where the new digital cameras really shine. As I mentioned in the opening statement, all my photographic life I’ve marveled at the night sky filled with stars and wished there was some way to record it in a photograph. With film, it was simply impossible. When I first started shooting digitally, noise made the image look terrible. But with the new digital cameras and their low-noise sensors, we’re finally was able to capture those awe-inspiring skies.

Compositionally, shooting stars as pinpoints is the same as shooting star trails. You want to use a wide-angle lens to show as much sky as possible and you want something interesting going on in the foreground. Look for something that projects into the sky that you can silhouette, such as bridges, trees, or towers. A jagged mountain horizon line can also work well. If there is nothing interesting to silhouette against the sky, you’re going to have to find something that is already lit or that you can light paint. City skylines and most any kind of manmade can make great foregrounds, but remember that the more artificial light you have, the less the sky is going to show up. If you are anywhere near a big city you can probably forget about shooting a night- sky scene.

Photo 1 Nikon D800, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens, f/2.8, ISO 3200, 20 seconds

Photo 2 Nikon D800, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. for sky: f/3.5, ISO 2000, 25 seconds. Exposure for waterfall: f/5.6, ISO 200, 15 seconds (multiple exposures using LED flashlight and orange gel filter). Exposure for pool: f/4, ISO 800, 15 seconds (multiple exposures using dive light and orange gel filter). Among my favorite foregrounds for night-sky scenes are waterfalls and lighthouses. Photo 1 captures Orion and the planet Jupiter in the sky behind a lighthouse on the North Carolina coast, while Photo 2 shows a waterfall in the North Carolina mountains. You should recognize the waterfall; it’s the same one as Photo 9 and Photo 10 in Lesson 2. I shot it on the same night that I shot those.

A huge advantage of shooting lighthouses over many other types of foregrounds, especially waterfalls, is that you often have the ability to move closer or farther away from the lighthouse, and sometimes even walk all the way around it. This provides tremendous flexibility with the composition. By changing your position, you can place the stars, planets, Moon, and other objects of the night sky wherever you want, relative to the lighthouse.

The classic night-sky scene shows the Milky Way arching across the sky or projecting above a desert . Where I live, in the mountains of North Carolina, we do not have the opportunity to shoot scenes like this because of the topography and light pollution. However, we can photograph the Milky Way and you can, too, if you go to a relatively dark site. The Milky Way might not look like it does in the middle of the Sahara, but it still looks good. And when you are shooting the Milky Way, you can often get by with a less-interesting foreground, as in Photo 3. The Milky Way creates a strong compositional element all by itself. Whenever I can, though, I try to find an exciting foreground to go with the Milky Way. Old houses, like the one in Photo 4, are one of my favorite types of foregrounds. I light painted this old house using the techniques discussed in Lesson 2.

As with star trails, I like to set up camp scenes for pinpoint- star photography. Photo 5 is a blend of two exposures, one for the sky and one for the tent. For the tent exposure, I Photo 3 used a yellow gel on a and manually fired it at half power in each section of the tent. I tried it at full power Nikon D700, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens, f/2.8, first, but that made it too bright. I had a friend pose with ISO 1600, 30 seconds binoculars during the flashes so she would appear as a silhouette against the tent.

Shutter speed and are primary concerns when shooting stars as pinpoints. Unlike with star trails, we have to shoot exposures that are short enough to keep the stars from recording as streaks. An often-quoted formula for determining at which a star will begin to streak according to focal length is to divide the focal length into 600. Using this rule, if you divide a 100mm lens into 600, you get a maximum shutter speed of 6 seconds before streaking shows up. My tests show that using 500 as the divider gives more accurate results. So with a 100mm lens, you could only shoot as long as five seconds before obvious trailing occurs and with a 500mm lens, you’d see trailing after only one second! With the 14mm lens that I often use, the maximum shutter speed is 35 seconds. Keep in mind that this is just a general guideline and is designed for obvious trailing. If you magnify the image, you’ll see trailing at faster shutter speeds. Also, stars that occur on the edges of the frame and the farther away from the pole will appear to trail more than others will. The best approach is to shoot a test exposure to determine the longest shutter speed you can use.

Photo 4 Nikon D800, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. Exposure for sky: f/2.8, ISO 1600, 30 seconds. On separate exposures, I Iight painted exterior of house with flashlight and interior with camera flash and yellow gel filter.

Photo 5 Nikon D700, Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8 lens. Exposure for sky: f/4, ISO 1600, 30 seconds. Exposure for tent: f5.6, ISO 200, yellow gel filter on camera flash at half power. Aperture is a concern because of a lens aberration called coma. Ideally, you’d shoot with the widest aperture on the lens to allow in as much light in as possible. However, when shooting wide open, coma causes pinpoints of light at the edges of the frame to bloat and not record as points. They look like the snow angels we used to make as kids. All wide-angle lenses, even professional ones, suffer from this to some extent. At f/2.8, it’s a safe bet that you’re going to have noticeable coma regardless of the lens you use. At f/4, you might be okay, but with some lenses, you might have to stop down even farther to f/5.6. All lenses are different, so you need to do some testing to learn the quirks of yours. However, I don’t recommend farther than f/4 even if the stars do show coma. I’d rather have the coma than sacrifice that much light.

To make the sky stand out in post processing, you’ll want to use a robust Curves adjustment, or use some other means to increase the contrast. After making all the adjustments, you can use the Unsharp Mask filter at a strong setting to make the stars pop. I typically set it at around 175 for Intensity, 1.7 for Radius, and 6 for Threshold. This will make the stars stand out, but it might be too much for the any foreground elements. What you need to do is make a duplicate of the background layer before applying the Unsharp Mask filter, and then you can create a Layer Mask and easily brush out the parts of the scene where you don’t want the sharpening to occur.

Another issue is that a strong Unsharp Mask setting causes dark rings to appear around the stars. To remove these rings, immediately after applying the filter, go to Edit>Fade Unsharp Mask and set the Blend Mode to Lighten. This will effectively remove the dark rings while retaining the desired effect from the filter.

When you shoot the night sky using a high ISO, wide aperture, and as long a shutter speed as possible, so many stars can show up that you can’t make out the constellations and the brighter stars are lost among the others. You can use special diffusion filters to cause the brighter stars to stand out from the crowd, but their proper use goes beyond the time we have in this lesson. I just wanted to mention it so you could seek out more info later if you’re interested.

You don’t have to use special filters to get some of the constellations to show up. If the constellation is low on the horizon at or , it will show up very well in a properly exposed image. Orion and the Big Dipper are good examples of this. Photo 6 shows the Big Dipper and Venus in a very early twilight sky. The proper exposure for the overall scene does not let in enough light for the fainter stars, so only the brighter ones show up well. I use this technique a lot with the Big Dipper because you can shoot it close to the horizon throughout the year. (Yes, I know, the Big Dipper is not a true constellation. It’s technically an asterism, which is simply a pattern of stars, and is part of the constellation Ursa Major.)

Photo 6 Nikon D800, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens, f/2.8, ISO 800, 20 seconds.

Planets

At first thought, photographing planets might seem no different than shooting pinpoint star scenes, but there is a little more to consider. The main difference from a photographer’s standpoint is that the planets often are much brighter and show up well in twilight skies, as Venus does in Photo 7. (Notice also the crescent Moon, just above the mountains.) This means you can include planets in your sunrise and sunset compositions, which is a good thing. Quality closeup shots of planets require the use of telescopes and, believe it or not, webcams. You shoot dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of images with webcams attached to telescopes and load them into special software programs that pick out the sharpest ones and stack them together. This process is for serious techies only and is way beyond the scope of this lesson, so we’re only going to talk about shooting wide-angle scenes that include planets.

Photo 7 Nikon D700, Nikon 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6 lens, f/8, ISO 800, 0.8 second.

The first thing you have to know is where and when the planets will appear. Review the supplemental document “Apps, Charts, and Newsletters for Night Photographers” for a discussion of the resources I use.

Unless you’re shooting close-ups through a telescope, the planets will record only as a small portion of the overall scene. So the landscape takes precedent and the planet should be composed within it as only an enhancement. This means that you need to have a suitable composition to begin with, with the planet being only icing on the cake. If you zoom in on the planet at the expense of the overall composition, the image will fail miserably. As far as exposure goes, don’t even think about getting detail in the planet. Let it fall where it will (most likely totally blown out) and set your exposure for the overall scene. Of course, just as with static stars, you’ll have to take into consideration the lens focal length and the maximum shutter speed you can use before trailing occurs.

Photo 8 Nikon D800, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens, f/4, ISO 2500. 25 seconds.

I shot Photo 8 from the same location as Photo 6, but on the following morning. It also shows the Big Dipper and Venus. Venus is the brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon, and makes a great complement to a twilight scene.

The more you learn about the planets, you more ideas you’ll come up with for photographing them. I can’t stress enough the importance of this. You don’t want to look up in the sky and say, “Oh, cool, look at that. I think it’s a planet and I’ll take its picture.” What you want to do is have the shot already planned (yes, previsualized) and when you look up in the sky you say, “Ah, there’s Venus, right where it’s supposed to be.” That’s when you’ll start to make the best photos. If you know where and when the planets are going to appear in the sky, you can plan shots that include foreground elements.

In planning Photo 9, I knew that Venus, Saturn, and Mercury would shine close together, low on the horizon in the dawn twilight sky. All I needed was to find a suitable foreground. Because Saturn and Mercury would be very faint, I wanted something simple that I could zoom in on, rather than using a wide-angle lens. As we’ve learned throughout this class, graphic silhouettes work beautifully against twilight skies and when you include three planets to boot, so much the better. I remembered this tree and fence from a previous shoot and knew that they would work well in a shot with the planets.

Photo 9 Nikon D700, Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, f/10, ISO 800, 8 seconds Moon

The night-photography possibilities with the Moon are endless and only limited by your imagination. (I say that a lot, I know, but man is it ever true when you’re talking about the Moon.) Think about it; there is the crescent Moon, full Moon, lit by the Moon, Moonbows, lunar halos, and so much more. Scenarios involving the Moon are so varied that it is difficult to generalize in a single lesson. I’ll give you just a few things to think about and encourage you to study up and think creatively (I say that a lot, too, don’t I?)

First thing is to remember that every 30 days or so there will be a full Moon, a new Moon, and two periods of the crescent Moon, one just before new Moon and one just after. It’s guaranteed, so if it’s clear, you’re going to see it and you can plan your shots with it in mind. If it doesn’t work out one month, come back the next. Around the new Moon, the night is very dark and you can shoot star scenes much better. A few days before new Moon, the thin crescent Moon hangs low in the eastern sky at sunrise and a few days after the new Moon the crescent is low in the western sky at sunset. At full Moon, and a few days on each side, you can shoot Moonlit landscapes that include stars in a blue sky, lunar haloes, and Moonbows. You can silhouette objects against a full Moon and Photo 10 place the crescent Moon against graphic elements of a scene. Truly Nikon D700, Nikon 70-300mmf/4.5-5.6 limitless creative options apply when you’re talking about the Moon. lens, f/20, ISO 200, 4 seconds.

Most published guidelines for photographing the Moon are quick to point out that since the sun illuminates the Moon, you can use an exposure based on . They suggest as a starting point an exposure of 1/100 of a second at f/16 using ISO 100 or any equivalent setting. This is a standard “Sunny 16” exposure, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s wrong. Go ahead and try it and see what the Moon looks like. To me, it looks underexposed with this exposure, and in a wide-angle scene, you can barely see it in the sky. The thing is, in a single frame, it’s just about impossible to show detail on the Moon and make it look right in a wide-angle scene. Shooting through a telescope or long telephoto? Sure, let er rip. But if you’re shooting a landscape scene that also includes the Moon, you’re probably going to have to “overexpose” the Moon to make it look right, else you’ll end up with a dim smudgy looking circular thingy hanging in the sky. You really don’t need to think about it much, anyway. Just shoot a few test exposures until you find the best setting.

If you’re shooting a photograph that includes the crescent Moon as a complement to the overall scene, as in Photo 10, you can forget about getting proper exposure in the Moon. It’s going to blow out no matter what you do, so the best thing to do is not to worry about it. Expose for the landscape and let the Moon do what it wants to.

My favorite kind of Moon photography is using the light from Photo 11 the Moon to illuminate the landscape, but not include the Nikon D700, Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8 lens, f/4, ISO 1600, 20 seconds.

Moon in the scene. Images shot during a full Moon look every bit like they were made during the day, blue sky and all, except there are stars in the sky. Yes, stars in a blue sky. The lighting in Photo 11 comes entirely from a full Moon, that in Photo 12 entirely from a half-full moon. The Moon was also half-full when I shot Photo 13, but very little of the was shining on the foreground. I used the light-painting techniques described in Lesson 2 to light the cabin.

Photo 12 Nikon D800, Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, f/5.6, ISO 1600. 15 seconds.

Photo 13 Nikon D700, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. Exposure for sky: f/4, ISO 1600, 30 seconds. Exposure for cabin: f/5.6, ISO 200, multiple camera flashes at full power, with yellow-orange gel filter.

Photo 14 Nikon D800, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens, multiple exposures at f/5.6, ISO 400, 60 seconds.

Some night photographers like to shoot Moonlit landscapes that do not include the sky. I do this occasionally, but I’ve never been a huge fan of the technique. As with the foreground in Photo 11, the scenes really do look just like they were taken during the day and I just don’t see the point. However, when you include the blue sky full of stars, it looks pretty neat. You can also shoot star trails in heavy Moonlight, but you can’t shoot at the same exposure settings as on a dark night because you’ll overexposure the sky. I shot Photo 14 during a full Moon and Photo 15 during a half-full Moon.

If the sky is hazy, you should watch for lunar halos when the Moon is around the full phase. I have my wife, Patricia, to thank for Photo 16. I was heading for bed when she camera running to tell me there was a lunar halo outside. I quickly grabbed my camera and started shooting, oblivious to the fact that I had no clothes on and it was 20 degrees outside! Lunar haloes typically last for a long time, so you don’t need to rush when shooting them. You won’t be able to record detail in the Moon and still show any in the halo, and you probably won’t be able to get a good exposure of the halo and the foreground in a single shot. As illustrated here, I like to shoot silhouettes with halos, so I don’t have to worry about the exposure of anything but the halo.

If the full Moon is very high above the horizon, it’s nearly Photo 15 impossible to get a well-exposed scene of the Moon in a Nikon D700, Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8 lens, landscape setting in a single exposure. If there is a dark multiple exposures at f/4.5, ISO 200, delineation between the foreground and the sky, you can shoot 90 minutes. two exposures, one for the Moon and one for the foreground, and blend them in Photoshop using the technique we discussed in Lesson 1 for cityscapes. Photo 17 is a good example. There is much too much contrast in this scene to get it all in one exposure, but it was easy to blend two exposures: Photo 18 for the Moon and Photo 19 for the foreground. I stacked them as layers in Photoshop, with Photo 18 on top. Then I created a Layer Mask on the top layer and used the Brush tool to erase the foreground portion of that image, revealing the properly exposed foreground from Photo 19.

It’s important to understand that the above example worked only because of the row of unlit trees between the foreground and the sky. This made it easy to blend the two layers seamlessly. This technique won’t work well for a scene such as Photo 20, where you want detail throughout the image. The only way I could make this shot work was to shoot multiple exposures to capture the full tonal range, in this case five exposures, and then blend them using HDR software. I typically use Photomatix Pro for HDRs, although I sometimes use Photoshop or Nik HDR Efex Pro.

If the full Moon is very near the horizon at dawn and dusk, you may not have to resort to blending exposures. During these times, the light value on the face of the Moon closely matches the illumination in the landscape, making a single exposure possible. It’s the same twilight exposure scenario that we talked about in Lesson 1.

Photo 16 Nikon D800, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens, f/5.6, ISO 800, 10 seconds

Photo 17 Nikon D800, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. This is the result of blending Photo 18 and Photo 19 (plus some cleanup work on the flare and dust spots).

Photo 18 Photo 19 f/8, ISO 1600, 13 seconds f/16, ISO 1600, 30 seconds

Photo 20 Nikon D700, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens, f/4, ISO 400, five exposures at different shutter speeds to capture full dynamic range.

Meteors

A meteor (shooting star, falling star) is the visible light that is created when a meteoroid enters ’s atmosphere. If the meteoroid does not burn up and reaches Earth’s surface, it is called a meteorite. Photographing meteors is surprisingly easy. Just follow the same techniques that we talked about for shooting stars as pinpoints. If a meteor happens to occur while the shutter is open, the camera sensor will record it.

The exposure settings are the same, but if you set out with the goal of capturing a meteor, you need to consider the time during which you shoot. On any given night, there is a good chance of seeing a meteor, but you never know where or when it will occur. Fortunately, several times a year we have meteor showers, during which the number of meteors increases substantially. With this knowledge at hand, we can greatly increase our chances at a good shot. If you sign up for my free Night Photography News eNewsletter, you’ll get a monthly calendar that includes all of the major meteors showers.

The ideal technique when shooting during meteor showers is to compose a wide or moderately wide scene including as much sky as possible with very little foreground. It’s okay to have objects projecting into the sky such as bridges or buildings, but remember that the idea is to show as much sky as possible in order to capture a meteor. Determine the proper exposure for the scene, without considering the meteors. Now set your camera to shoot continuous exposures at this setting. Any meteors that occur will record on one of the exposures. As far as I know, Nikon and Canon cameras will only allow you to shoot 100 exposures continuously, but that’s not a big problem. You can simply reset the sequence throughout the night, or you can use an to shoot unlimited exposures. Some cameras have built-in that will allow you to shoot unlimited exposures of 30 seconds or less.

Photo 21 Nikon D700, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. Exposure for sky and meteor: f/2.8, ISO 1600, 25 seconds. Exposure for tent: f/8, ISO 200, camera flash with yellow gel filter.

Unless you’re shooting a scene with a special foreground, you probably won’t want to shoot more than 100 exposures at a time, anyway. You should choose a composition utilizing the constellations and planets, rather than just pointing the camera at the sky and firing. Since the stars are constantly moving, you’ll need to recompose throughout the night.

Photo 21 is a situation where I did not want to change composition during the night. I set up this tent in my front yard specifically for the Perseid Meteor Shower, so I wanted it in the frame for all shots. I used an intervalometer to shoot continuous exposures all night long. I captured several meteors, and was thrilled that one of them occurred while the Milky Way was shining directly behind the tent. If you’ve been paying much attention at all during this class, you probably already figured out that I shot the exposure for the tent independently of the exposures for the meteor shower. I shot the tent early in the evening, with a friend pose with binoculars. The lighting inside the tent comes from camera flash with a yellow gel filter.

Photo 22 Nikon D700, Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, f/3.2, ISO 1600, 25 seconds. Photo 22 is another example where I wanted to keep the camera set up in the same composition all night. In this case, I’m shooting the Leonid Meteor Shower. I captured several meteors this night as well, but this is the only one that occurred in a compositionally pleasing part of the photo. That’s the big problem with setups like this; you limit the chances of capturing a meteor that will look good in the image.

Photos 23 – 25 don’t have this problem. I was shooting from a high vantage point, with only a narrow line of mountains as a foreground. I could easily change the throughout the night to incorporate the Milky Way, constellations, and even the clouds in the most pleasing compositions. Photo 23 and Photo 24 show meteors from August’s Perseid Meteor Shower. Photo 25 captures a surprisingly bright December Geminid meteor.

Photo 23 Nikon D700, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens, f/2.8, ISO 1600, 25 seconds.

Photo 24 Nikon D700, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens, f/2.8, ISO 1600, 25 seconds.

Photo 25 Nikon D800, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens, f/2.8, ISO 2000, 20 seconds.

Assignment: Because the night sky is different every night, the assignment for Lesson 4 changes accordingly. If I haven’t forgotten, you have already received your assignment as a group note to the class. If I have forgotten (likely, knowing me), please kick me in the butt with a note in the Q&A.