Night Photography – Workshop Notes by Denise Coleman 31-Oct-2017
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Night Photography – Workshop Notes by Denise Coleman 31-Oct-2017 What is covered by this workshop: These instructions are for night photography with no flash. This is the approach that I almost always use. I learned it from Dana Foy who is an inspirational night photographer. He has a website and blog at danafoy.com. I've used this approach successfully to take photos in the dark of night, about 1.5 hours after the sun has set. I've also used this approach during the Blue Hour. That the time that starts about 15 minutes after the sun has set and goes for about an hour. Blue Hour also occurs in the morning about 1 hr and 15 minutes before sunrise and goes for an hour. I also give some resources for shooting the Milky Way and star trails. I don't cover painting with light. I do include some titles of training videos in the Resources section below. Equipment: • A camera that allows manual control of f/stop, shutter speed, and ISO • A “bulb” setting is required for exposures longer than 30 seconds, though most of my images have been taken with less than 30 seconds. There are some effects that you can only achieve when you expose the photo for more than minutes. • Sturdy tripod • Cable release or remote (you can use your self-timer, but it is restricted to the longest shutter speed of your camera) • Flash light, layers of clothing, maybe a watch that you can read in the dark that doesn't also create light. I count one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand (really). It becomes a mantra. Recommended Approach, the short story: • Set the ISO (100-800 recommended depending on how your camera handles noise). • Set white balance to something other than Automatic. • Turn image stabilization off. • In Camera Noise Reduction is optional. I don’t use it. • Work in manual exposure mode and shoot raw format. • Take multiple exposures from very dark to very light. Recommended Approach, the explanations: Set the ISO, do not use automatic ISO because it can bounce around between shots. I like to use between 100-800 to keep control of the noise. My camera is generally good to 1600, but the time exposures can heat up the electronics, so I keep it lower. Set the White Balance to something other than Automatic because it can self-adjust in between shots. I user Daylight which gives a warm tone that I can cool down in photoshop as I want. This point is debatable, it's just the way that I do it. You can look at live view and bounce around through the WB settings to choose what you like. Just don't land on Automatic, even if it looks best for the current shot. By using raw exposures, you can adjust the WB in post. Work in manual exposure mode. When I’m not shooting milky way shots, I chose an f/stop between f/7.1 and f/13. Point sources of light will look softer at f/7.1. They will look more like star points or diamonds as the aperture gets smaller. You should get excellent twinkling star points at f/13. Any man-made light is very bright relative to the dark background at night, and you cannot use your live view or even your in-camera histogram to judge the BEST exposure in the field, so bracket. Taking the multiple exposures is like an HDR collect; and you can use these images for HDR or compositing. Photomatix is particularly nice because you can isolate a point source of light and chose the image that best represents that light (usually one of the underexposed images) by using the de-ghosting feature (as of May 2015). In-Camera Noise Reduction can help. It's the only time in the capture or the post- processing that you have a measure of the actual noise that was caused by the electronics heating up at the time of the capture. However, it doubles the time of the capture because the camera acquires a second image with no light that is exposed as long as your original capture. So, if you took a 2-minute exposure, expect to wait a total of 4 minutes before you can take control of your camera again. I'm patient, but not that patient. Also, since heat is the largest producer of the sensor noise, In-Camera Noise Reduction just heats it up that much more. Bracketing for night and finding the first exposure: I bracket my night photos going from very dark to very light. I use this order consistently, so I don't get confused about what I'm doing when I'm out in the dark. To find the first exposure, i.e. the darkest exposure, I can suggest two possible methods. Method 1: Wing it using the feedback from your camera controls. If you have a lot of practice with your camera you know how to move the dials and look at the information histogram to get a starting exposure. Adjust the shutter speed so that you get a VERY underexposed image. If your histogram is mostly to the left, you can start there or decrease the time the shutter is open by one more EV to make sure you have a dark image. This is a viable approach when there is some light. Method 2: Try to get a test shot with a shutter speed of 30 seconds or less. Most cameras allow up to 30 seconds for a shutter speed. To do this, get as much light into the camera as you can for a test shot. Crank up your ISO to the max. Put your camera on Aperture-preferred priority and set aperture wide open. Take a test shot and check your histogram. Go into bulb mode for more than 30 seconds if you must. Take note of the exposure. Adjust your ISO back to 100-800. In Manual Mode, set the f/stop and set a shutter speed that will give you 3-5 EV less light than the exposure of the test shot. You will have to do the math to convert from the settings of the test shot to the settings that you need. Practice this at home before you go out. What does a change in 3-5 EV mean? EV means Exposure Value. Think of EV as the total amount of light that reaches your sensor. We know EV is controlled with ISO, f/stop, and shutter speed. If you reduce the amount of light by half, by either ISO, f/stop, or shutter speed, then you have decreased the EV by one. Example: changing from 1/125 to 1/250 decreases the light by half, in other words, by one EV. Example: changing from 1/125 to 1/500 decreases the light by one quarter, I.E. decreases by two EV. Example: changing from 1/125 to 1/1000 decreases the light by 1/8, I.E. decreases by three EV. Changing ISO from 100 to 200 decreases the light by one EV. Changing ISO from 800 to 100 decreases the light by 3 EV. Changing the f/Stop from f/4 to f/8 decreases the light by 1 EV. The sequence of shots: Take the first shot and look at your histogram. It should be way over to the left (the dark side). This is especially important if you are going to do HDR or compositing. After you have a good first shot, increase the light by one EV for each shot in the sequence by only changing the shutter speed. An example of a sequence of shutter speeds would be 1/16, 1/8, ¼, ½, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 seconds. Stop when you believe that you have details in the dark areas. Some thoughts about focus: Focus is the hardest part for me. Once you get the focus that you want, change to manual focus so that your camera doesn't adjust the focus in the middle of your sequence. If you have nothing in the foreground and you are using an f/stop of 11 or so, or smaller, try a focus at infinity. You can take a high ISO test shot and look at your focus in the live view. Be careful about not accidentally going past the infinity mark in the dark. Use a flashlight to look at the focus ring to make sure. You can look up hyperfocus on YouTube, which isn't hard to learn if you watch a video. It basically takes advantage of the depth of field using a small aperture. You can get to location early, focus and wait. If it's already dark, you can take a powerful light source and shine it on the main subject. Another idea is to take a light out to the subject and point if back toward the camera. Walk back to the camera and focus on the light. Retrieve the light. Check that you have not gone past the infinity mark. You can also use focus stacking. There are lots of YouTube videos on focus stacking. What if a car drives by and ruins my photo? What are other effects? It's possible that you will get a nice light trail from a passing car. You can also block the light by covering your lens with your lens cap, a hat, a scarf, or such, and remove the block when the car has passed. This is especially useful when you are going more than 30 seconds and you are using bulb mode.