Night Photography

[Joey Ketcham]

I've been experimenting with nighttime photography and using longer exposure to compensate for the low light, while the shots are pretty cool one thing I've notice is that anytime there is the tiniest bit of movement of trees, weeds, bushes, etc.. that it shows up blurry in the picture.

When I was looking at other night time pictures taken by other people I notice that a lot of them are clear, crisp, and looks really cool. I don't know if this is because they're taking the pictures on a night with no wind at all or what.

I know many of you are into photography, is there a technique that can be used to prevent this or is it just best to wait for a calm night with no wind at all to do night photography?

 

[Eric Flescher]

wasn't this from another thread?

Thought I read this stuff in another thread somewhere?
A tripod is needed. Also use a trip cord or a IR transmitter to your camera so that you don't shake the camera.
Faster exposure and 5.6 F stop helps too.
Higher ASA/ISO can help. Supposedly I have been told there is not much "grain" in digital pictures ( for example 800 vs 400 at night) or hot spots that occur or level of noise that occurs with higher ASA?
Can anyone corroborate when digital higher ASA actually does worse? any pics to show the differences. Maybe I will try to see.


:::

I've been experimenting with nighttime photography and using longer exposure to compensate for the low light, while the shots are pretty cool one thing I've notice is that anytime there is the tiniest bit of movement of trees, weeds, bushes, etc.. that it shows up blurry in the picture.

When I was looking at other night time pictures taken by other people I notice that a lot of them are clear, crisp, and looks really cool. I don't know if this is because they're taking the pictures on a night with no wind at all or what.

I know many of you are into photography, is there a technique that can be used to prevent this or is it just best to wait for a calm night with no wind at all to do night photography?

 

[Brian Emfinger]

If you want the trees in the picture and its windy then there is nothing you can do if you want longer exposure pictures. I definitely don't like it either as it kinda makes it look like the picture is out of focus but there is nothing you can do unless you shorten the exposure time.

and I shoot most of my night time non-storm stuff at 1600 and it looks exactly like 100/400/800...except for of course allowing in more light.

 

[Dan Robinson]

You could paint the trees in the foreground with the flash during a shorter overall exposure, so that the ambient light reflected off of the leaves doesn't show up enough to be seen.

 

[Joey Ketcham]

Thought I read this stuff in another thread somewhere?
A tripod is needed. Also use a trip cord or a IR transmitter to your camera so that you don't shake the camera.
Faster exposure and 5.6 F stop helps too.
Higher ASA/ISO can help. Supposedly I have been told there is not much "grain" in digital pictures ( for example 800 vs 400 at night) or hot spots that occur or level of noise that occurs with higher ASA?
Can anyone corroborate when digital higher ASA actually does worse? any pics to show the differences. Maybe I will try to see.


:::

I think you probably saw advice given in threads about lightning photography, I did a search prior to making the post and came back with a lot of results about lightning photography. I'm speaking in terms of just general nighttime photography, not related to weather. The reason I asked, and I wish I had the pictures still, is because Saturday night I went out to do some nighttime photography just playing around and the results were ok, but I guess there was just enough wind to make weeds sway and it came up blurry in the pictures.

Then yesterday when I was searching for nighttime photography tips I saw some pictures with long exposures (3 secs+) and obvious movement in the picture (boat, people, etc..) and yet those were clear and crisp. It got me wondering, how can you have an exposure of 3 seconds with movement in it (people, boat) and they not be blurry but then I have some swaying weeds in my pictures and they came out blurry?

I thought maybe I was missing something or some people just use photoshop a little too much to manipulate their photographs. I do use the tripod and a camera release cable.

As for the picture, it wasn't a nighttime shot of trees or anything.. I don't want to use "cityscape" since it's not much of a city, but that's the best way to describe it.. I shot it in a field about 3 miles outside the city.. but the field in front of me had some weeds in view of the view finder...

 

[Robert Edmonds]

As for the picture, it wasn't a nighttime shot of trees or anything.. I don't want to use "cityscape" since it's not much of a city, but that's the best way to describe it.. I shot it in a field about 3 miles outside the city.. but the field in front of me had some weeds in view of the view finder...

The only way to "freeze" something in a night time shot (~a few seconds long) is to use a flash. As long as the object is not illuminated by some other source then the object will remain still. The problem with a field is that to illuminate it once you'd need quite a powerful flash likely outside of your budget (famous examples of flashing a large area at the same time would be with O. Winston Link(just google for images)). If you flashed the field multiple times with a regular flash there would likely be over lap in the illumination thus the appearance of motion. If you were to flash two trees separated by a large enough distance then you wouldn’t have the problem. The only other suggestion which took me quite a long time, would be to use multiple gradated neutral density filters. Use the dark side to cover the sky line during the day to take a photo of the ground. Then reverse the filters, don’t move the camera from the tripod, wait till night then on the same negative(i.e. multiple exposure), then shoot the horizon. Example would be from a photo I did in the link --> http://www.untitledimages.com/waterfall2.jpg
This can also be done on photoshop of course, but that feals like cheating.

 

[Joey Ketcham]

Tonight we had fog in the area, so I decided to go out and do some nighttime photography with fog.. here's what I got:

The rest of the pics can be found at http://kschaser.com/gallery/index.php?dir=Foggy%20Night

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Cool fog pics. Some examples of these photos you think must be PS'd would be nice to see...to help have something to comment on. If it is dark enough you can even run into the shot, hold still for the majority of it, and then run back out...and not be blurry. Maybe the ones you looked at were like this, setup with people holding still? Was the camera on the same boat? Was the boat moving much?

I ran into and out of that shot..hence being able to see the aurora "through me".

Brian, what camera are you using that has the same noise level at 1600 as the other ISO settings?