Outdoors Night Shots

[Ferrell]

I am looking at taking some night photos some with long exposures to get star trails and some faster shots of a rising moon and things of that sort. Can anyone help me with even a rough on what type of settings to have my Canon Rebel Xti. Also I would like to take moving traffic from a distance. Any help is appreciated.

[navcom]

On the star trails photos, here is a great link to explain how to do it. It's the procedure I use (at least pretty close).

Lets Go Streaking, a Guide to Star Trails : Liquid in Plastic – Photography and Words by Dan Newton


The best software for this is free at www.Startrails.de-Home

Hope that helps!

[Elmo]

THe best advice is to get out and shoot. Review your shots and adjust things to get closer to what you want. You can copy what someone else has done and get the same results or you can experiment and get results that express you not someone else.

This is my kind of night time stuff

[navcom]

Awesome picture Elmo!

Did you use bracketing and combining (HDR) or just post-process a single image?

[Elmo]

HDR is used to increase dynamic range. This subject has a very limited dynamic range so HDR is not needed. (OK I will get off my soapbox).

This is a single image. And yes it is bracketed, sort of. For something like this I generally use Av mode and set Compsentation for two steps under exposure. I then chimp and check the results and adjust until I get what I want. I shot 3 exposures at f:22; 20, 25, and 30 seconds. This is the 25 second exposure. Note I had already shot several shots at the site and I had already established a base line exposure. I chose f:22 to get the longest exposure time to get the steam to turn silky and full.

Also there is very little post processing. Basically Crop, sharpen, resize, resharpen.