Help: Nite Photography

[BBenson]

Originally Posted by higgo

Last night i was taking a photo of landscape snow covered ground, low light skyline and every picture i took a shadow of me was in it and it ruined the pictures, i used flash but without it i would not have been able to take the picture. Can anyone help me in finding out why, or how i could get rid of the shadow while taking the photo?

Thanks in advance

Camera and settings? Why flash required to shoot? Source of shadow is simple, a light behind you that registered the shadow during the exposure time. Solution may be simply moving and/or rotating the shot. Or less simple, such as much more flash. Key to how to do it is in those questions above

Bob

[Spendlove]

First, to the OP. Try boosing your ISO higher. Maybe not all the way up, but 800 or 1600 would do nicely. This shortens the exposure, which keeps individual hot sensor points from creating too much noise in a 45 min exposure. You could cut your exposure time to about 5 minutes at 1600. Turn off AF, turn off long exposure compensation, turn ON high ISO noise reduction, turn off any stabilization, add weight to your tripod hanger, and run 10 shots consecutively. Then use software to combine them. The software will help eliminate any noise caused by the high ISO, and the shorter exposures will help with noise from sensor heat.

Next one... the shadows. Are these actual shadows or are you standing between the camera and your flash-lit subject during the flashing part of the exposure? Hint, if flashing a subject during a long exposure when you are normally "invisible" in the frame, your body will block the flashed light from returning to the camera. You have to be hidden while flashing if you're doing it within the frame of the shot, otherwise do it from outside the frame.

[ressalg]

Originally Posted by BBenson

Well, there's lots of different street lights. The "orange" ones are sodium vapor lamps, which emit virtually all of their light at the sodium doublet (atomic transitions) wavelengths of 589+ nm and 590- nm, your eye can't tell the difference. Shooting photos under these means you are using essentially a monochromatic light source. White balance by itself helps a lot but isn't a full answer since different surfaces reflect different wavelengths in somewhat different manners, and there's a lot of solar wavelengths missing

The most popular other street light in the US tends to be the mercury vapor lamp, usually with color corrections via a phosphor. Uncorrected mercury vapor lamps emit mainly the mercury triplets which range roughly 360nm-435nm and appear blueish. The color corrected mercury lamps pump up the red end of the spectrum and have peak emissions running from about 250nm-575nm, which appears "more white" to the eye and the camera. White balance adjustments work better under mercury lamps than under sodium, IMHO

Bob

I think my head just exploded.

[freybear3]

Originally Posted by ressalg

I think my head just exploded.

lol, but all that info is very valuable

thnx Bob

[Raoul Isidro]

Night photography and time exposures associated with it can be tricky because of the high dynamic range encountered such as the extremes of the light from the street lamp and the exposure from the dark trees.
You could try bracketing several exposures with different WB settings.
You could manipulate in post pro by sing HDR or masking.
Cheers!

[Elmo]

A couple of thing struck my eye as I reviewed this thread. The first and most important is night picture usually contain several different types of light sources. This will entirely confuse the WB in your camera. The only solution is to shoot at what-ever and adjust WB to your liking in post. This requires shooting in RAW for best results.

The next issue is we tend to overexpose night pictures. (How do you over expose Black?) There are a couple of ways to determine proper exposure. The first is if there are lit areas in the frame spot meter a spot which you want to be mid brightness, one way of doing this is to set camera to Av and open lens wide open using spot-meter function centered on mid-brightness spot and click off a frame. Chimping and your histogram should show how much to shift exposure. With proper exposure determined switch to manual dial in your desired f-stop and adjust shutter speed to maintain the determined exposure.

If you are in a dark place with no central lighted area try this method. Set ISO very High (1600) set lens wide open in Av mode, meter to almost anything and photograph an 18% gray card. Chimp and look at histogram and if card look gray the exposure is 4 stops over exposed. Then using the exposure triangle you can go to manual and adjust ISO, f-stop and SS for 4 stops less exposure and you should be close..

[inkista]

And, as opposed to white balancing corrections, you can just use the orange from the sodium vapor lights.