Help: Nite Photography

[creative_one]

Hi Everyone ,
I was practicing night photography. I was shooting in Manual Mode & playing with the aperture . For some reason I don’t know if the street light makes everything look more orangeish then goldish?.?. I saw a tree with the street light just hitting the tree just right plus i like how the color of the tree looks @ nite but when i take the photograph of it , it doesn't look like how i see it with my own eyes or through the viewfinder before i take the picture.
How can i get that color that i see through the viewfinder before i shot it?

Thanks
Creative_One

[bcummings88]

I may be wrong but did you check your white balance?

[OsmosisStudios]

Street lights burn orange. Very orange.

There are several ways of fixing this. The first is to set a custom white balance in-camera before shooting using a grey card or white point. This is fairly simple and probably your best bet. That being said, you'll likely still end up resorting to method 2: postwork. Opening the image up in your favourite RAW processor and running it through that, or using a photo-editor (photoshop), or both.

[EmigrantChris]

This link would be a great place to start.
Introduction to White Balance

[Silverz]

I think you will find adjusting your WB will fix this pretty easily

[sbunting108]

Yeah just adjust the white balance in camera or in RAW.

[RWeb]

Originally Posted by sbunting108

Yeah just adjust the white balance in camera or in RAW.

The other thing you can do is within Photoshop, offset the whitebalance, by selecting the part of the picture you know is white, and photoshop recalculates the whole picture based on that data. This isn't flawless however, and should only be done if you have no other alternative. This is because other colors in the photo will be abit different to what they were supposed to be.

But as always, control your camera (ie. WB) so that you only have to do very little in post.

[wulf]

Getting what you see might be tricky - both your camera and your eyes have strengths and weakness. The camera needs a relatively large amount of light but you can leave the shutter open for a long time and also adjust WB to affect the mix of colours in the resulting image. Your eye gives instant feedback and, with the brain, is brilliant at interpreting the information it takes in but is much less good at judging colours at night and has a "fixed shutter speed".

Wulf

[A. J.]

I come looking for an answer to why my night shots (see here) turned out grainy.

Given the late (or early as it was) hour, I forgot and left my ISO set at 200. Am I correct then in making the leap of faith, that if I set my ISO to 800,1600, 3200 or beyond (my D300 goes higher), that I will be able to clean up my image and significantly reduce the grain?

Is there a point of diminishing returns, meaning going beyond ISO 800, 1600 or even 3200, will not improve the clarity of the final image?

The Zion shot was a 46 min. exposure, shot at f3.5, with a 12-24mm wide angle, taken between 2:30-3:16am MST. The Bryce shot was a 35 min. exposure, same lens, same ISO, relatively same time. I was looking to get the star trails.

Suggestions on improving the final image, in-the-field (e.g., different f value, longer/shorter exposure, ISO setting, etc)?

Oh, BTW.....

maybe 46 min. was a tad bit too long for the exposure. Thus, another question, how can one decide/tell what IS a proper length of time (exposure) for such a shot?

Too short and the trails do not appear, too long and too much light enters the image. Maybe if I started closer to midnight, I would be less impacted by the coming twilight/dawn. I just won't sleep any more.

Also the evening was super clear, altitude was at approx. 4000 ft. (+/-) at Zion and 8800 ft. at Bryce, and the sky was just ablaze with stars. Possibly the billions and billions of stars and their associated light contribute to the potentially over exposed image.

When taking such long exposures, there is little opportunity for many multiple shots in one evening before the dawn's light begins to wash out the sky.

Thanks in advance for any insights that can be provided!

I appreciate it.

A. J.

[ressalg]

Originally Posted by A. J.

I come looking for an answer to why my night shots (see here) turned out grainy.

Given the late (or early as it was) hour, I forgot and left my ISO set at 200. Am I correct then in making the leap of faith, that if I set my ISO to 800,1600, 3200 or beyond (my D300 goes higher), that I will be able to clean up my image and significantly reduce the grain?

Is there a point of diminishing returns, meaning going beyond ISO 800, 1600 or even 3200, will not improve the clarity of the final image?

The Zion shot was a 46 min. exposure, shot at f3.5, with a 12-24mm wide angle, taken between 2:30-3:16am MST. The Bryce shot was a 35 min. exposure, same lens, same ISO, relatively same time. I was looking to get the star trails.

Suggestions on improving the final image, in-the-field (e.g., different f value, longer/shorter exposure, ISO setting, etc)?


Oh, BTW.....

maybe 46 min. was a tad bit too long for the exposure. Thus, another question, how can one decide/tell what IS a proper length of time (exposure) for such a shot?

Too short and the trails do not appear, too long and too much light enters the image. Maybe if I started closer to midnight, I would be less impacted by the coming twilight/dawn. I just won't sleep any more.

Also the evening was super clear, altitude was at approx. 4000 ft. (+/-) at Zion and 8800 ft. at Bryce, and the sky was just ablaze with stars. Possibly the billions and billions of stars and their associated light contribute to the potentially over exposed image.

When taking such long exposures, there is little opportunity for many multiple shots in one evening before the dawn's light begins to wash out the sky.

Thanks in advance for any insights that can be provided!

I appreciate it.

A. J.

If anything, you should be dropping your ISO to 100 instead of increasing it. The grainy/noisey appearence of the photo is due to the long exposure heating up the sensor in your camera. It's kind of unavoidable. That's why, up until just recently, film cameras were considered to be the better choice for doing startrails. However, in the last couple of years, due to improvements in sensor technology, this is starting to change.