Comments on: Low Light Digital Photography

By: Lofts Conversions

Lofts Conversions — Tue, 12 May 2009 23:32:00 +0000

Great article! I used an old Olympus digital camera for night photos c5000. I would attach the camera to a cheap telescope from Lidl and take great pictures of the moon. If anyone interested I have put some on http://photobucket.com/elfinlink night moon

Small aperture long exposure!
Regards!
Loft Conversions London

By: MattGranz

MattGranz — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 08:22:35 +0000

The one thing I didn’t see in the article or in the comments, is that a flashlight (especially a high intensity one) is invaluable for getting your focus right on the subject matter. Infinity can always work for a basic landscape but objects will not autofocus and a manual focus can be a real pain if you have no real ability to see what you are focusing on. Otherwise a great article. By the way, I find that ISO 200
F3.8
2-1/2 minute exposure
25 mm.
is a great recipe for doing light painting at night.

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 15:57:52 +0000

I had a question low light photography. What do you recommend metering off for these types of photos, like say, the example sea photo, what did you meter off of originally?

Thanks,
Matt

By: bryan

bryan — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:34:43 +0000

it’s a great articles, iam a newbies wait for more new articles from you.

By: Olivia Bell

Olivia Bell — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:01:15 +0000

Landscape, waterscape… anything other than portraits I don’t feel comfortable with. This article has really helped me. Thank you :D

By: Jamie

Jamie — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 12:34:47 +0000

Thanks for the tips. My first outdoor shoot at night once the weather warms up here is going to be at night, so stumbling upon this article is ver timely for me.

By: Nuno

Nuno — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:41:19 +0000

“Simple! Just the basic of photography.”
That’s true.
The basic of photography.

Nice blog. :)

By: dhanasekar

dhanasekar — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:51:45 +0000

good and i want suggest one thing, yes if i want take picture in low light ‘never use zoom lens or tele lens, i used only block wide lens it gives great depth and avoid nois also. And one more important, dont be tens; work with cool.

By: Lou Ann

Lou Ann — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 14:54:52 +0000

Washington, DC is another city where you technically need to get a permit to use a tripod. Police are inconsistent about enforcing this law. I have used a tripod there without a problem, but only at low-tourist times and only when I am sure to stay out of the way. I have heard of lots of people who have had problems with tripods in DC…

By: My Camera World

My Camera World — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 14:11:09 +0000

RAW vs Jpeg

The Camera Raw format is the direct light data hitting the image sensors with only minimal processing applied (Bayer algorithm). Any changes that are performed to the RAW file through RAW editors add what they call a sidecar file, which records those changes. The RAW file is never changed not matter what you do. You can always go back to the original version and start over.

Every time you save a jpeg image there is some loss of quality, even if it is to rotate file.

Camera RAW sensor can depending on the type of camera record 12 or 14 bits of data vs jpeg which only has 8 bit. This only valid if you are doing extensive image enhancement to tones or colours that stretch their original range. In this scenario jpegs may cause banding in colours or msiised tones and should not in RAW unless to extreme.

Because RAW files have extra data available then normally you are able to recover some blown highlights, but not normally more than 1 stop and even then sometimes one of the colour channels may be clipped a bit if highly saturated colour

For most camera images the biggest advantage is that eh White Balance (WB) can be set in the RAW editor and is not permanent as with Jpeg image. It is so easy to change the colour tone of your image form warmer to cooler.

The first image show in blog article how I made the snow more blue.
http://niels-henriksen.blogspot.com/2007/12/my-winter-snow-capped-friends.html

The down side is very large files my RAW files are 15MB each whereas my jpeg tend to be about 3-4MB and therefore this eats up memory card space quickly or the hard drive storage.

Also you need a RAW editor (some are free) and a workflow that allows to maximize the benefits of 16bit workflow like Adobe CS.

There are even books just devoted to RAW processing.

Here are a few good technical articles from the web.

http://luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/u-raw-files.shtml

RAW vs Jpeg
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/raw_vs_jpg.shtml

Primer RAW format
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/RAW-file-format.htm

Thom Hogan Quick & Dirty Guide to RAW
http://www.bythom.com/qadraw.htm

Niels Henriksen