Moonlit sak-sak roof

[JBW]

The advertisements all said that the a68 did well in the shadows. Working with the theory that if I can see it I can shoot it I went out with a half full waxing moon tonight and tried it out.

I even returned control to the camera and set it on night shot, tripod. ISO 1600 ~ 30s ~ F/2.8. It looked like a badly shot bright sunlight shot.

I played around a bit and came up with ISO 500 ~ 30s ~ F/2.8. No noise and it definitely does not look like bright sunlight.

C&C most welcome, Brian

[Manfred M]

First of all, Brian, your camera's metering system in one of the automated modes will try to expose the shot to what it has been designed to interpret as a "properly exposed" shot, which means that cameras do tend to overexpose night time shots like this one. If the highlights are not clipped and the shadow detail is not blocked, this is not necessarily a bad thing as one can make the appropriate corrections in PP.

Setting the camera to manual or using exposure compensation to override the default settings is definitely the right way to go.

When I bring this shot into Adobe Camera Raw, it suggests that you are underexposing a touch as you have lost all shadow detail in a lot of areas (the blue). Those are the areas where noise usually hides, so one can't really tell if there is significant noise in this shot as most of those key areas have gone completely black.

[xpatUSA]

The advertisements all said that the a68 did well in the shadows. Working with the theory that if I can see it I can shoot it I went out with a half full waxing moon tonight and tried it out.

I even returned control to the camera and set it on night shot, tripod. ISO 1600 ~ 30s ~ F/2.8. It looked like a badly shot bright sunlight shot.

I played around a bit and came up with ISO 500 ~ 30s ~ F/2.8. No noise and it definitely does not look like bright sunlight.

C&C most welcome, Brian

For moonlit shots, you might want to consider the human eye response (scotopic vision) under such circumstances:

https://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=14971

The camera sensor has no idea as to the lighting it's in, of course.

I think that there might be a WB, e.g. incandescent, on your camera that would shift the scene capture in the direction of scotopic.

The main effect sought for scotopic being a serious reduction in saturation and a slight shift towards blue, IMHO.

While understanding that you are happy with the final image, I used it in order to illustrate the above claim, using FastStone Viewer:



In principle, this is no different to using processing to offset other effects of the human eye/brain combination such as the well-documented white-paper-under-warm-light effect.

Not disagreeing with Manfred's Exposure Advice, BTW.

[Manfred M]

For moonlit shots, you might want to consider the human eye response (scotopic vision) under such circumstances:

https://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=14971

The camera sensor has no idea as to the lighting it's in, of course.

I think that there might be a WB, e.g. incandescent, on your camera that would shift the scene capture in the direction of scotopic.

The main effect sought for scotopic being a serious reduction in saturation and a slight shift towards blue, IMHO.

While understanding that you are happy with the final image, I used it in order to illustrate the above claim, using FastStone Viewer:



In principle, this is no different to using processing to offset other effects of the human eye/brain combination such as the well-documented white-paper-under-warm-light effect.

Not disagreeing with Manfred's Exposure Advice, BTW.

Good point Ted; I wasn't even looking at the physiological / psychological aspects of the human visual system in my response.

The camera does not record light the way that we see in these conditions; there may be a small component of colour vision in night scenes, but in general there is not enough illumination to stimulate the colour sensors in our eyes (cones) and the rods that are sensitive to light levels, but not colours are what are relied on in night vision. This means night vision is predominantly black and white.

Just as an interesting side note; museums and galleries tend to be very dimly lit and under this level of light, human vision tends to shift to being more sensitive to the blue wavelengths. So rather than using daylight colour temperature illuminants (5500K - 6500K), they tend to have lighting that is slightly warmer colour temperatures lights; 3500K, 4100K and 4700K are typical. This helps compensate for the blue sensitivity.

A lot of these institutions use Solux bulbs. http://www.solux.net/cgi-bin/tlistor...ges/index.html

[JBW]

Thanks for the comments. If i could only find a way to get camera to shoot in 'averted vision' I'd solve all the problems.

I ran the shot through all of my possible wb settings in C1 and there wasn't any improvement that I could see.

Seems my options are (1) higher ISO (2) brighter moonlight?

[JBW]

The advertisements all said that the a68 did well in the shadows. Working with the theory that if I can see it I can shoot it I went out with a half full waxing moon tonight and tried it out.

I even returned control to the camera and set it on night shot, tripod. ISO 1600 ~ 30s ~ F/2.8. It looked like a badly shot bright sunlight shot.

I played around a bit and came up with ISO 500 ~ 30s ~ F/2.8. No noise and it definitely does not look like bright sunlight.

C&C most welcome, Brian

Here's an example of the in-camera settings. Shot from the same position but with a slightly different angle of elevation.

[Manfred M]

Thanks for the comments. If i could only find a way to get camera to shoot in 'averted vision' I'd solve all the problems.

I ran the shot through all of my possible wb settings in C1 and there wasn't any improvement that I could see.

Seems my options are (1) higher ISO (2) brighter moonlight?

How about longer exposures? Bulb mode (requires a remote release) can give you virtually unlimited exposure times. The camera's battery life and your tripod's stability are the only limitations.

[JBW]

How about longer exposures? Bulb mode (requires a remote release) can give you virtually unlimited exposure times. The camera's battery life and your tripod's stability are the only limitations.

Doing live view shooting and editing i get about 2 hours out of a full battery. The tripod is steady. Next good night I'll try 45s exposures.

[Manfred M]

Doing live view shooting and editing i get about 2 hours out of a full battery. The tripod is steady. Next good night I'll try 45s exposures.

Remember you will have to shoot on manual. No camera that I am aware of can handle an exposure of longer than 30 seconds.

This means you have to select "bulb" mode and either hold the shutter release down for the entire time without causing camera movement or use a remote release. Some remote releases have built-in timers that let you program in the exposure time, which makes things a lot easier.

[JBW]

Remember you will have to shoot on manual. No camera that I am aware of can handle an exposure of longer than 30 seconds.

This means you have to select "bulb" mode and either hold the shutter release down for the entire time without causing camera movement or use a remote release. Some remote releases have built-in timers that let you program in the exposure time, which makes things a lot easier.

I do have a remote release but sans timer. So I'll have to hold the button but as it is wireless no camera shake