Post Dark Photography

[arith]

Cheers Bruce; I was just thinking that window is the main thing with the devil and the podium, if I Ortonise it then the window will remain sharp but hazy and the blur in the podium will be less noticeable.

Trouble is I had a lot of perspective correction to do and the top of the window needed to be cloned in; was quite difficult.

[arith]

Here is another go using slight Orton technique.



I notice TinyPic resizes to tiny pic and so unfortunately you cannot even read the words in the window. I made it big enough to read and only 1MB size

[Polar01]

Steve: love that last shot, the detail to my way of thinking is wonderful, specifically on the podium. You state that the it is out of focus because of the depth of field you feel is not great enough. As you shoot alot at f8 (supposed sweet spot for sharpness), why not go wild next time, shoot as you usually do, f8 then really wild, f22 and f29, put your shots together and compare. I usually shoot f22 or more when using the tripod. Back to the last image once you compose it in the view finder, pan over to the podium focus on it, turn off auto focus and pan back to the orginal composition and every thing behind the podium should be infocus, but you probably did that. It is getting harder for me to find images to post that I feel are of worth to this post, so darn you Steve for coming up with so many great images, Canada is not an "ABC" place (another bloody castle, another bloody cathedral) lots of lakes and trees and rocks and open spaces not the best for long exposures. Look those images you take,

Cheers:

Allan

[arith]

Great praise indeed Allan. There are so many reasons for doing a long exposure; smoothing water, fireworks, making people invisible, star trails as well as photo's of dark places.

I have indeed used alot from the past but felt compelled to do some more recent ones although nowadays I mostly use a monopod and bump up the iso.

I eagerly await other members images to learn from; but here is one that is a long exposure because it is very dark.

17mm 1.3 secs @f6.3 400iso on a monopod.

[Ollokot]

Hi Steve,
Thoroughly enjoying this thread, here is a shot I made recently, purely experimental to try and capture the ambience of a foggy night, not really much of interest in the shot, taken from my backyard.
f11, 88sec, and ISO100.
Best Wishes Pat

[Polar01]

Steve: I think I found one it just fits the defination as it was taken at .3 of a sec., +1 exposure, f20. It was taken in June at a waterfall about 45 minutes north of me, called Healey Falls on the wait for it "Trent" system. To create this image I opened using CS6 as it allows me to open the image as a smart image which allows me to go back into the RAW program and re-adjust the image. I then opened as a smart copy, I then went back into the RAW program and re-adjusted the Clarity to almost nothing to really blurr the water. Saved that went back into photoshop, added a layer mask, inverted it to black, then slowly painted where I wanted this unclarified layer to be seen, so I have a image is is both very sharp where I want it and blurred where I want that. Then did a Visible Merge, converted to B&W, levels, curves, than another Visible Merge and applied a high pass filter to just add a little sharping.

Cheers:

Allan

[arith]

I think that is an amazing shot Pat; good idea to use fog to capture a mood and extremely well done at that.

[arith]

Yet another accomplished shot Allen; I have to try this one day but the Washlands are flooded at the moment. The Trent nearby isn't nearly as ferocious but still has its bits.

[Polar01]

Pat: very nice image, I like that orange glow from the lights of the city, will not probably get any fog or mist until the late summer or early fall as the nights have to be alot cooler then now. Please post more such images.

Cheers:

Allan

[Ollokot]

Thank you Steve, Allan for your comments, I plan to do a scout for a location that might make a good image in the fog, once I find a scene all I have to do is wait for the fog

[Polar01]

Went out tonight to try to get a couple of shots down by Lake Ontario wanting to use the light of the moon on the water. There was only one problem, no that was millions of problems, we have been very dry of late, however we have had some rain and it was mosquitoes. I was the only live warm blooded thing for miles, they are why I like winter photography so much, I got a couple of images, after they took about 2-1/2 pints I left.
So this image was shot at f8 for 30 sec. at 100 ISO, I am going to have a couple of pints now, but only to replace the volume of liquid that they took out, it is not like I like beer or anything.

Cheers:

Allan

[arith]

It looks so smooth and I like the blue. Above and beyond the call of duty Allan. Actuall Sunday mornings I listen to a radio show about fishing and I know they have got something that works at keeping mosquitoes away, that is made to do something else like anti wrinkle cream but I can't remember what it is.

They was making a fuss because the manufacturer withdrew the product, however they found an alternative, so it might be worth googling cosmetic, fishing, mosquitoes, or asking a fisher.

"Just had a quick look and can't find it. Apparently it was better than DEET, but I suppose 100% DEET might work. I'll have to get some because I went to the National Memorial Arburetum and stood in a dried out stream, looked down and my shoes had changed colour and appeared to be alive; they was covered in spiders. "

[Cantab]

Allan, a spectacular photo, but I don't see any of the mosquitoes. The joys of not living on the coast: flys, mosquitoes.....!

[Polar01]

Took this image June 05, of this year, had a full moon I think, there were some cloub banks, I saw this on the way home late and I decieded to go down to the harbour to see what is was like. This is an image of Cobourg harbour, sometime around 11:30 pm it was shot at f16 8 sec at 1250 ISO.

Cheers:

Allan

[Cantab]

Allan, at the risk of repeating myself, another spectacular photo! The reflections of the moon and the red (starboard?) beacon are wonderful. This is presumably the view looking out to sea (or I suppose I should say, the lake)?

[arith]

I wished I took that one Allan; I can see some posturization and so thought I might try and find a way to remove it before saying anything, but then got carried away.

If you duplicate the layer 50% alpha and apply a mask with a simple top to bottom W+B gradient adjusted to fit, then use overlay blend and apply Guassian blur to the top, it is possible to hide the posturization.

Then I went overboard and applied a Deep Emerald Photo Filter 25% on a Color Blend.

http://i46.tinypic.com/13ydt9c.jpg

[arith]

Scraping the barrel now to find anything to show; composition on this isn't too good and I think maybe I should have been more to the left showing the candles better. It is an attempt to get everything in focus and since at 17mm f6.4 the hyperfocal distance is 2.3 metres, at f16 it must be around a metre. So guessing that everything will be in focus here from about 2/3 of a metre.

I always remember the hyperfocal distances for 50mm, 35mm, 24mm, and 17mm at f6.4 as 23, 10, 5, and 2.3 metres approximately and dof to be 1/3 in front and 2/3 behind. I said it was all guesswork

So here we have 17mm @f16, 400iso and 1.6 seconds exposure on a monopod.

[arith]

Photographed in 0430 hrs August/Sept 2009 and processed just now for the first time; it was an HDR but totally unnecessarily so this is 1 second f8 @200iso.

Unfortunately the viaduct moves when people walk on it it was a cheap nasty 28-80mm lens at 38mm on my fantastic 10D.

[arith]

Long exposure is sometimes useful in museums where flash isn't allowed, don't know why. But it is also useful to have a monopod where they frown on the use of tripods, for some reason they can't can't seem to work out what a monopod is.

Jamming yourself carefully between solid objects you can make yourself into a tripod and times over a second are quite easy for up to 50mm, but I'm yet to manage a second for accumulated time of exposures +1/3 with HDR for some reason.

The 70-200mm lens is a bit different and although I've managed 1/30 mostly I find it hard to do better than 1/125 seconds.

Here,a museum in Nottingham, a flash is useless anyway:

1.3 secs f6.4 @400iso on a monopod.

[Radu Dinu Cordeanu]

77,78,79 I like them all.