Night photo shoot tomorrow

[pschlute]

I am attending a night photo shoot at my local aviation museum tomorrow. The aircraft will be illuminated by powerful LED lights.

If anyone has experience of this kind of event any guidance on shutter speed ? I know domestic LED lights can pulse and so a slow shutter speed is advised. Not sure about this kind of event. I will ask the organisers when I arrive anyway.


This is the event..... It will be good to get back to photography after a long hiatus

https://www.brooklandsmuseum.com/wha...-with-concorde

[DanK]

Peter,

I've never shot an event quite like that, but I've done a lot of night photography, so maybe I can help a bit.

First, a big challenge in night photography is often large dynamic range. The choice is often either to let lights blow out or bracket.

Second, the general guideline for night photograph is base ISO and long shutter speeds, which should take care of any flicker.

Third, white balance is going to be tricky. Who knows what the spectrum of the LCDs will be. I would set the camera for a fixed WB, maybe take a shot or several shots with a neutral card, and plan on re-setting WB later.

If you need really long shutter speeds--which I doubt--you can consider long-exposure (back frame) noise reduction, which requires a second, blank shot of the same duration. I find that with modern cameras, I almost never need it, but if you have any hot pixels with long exposures, this is how to fix it. I used to use it when I did very long (say, 3 to 10 minute) exposures in rural or wilderness settings, but that was with cameras that are several generations in the past. My guess is that you won't need exposures longer than 30 seconds or so.

Dan

[pschlute]

Thanks Dan. I will shoot raw capture so that will deal with WB issues.

I am quite excited, never done one of these before.

[DanK]

Thanks Dan. I will shoot raw capture so that will deal with WB issues.

I am quite excited, never done one of these before.

I assumed you were shooting raw. I wasn’t clear. The problem is that changing white balance in the lighting can make AWB do weird things. I find it easier to make the WB adjustments if I set a fixed wb for the initial rendering. But of course. It’s fixable if you shoot raw.

I look forward to seeing what you get.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[DanK]

This is a real digression, but in case it's interesting:

I had a relevant debate with two experts in night photography about this. All shoot only raw. All agreed that they use a fixed WB in the camera to make the initial renderings consistent. They disagreed, however, on what the renderings should be.

The two experts both use a table that sets the WB to give a neutral rendering regardless of time, that is, changing the WB setting as the lighting changes from warm during golden hour to cold during blue hour. I don't do that. The effect of doing what they advised is of course removing the color casts that help make those periods interesting. Here's an example:

During blue hour with a neutral WB:




During blue hour with the blue cast, but with tint changed in post to make the whites on the boats more neutral:

[pschlute]

It was a great event tonight, despite the constant drizzle for 2.5 hours....thank heavens for weather resistant camera and lens.

First image through the editing procedure.......

IMGP1471 by Peter Schluter, on Flickr

[Chataignier]

I'm envious, here in "la France profonde" there are no such events without several hours travel. Super shot...

Too late now, but perhaps for the future, for any tricky situation like that (concerts too when the subject is moving in low light) I always under expose and bump up the exposure in post. This has the twin advantages of reducing the exposure time, so reducing camera shake issues, and avoiding blown out highlights. My Fuji X-T3 is considered ISO invariant, which means that upping the exposure in post is no worse noise wise than upping the exposure on the day. I dont know if your camera is ISO invariant - it might be worth checking it out.

[pschlute]

Thanks David

i used 15 seconds exposure here.... no shake issues !!

[DanK]

I'd give quite different advice.

Because DR is usually an issue in night photography, and--related--because the detail in shadow is often needed, I avoid any amplification and use a tripod if I can't manage handheld. Usually, if there is limited DR in the scene, I expose to the right and darken in post because that gives better shadow detail. The result, before post, is night images that often look like they were taken in the daytime because they are well exposed.

Often, however, the DR in the scene is just too great. This is particularly likely in urban night photography. Then the choice is to bracket, let some lights blow out, or a combination. Letting features like streetlights blow out can be fine (to my taste) and can be a compositional element if you use a narrow enough aperture to get starbursts. E.g., an old one of mine:



In that case, despite letting the lights clip, I still had to bring up shadows that were almost clipped because I had to expose so that the bright archways still had detail. I should have bracketed but didn't for some reason.

[pschlute]

The result, before post, is night images that often look like they were taken in the daytime because they are well exposed.

Dan, I realise I may be misreading your comment here.... but I want my night images to look like they were taken at night

[DanK]

Dan, I realise I may be misreading your comment here.... but I want my night images to look like they were taken at night

The images, but not the captures. In night photography, as in all photography, underexposing means less data.

In some cases--the image I posted above is one--one has to do what David suggests. I was shooting with a 5D III, which has a DR at base ISO of about 9 stops. That wasn't nearly enough to include all of the scene. Since I didn't bracket--I have no recollection of why I didn't--I exposed so that the archways wouldn't blow out but the streetlights would. That exposure left a lot of the image very dark, so I had to brighten it, as David suggested.

I also have a lot of images where I exposed to protect the highlights (again, excepting some lights) and found that this left the dark areas pretty much as I wanted.

However, when there is less DR in the image (or less that you want to capture) than your camera can handle, you are better off exposing properly, or even ETTR, and then darkening in post, to capture as much data as possible.

My current camera (R6 II) has roughly 2.5 stops more DR at base ISO than my 5D III had, so I less often run into situations where the DR of the scene is too big, but it still happens often enough, and the best answer is often to bracket and merge exposures. Since I and everybody I do night photography with almost always uses a tripod, this is easy enough to do.

So my approach, when I have time, is often to start with an overall matrix metering to see what that yields. I can then use that to adjust the metering, decide whether to bracket, or whatever. Often I just bracket as a matter of course and decide later whether to use the bracketing shots.

In urban night photography, the scene is typically bright enough that in-camera metering works, but in rural or wilderness night settings, the scene is sometimes too dark for a meter reading at base ISO. In that case, assuming you are shooting at ISO 100, you can set the camera for ISO 6400, take a reading in seconds, and use that number of minutes.

While people disparage chimping, I find it invaluable in night photography.y