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Archive 2015 · Night Shooting Exposure Control

  
 
Lee Saxon
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Night Shooting Exposure Control


Lately I've been experimenting with night shooting, the glow of streetlights and all that, but I'm having trouble figuring out exposure.

At the exposures I want, light sources like streetlights and lit windows of course tend to be blown out. I've been bracketing one stop at a time and blending the images in Photoshop, but that takes painstaking work with layer masks and I'm finding it challenging dealing with the shrinking of the outer glow around these light sources (I find the same with bokeh when I'm trying to assemble focus bracketing).

I've experimented with fill flash and I can see that would definitely help. For the moment I'm limited to the weak built-in until on the camera but I can see I should probably invest in a real one or just bite the bullet and lug out my studio strobes and battery pack. I feel you can only take that so far before the fill lighting completely changes the nature of the scene, though.

Do I need to do smaller bracketing stops? Is there software that can help with the assembly? Am I missing something else?



Nov 13, 2015 at 09:35 PM
kaplah
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Night Shooting Exposure Control


Lee Saxon wrote:
Do I need to do smaller bracketing stops? Is there software that can help with the assembly? Am I missing something else?


In order:
- no. 2-stop brackets are normal. Try -5, -2, 0, 2, 5. Smaller stops just add images (my perspective is doing spherical panoramas indoors, with window pull) and potentially increase artefacts.
- photomatix pro is the gold standard. LR 6.n.n also has an alignment / hdr feature, but is less flexible (and I haven't used it)
- maybe. If your subjects are close enough, then fill-flash (to reduce the dynamic range) is the answer, and that means anything from an on-camera flash to an off-camera bedsheet hung from a support with several speedlights behind it.
- otherwise, try pulling up the shadows in post-processing (shooting 14-bit raw)



Nov 14, 2015 at 07:43 AM
Mark_L
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Night Shooting Exposure Control


The vast majority of 'night' shots are not really night at all but dusk where there is still enough ambient light to illuminate the scene to deal with exactly this problem. If there are streetlights and lights on buildings on it tends to look like night in photographs even when it is still quite bright.

What camera are you using? If the dynamic range is outside of your sensor can record or the shadows get very noisy when pulled up in post processing there isn't much you can do other than workarounds with multiple exposures like you have done.

What is it you are you photographing?



Nov 14, 2015 at 08:51 AM
LightShow
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Night Shooting Exposure Control


Perhaps you can post some samples to illustrate your problem.
Doing a full HDR should give you the most control over tonality and minimizing glow.
Here are a few of mine, I tend to have my night shots still feel like night.
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7749/17541357989_3bc707c4ea_h.jpg

https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8170/7977798251_fb1b824648_h.jpg

https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8801/17378238075_1cd0172b14_h.jpg





Nov 16, 2015 at 03:59 AM
Kisutch
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Night Shooting Exposure Control


Ditto on the dusk/dawn advice, fill lighting the environment is not practical. if you were dead set on it, you'd want a strong light placed far away for even spread. Color gels too. Radio triggers in the 2.4 ghz variety too or wein ultra slaves


Nov 26, 2015 at 10:04 AM
ebookman
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Night Shooting Exposure Control


I certainly don't have extensive experience with night shooting but I was out last night shooting and it was well after sunset. My approach was to expose for a minimum hot spots. In the scene below, I set up the tripod, set the camera to manual, aperture at 5.6 and exposure 1/4 second. ISO auto. I checked the results on the the camera playback. I am watching for where the ISO lands. I am going to be happy with a value from 100 to 300. If it fails to fall into this range I will adjust the shutter speed until it does. If I had patience I would hold out for 100. Once it was there, I made shot to shot adjustments with aperture control alone. If depth of field was the issue, I would set aperture and make shutter speed my variable. The point is that I get down to a single variable and concentrate on not blowing out highlights. In total darkness this is very difficult as dynamic range exceeds the camera's ability to cope, so I select those highlights I will allow to go hot and at least control exposure enough to keep sharp edges on them if possible. This was my goal below on the moon and spotlights in the scene. If I keep the ISO low, I can pull a lot of detail out of the shadows with out noise.


https://jendale.smugmug.com/Dales-pictures/Dales-2015-photos/i-TPDBRFN/0/O/DSC04190---Copy.jpg



Nov 26, 2015 at 10:30 PM
Two23
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Night Shooting Exposure Control


The dynamic range is exceeding the ability of the camera. Either let the shadows just go dark, do some multi-exposure work, or wait until the ground is snow covered. Snow solves a lot of problems for me. I love it.


Kent in SD





Oakland, Nebraska




Nov 27, 2015 at 10:40 AM





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