Night Time Photography Continued

Ooooo look at this I'm getting on a schedule! I will be updating every wednesday! Unless I am deathly ill or I am traveling with the Doctor and the T.A.R.D.I.S. decides do drop me off 12 months from now... Anyway on to the post for today yay :D

So for today I am doing night time photography again! But this time it is more focused on long exposure and not necessarily on the light streaks and also using props.

The camera settings are pretty much similar to what I had mentioned before so the shutter on bulb so that I can control the time I want it to be exposed for, a decently high f-stop, and an ISO around 250.

Along with this shoot I also used props and a flash to achieve some images like this:

In this image what you need is:
-a table or something sturdy
-a glass (wine glasses look prettier in pictures to me)
-water
-a flash (I used my sb 900)
-a remote so you don't get shaking from pressing the shutter
-a camera (I dont know why I still post this...)

Ok so if you look close enough you can see that in the glass the bridge is reflected upside-down which is the reason for the water to be in the glass. for this particular image my settings are at ISO 500 f-stop 5.0 and shutter at 1/13.


The reason for the shutter being significantly slower than the rest of the images is due to the use of the flash, just long enough to have a flare but not too long to make the whole image go white. Since I wasn't using a really long shutter I dropped my f-stop to 5.0 which also gives me the depth of field that makes the bridge lights blurred. I upped my ISO too because I didn't want the background to get too dark.

The image above I didn't use the flash so my settings are more or less like my last post ISO 500, shutter 4 seconds and f-stop at 25.0. The ISO was kept at 500 because the f-stop was raised so high so I didn't want to lose any information.



Next up is more or less landscape photography with long exposure:

First up the settings in the camera are ISO 250, shutter 30 seconds, and f-stop 25.0. For this since my subject was really far away I used a high f-stop so nothing came out too blurry, my ISO back down to my golden ISO, and my shutter with my camera on bulb my shutter ended up at 30 seconds. For the shutter I recommend playing with it, you never know what you are going to get. Also on buildings like this they have lights of their own so the longer the exposure the more you will pick that up. Since you wont really know starting off what the lights will do it is good to experiment.

Remember my settings are always changeable not everything is set in stone, have fun on your own and just experiment, thats the beauty of having digital cameras you aren't waisting film! Last but not least i will leave you with this little nugget :D

Night Time Photography

So I've decided I will probably update once a week, either on Monday or Wednesday probably Wednesday because I have access to the computer lab. I do have a laptop at home but I rarely get online at home too busy watching Doctor Who. Anywho as of right now I am pulling from my archives because I do have pictures that I love and that some people don’t know how to do.

So this time it is night time photography, which includes light streaks like from cars or flashlights. For this setup you will need:

-Camera (duh)

-A tripod (unless you can stand like a statue…)

-A remote (so you don’t get movement when you hit the trigger)

-A street or in this case a bridge

-A lens (any will do I just used the standard 18-55)

For this shoot I went up the Harbor Bridge in Corpus Christi, less than a year ago they put lights lining the bridge which is why I decided to go up there. Trust me its not a fun trek with your camera equipment…

Next up are the settings. For this I used bulb function in the camera to control the shutter so I usually did it around 3-4 seconds, this is the main reason that you need the remote. With the remote you don’t have to hold the button down, you don’t even have to touch the camera so you wont shake it so it wont be blurred. The ISO was set at 200 just so that it will be a touch darker so I can make the shutter last longer. The f stop was at 8.0 not too high but not too low so that there is some depth of field. 

Remember for long exposure photography you are at the mercy of any of the lights around you like streetlights, they are very yellow in pictures as you can see in all of these pictures where there is a light on the subject.

Up on the bridge you have an amazing view of the Texas State Aquarium and the Lexington so I took some of those too.

Then you have an amazing view of downtown Corpus Christi.

Its All About the Setup

Since I just now decided to start this blog I don't have a picture of my setup for this first post but this one is all about your setup and timing. I sketched out what the basic setup was in Photoshop so hopefully you can understand what I did.

So to start you will need:
-A pale or something to have the water in (I used a paint liner that was painted black)
-A flash (Nikon SB 900, I used the SB because it has a higher sync speed than a strobe so you can used a faster shutter)
-Camera (duh!)
-A paper with different colors printed on it (make it in Photoshop or paint, 2 colors preferred)
-Something to drop water into the pale (for this I rigged up a bag to continuously drop, but if you have a helper you can have them drop the water for you)
-A tripod (optional)
-A stand for the flash (or a helper)
-A Table to setup on
-An off camera flash system (you can use a corded system, pocket wizard, Yongnuo, whatever your heart desires it just has to be off of the camera)

So to start I got the paint liner and filled it with water and placed it on the table. For the water droplets I filled up a bag and rubber-banded (you can tape or just hold it) it to a backdrop stand so that I could have a constant water drop and I didn't have to time it just right with someone else. The I taped the paper to the back side of the paint liner and taped to top of the paper to where the bag was connected. For the flash I had a helper and he would hold it and tilt it as I needed. but the key thing is to have the flash pointed at the paper across the water so the colors reflect across the water. This is what it should look like with no water droplets:

Now for shooting it I recommend using a macro lens so you can get closer to the droplet without having to crop in and reduce the ability to print on a larger canvas. Now with a macro lens you are going to have to clean off the lens because when the water drops it does splash a little. The other option is to use a longer lens but even those have limitations on how close you can really get to the droplet.

Next for the settings in my camera I had my ISO at 250, my shutter at 1/2500, and my aperture at 14.0. you can mess with these settings as much as you want but the high shutter is a must if you are wanting to "freeze time". My ISO is usually at 250 when shooting indoors with a flash, its pretty much my golden ISO. For my aperture I wanted pretty much all of the image in focus so I went with a higher f stop. The camera I was using was a Nikon D7000, that really doesn't matter in this or anything else because you can get this image with any camera that has a fully manual mode or even a partially manual mode, you just need to control the shutter.

For focusing it will be hard since you are basically focusing on a plain black surface so what I did was figure out where the drops were landing and used a straw to focus on that then turned the focus to manual. At this point you only have to refocus if you move, and I do recommend moving, try different angles its what makes the image better. You can as I mentioned before move the flash around at certain angles it reflects better in the droplets that are in the air making them stand out more.

Pretty much every image that you capture will be different and don't be afraid to take too many, its all digital now so you aren't wasting film. Do keep in mind your flash can only take so much, don't over heat it, especially if you are using the SB 900 that one overheats really quickly but it did me just fine for this shoot. Now I don't know exactly what the flash was set at but I usually start it at its regular default power and just turn it up and down as I feel it needs. For shoots like this I usually don't change the flash settings I mostly change the camera settings.

Here are a couple more from this shoot: