{"id":2332,"date":"2012-01-28T09:26:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-28T17:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/?p=2332"},"modified":"2012-01-28T09:29:48","modified_gmt":"2012-01-28T17:29:48","slug":"exciting-nighttime-photography-exposure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/2012\/01\/28\/exciting-nighttime-photography-exposure\/","title":{"rendered":"Exciting Nighttime Photography – Exposure"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are many techniques involved in nighttime photography.\u00a0 Star trail photographs are a traditional approach dating back to the film days.\u00a0 If you think about it, that makes sense.\u00a0 With the ISOs commercially available to most of us photographers, shooting the nighttime sky was not an option.\u00a0 We simply didn\u2019t have fast enough film.<\/p>\n

With the advent of digital photography we can now push ISOs into the thousands and the noise levels are constantly improving.\u00a0 And we can modify our cameras\u2019 sensors to sensitize them to infrared light, something that the serious and most accomplished nighttime photographers do.\u00a0 This provides us the opportunity to photograph both star trails and the night sky.<\/p>\n

In previous articles I\u2019ve discussed techniques for both types of nighttime photography.\u00a0 In the most recent one I describe a technique that can provide both star trails and night sky photographs from a single session.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the link.<\/p>\n

Exciting Nighttime Photography in 10 Easy Steps<\/a><\/p>\n

One aspect I haven\u2019t covered in detail yet is exposure.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week there was a beautiful conjunction of the crescent moon and Venus in the early evening sky.\u00a0 So I grabbed my camera, got permission from my neighbor and used their front yard to photograph the moon and Venus over the Los Angeles basin here in Southern California.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I used my Canon EF 24-70mm f\/2.8L USM lens with a pretty wide focal length \u2013 34mm.\u00a0 If you recall from the \u201c10 Easy Steps\u201d post you can stop motion of the stars (and planets and moon) if your exposure length in seconds is 600 \/ focal length in millimeters.\u00a0 So by this rule I could have exposure lengths of 18 seconds with no apparent movement in the moon or Venus.\u00a0 I set the mode to Manual and the ISO was at 200\u00a0 I saw that I could get a \u2018correct\u2019 exposure at f\/2.8 and 13.0 sec., at least according to the light meter.\u00a0 So I set up the shot, focused and captured the first image.\u00a0 (You can click on the images so see the full size version.)<\/p>\n

\"'Correct'<\/a><\/p>\n

Besides the obvious fact that the nighttime sky over Los Angeles is brown, it is also clear the city lights are overexposed.\u00a0 But more importantly so is the moon.\u00a0 You really can\u2019t make out the crescent.<\/p>\n

\"Moon<\/a><\/p>\n

There were also concerns with the focus.\u00a0 I was shooting wide open and was having trouble holding the focus on the foreground tree, the city lights and the moon.\u00a0 So the next thing I tried was to up the ISO and stop down on the aperture.\u00a0 This next shot is at ISO 1600, f\/18 at 20.0 sec.<\/p>\n

\"Moon<\/a><\/p>\n

I also \u2018underexposed\u2019 this image by two stops.\u00a0 You can see it looks a bit more like nighttime.\u00a0 However, the moon and Venus are still overexposed as you can tell by this detail.\u00a0 The crescent in the moon is a bit more visible but still not satisfactory.\u00a0 And of course at ISO 1600 there\u2019s noise although that can be handled with noise reduction both in the camera and in Lightroom.<\/p>\n

\"exposure-2a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the result I\u2019m looking for yet but it\u2019s moving in the right direction.<\/p>\n

So if \u2018underexposing\u2019 two stops is good, underexposing three stops should be even better.\u00a0 And I really don\u2019t need to go to a high ISO to get the shot so I reduced the ISO to 200 and set the exposure to f\/8.0 at 8.0 sec.\u00a0 The results are even better.<\/p>\n

\"Moon<\/a><\/p>\n

And here\u2019s the detail.<\/p>\n

\"Moon<\/a><\/p>\n

OK, that\u2019s better.\u00a0 And we also have the benefit of the LA city lights being far better exposed.\u00a0 I decided to try one more stop and got this shot at \u20134 stops from the \u2018correct\u2019 exposure.\u00a0 The exposure settings are ISO 100, f\/8.0 at 8.0 sec.<\/p>\n

\"Moon<\/a><\/p>\n

This final exposure nails the moon.\u00a0 You can clearly see the crescent illuminated by the sun but the dark part of the moon that is illuminated by bounce light from the earth.<\/p>\n

\"Moon<\/a><\/p>\n

So we found a good exposure.\u00a0 There\u2019s just one more thing to do \u2013 have a little fun playing around with light painting.<\/p>\n

\"Moon<\/a><\/p>\n

Lessons Learned<\/h3>\n

Let\u2019s take a moment to reflect on what\u2019s going on here.\u00a0 There are several important lessons to be learned.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The first is how our camera\u2019s light meter works.\u00a0 Its job is to make the average brightness or tonality of the image neither bright nor dark but right in the middle.\u00a0 That is referred to as \u2018neutral tonality.\u2019\u00a0 But nighttime scenes need to be rendered as dark.\u00a0 So they need to be underexposed.\u00a0 Normally a couple of stops will do.<\/li>\n
  2. Exposing the bright part of the moon is like exposing a scene on earth in the middle of a bright sunny day.\u00a0 Think about it.\u00a0 The moon is receiving direct sunlight, just like the earth does during the day.\u00a0 So regardless of what your light meter says, the moon should get the same exposure as a sunny day here on earth.\u00a0 In fact, if you had a very precise spot meter you could prove this for yourself.\u00a0 Spot meter the moon (and only the bright part of the moon) and compare that to an average meter reading on a bright sunny day and they will be very close to each other.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Caution<\/h3>\n

    What we\u2019ve seen here applies to photographing the moon at night.\u00a0 But it\u2019s brighter than the planets and much, much brighter than even the brightest stars.\u00a0 So an exposure that works for the moon will not work for stars.\u00a0 You will notice that there aren\u2019t any stars in the images above, due in part to the atmospheric haze that hangs over Los Angeles but mostly to the fact that the moon is so bright.<\/p>\n

    So the conclusions drawn here apply to photographing the moon at night.\u00a0 You\u2019ll still need to bump the ISO, open up your lens and go for 30 second exposures when photographing the stars.\u00a0 But you may not need to go to your highest ISO and you just might be able to stop down a bit.\u00a0 So the lesson is to test your exposure and find what works best.<\/p>\n

    We do photography workshops.\u00a0 Come on out and join us.\u00a0 Click here to check us out.<\/a><\/p>\n

    You can also check out our photography.\u00a0 Click here.<\/a><\/p>\n

    (3166)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Nighttime photography – photographing the moon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[281,64,4,6],"tags":[223,340,361,362,199],"class_list":["post-2332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-expoure","category-how-to","category-how-to-articles","category-journal","tag-moon","tag-night-photography","tag-nighttime-photography","tag-nighttime-sky","tag-photography-workshops"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Nl7-BC","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2332"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2334,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2332\/revisions\/2334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}