{"id":3143,"date":"2014-01-22T18:19:22","date_gmt":"2014-01-23T02:19:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/?p=3143"},"modified":"2019-11-29T14:32:12","modified_gmt":"2019-11-29T22:32:12","slug":"12-tips-nighttime-photography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/2014\/01\/22\/12-tips-nighttime-photography\/","title":{"rendered":"12 Tips on Nighttime Photography"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here are some tips on nighttime photography from an informative article by Dan Richards in a recent issue Popular Photography.\u00a0 Credit for these tips goes to three great photographers \u2013 Matt Walker, Darren White and Mashahiro Miyasaka.\u00a0 Here is the heart of what they shared\u2026<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Use a fast, wide lens.\u00a0 Wide lenses slow the apparent motion of the stars.\u00a0 Fast lenses gather more of the faint light.<\/li>\n<li>Use a tripod.\u00a0 The shortest practical exposure is 30 seconds.\u00a0 Star trails require anything from tens of minutes to an hour or more.<\/li>\n<li>Use an intervalometer.\u00a0 This is essential for exposures greater than 30 seconds or if you plan to take a sequence of 30 second exposures.<\/li>\n<li>Be aware of the weather.\u00a0 An overcast sky will foil nighttime photography plans and a wind will wreak havoc with long exposures.<\/li>\n<li>Be careful.\u00a0 Scout the location ahead of time.\u00a0 Use a headlamp, especially\u00a0 one that has a red light so as not to destroy your night vision.<\/li>\n<li>Include interesting foregrounds.\u00a0 They can be silhouettes or you can light paint them.\u00a0 You also have the option of creating a composite image by capturing a well exposed image of the foreground at low ISO and a high ISO image of the sky and then blending the two.<\/li>\n<li>Focusing is really difficult.\u00a0 Autofocus doesn\u2019t work so you must use manual focus.\u00a0 Pick the brightest star in the sky and use live view to focus on it (don\u2019t change your focal length to focus; use the focal length you\u2019ll be using for your image).\u00a0 Another alternative is to focus on an object at infinity during the day and then marking the focus point with fluorescent tape so you can reset the same focus at night.\u00a0 Again, use the focal length you will be shooting with as the infinity focus point changes as you zoom in and out.<\/li>\n<li>Exposure is critical.\u00a0 If you\u2019re going to shoot starry\u00a0 night photographs your exposure length will be 30 seconds (with a 24 mm lens or wider).\u00a0 Shoot wide open and run tests with different ISO settings.\u00a0 If\u00a0 you\u2019re going to use a long exposure to get star trails determine the ISO setting your 30 second exposure and then adjust ISO and f\/stop to compensate for the length of exposure.\u00a0 If your ISO is 6400 at f\/2.8 and 30 seconds, if you want a 60 second exposure reduce your ISO to 3200.\u00a0 A two-minute exposure requires an ISO of 1600.<\/li>\n<li>Take a workshop.\u00a0 That\u2019s always good advice, no matter how experienced you are.\u00a0 There\u2019s always more to learn.<\/li>\n<li>Don\u2019t get disheartened.\u00a0 This is not easy stuff but practice pays off.<\/li>\n<li>Get in shape.\u00a0 Good locations for night photography are going to be where there\u2019s minimal light pollution and that\u2019s a long ways away from city lights.<\/li>\n<li>When the temperature is cold wrap a hand warmer around your lens to keep it from fogging over on those long half hour to hour exposures.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Well, that\u2019s it.\u00a0 Yea, and I confess; I threw in a couple of my tips too.<\/p>\n<p>Hey, here are a couple of blog posts I\u2019ve done on nighttime photography a while back there.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/articles\/exciting-nighttime-photography-10-easy-steps\/\">Exciting Nighttime Photography in 10 Easy steps<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/articles\/how-to-articles\/nighttime-photography\/\">Nighttime Photography<\/a><\/p>\n<p>So, go on out there and give it a try.\u00a0 Have fun and be careful.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>We always enjoy hearing from you so please feel free to leave a comment and share your experiences with us.<\/p>\n<p>Also sharing this post on Google+, Facebook, Twitter and the like is also appreciated.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/workshops\/index.html\" href=\"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/workshops\/index.html\">Join me on an upcoming workshop.\u00a0 Click here for more details.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/RalphNordstromPhotography.com\">To see more of my photographs click here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"bawpvc-ajax-counter\" data-id=\"3143\"> (931)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nighttime photography poses its own challenges.  Here are some helpful tips on preparing for and getting the most out of your hours spent in the dark.<\/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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[64],"tags":[1256,1255,266,490,1249,488,275,1259,1253,1261,1252,543,1251,312,214,1254,197,429,1257,239,341,480,506,498,13,1260,941,1029,1258,1250,756,1196,1248,707,93],"class_list":["post-3143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-to","tag-autofocus","tag-composite","tag-exposure","tag-fstop","tag-fast-lens","tag-focal-length","tag-focus","tag-focus-point","tag-foregrounds","tag-hand-warmer","tag-headlamp","tag-image","tag-intervalometer","tag-iso","tag-light","tag-light-paint","tag-live-view","tag-location","tag-manual-focus","tag-night","tag-nighttime","tag-overcast","tag-photo","tag-photo-workshops","tag-photography","tag-seconds","tag-silhouettes","tag-sky","tag-star","tag-time","tag-tripod","tag-weather","tag-wide-lens","tag-wind","tag-workshop"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Nl7-OH","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3143","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=3143"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4707,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3143\/revisions\/4707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}