There is a growing interest in a new kind of nighttime photography.\u00a0 Photographers have been taking photographs of the nighttime sky ever since film was invented.\u00a0 These photographs were generally long exposures that show beautiful star trails.\u00a0 But now they are taking clear, sharp images of the stars and planets literally stopped in their tracks.<\/p>\n
Astronomers have always been taking photographs of the nighttime sky and their goal has always been to get sharp images of the stars.\u00a0 To do that they rigged their powerful telescopes with very precise motor drives that slowly turned the telescopes at the same rate as the stars move overhead, effectively holding the stars motionless in the field of view.<\/p>\n
But with the advent of digital cameras the notion of photographing the night sky as part of a broader landscape has become increasingly popular.\u00a0 And it\u2019s not just star trail images that photographers are capturing.\u00a0 They are capturing spectacular images of the planets, constellations and even the Milky Way over well known features on earth.\u00a0 Wally Pacholka is one of the best of this new breed of photographers and his work is an outstanding example of this genre of fine art photography.\u00a0 Check out Wally\u2019s incredible Top Ten Night Sky Images<\/a> to see what I\u2019m talking about.<\/p>\n Nighttime photography like Wally\u2019s can be both fun and rewarding.\u00a0 But there are a couple of tricks you need to know in order to making it work.\u00a0 Let\u2019s take a look at them one by one.<\/p>\n You need a night preferably without clouds.\u00a0 The subject is the sky and you don\u2019t want to obscure it.\u00a0 Also, ideal conditions would be air that is dry.\u00a0 Humidity in the atmosphere can cause flare around heavenly objects.\u00a0 Dry air is best achieved on cold nights so you\u2019ll need to wear very warm clothing and possibly use pocket warmers to keep your fingers and toes warm.<\/p>\n For this kind of nighttime photography to be at its best the night sky must be at its darkest.\u00a0 To get the most stars a good rule of thumb is to start photographing no sooner than three hours after sunset and stop no later than three hours before sunrise.\u00a0 This guarantees that the sun is far enough below the horizon that its rays do not illuminate the upper reaches of our atmosphere.\u00a0 Any light falling on the upper atmosphere will block out the very faint stars.\u00a0 Wally does most of his best work at 2:00 AM.\u00a0 But you can get very good results and still be asleep in your sleeping bag when Wally is out there creating his magic.<\/p>\n Another thing that can interfere with this kind of photography is the moon.\u00a0 The ideal time to photograph is when there is a new moon.\u00a0 At other times of the lunar cycle you want to make sure the moon is well below the horizon, same as the sun.\u00a0 Even light from a partial moon on the upper atmosphere can overpower the dim stars.<\/p>\n A third thing that can interfere with nighttime photography is city lights.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t take much of a city either to cast a glow on the horizon.\u00a0 To give you an idea of how city lights can interfere with a clear view of the heavens, Death Valley has a light pollution problem because of the lights in Las Vegas 150 miles away.\u00a0 So the ideal location is far away from the polluting effects of city lights.<\/p>\n Wally is as much of an astronomer as he is a fine art photographer.\u00a0 He times his visits to the locations he shoots to coincide with celestial events.\u00a0 But he does this photography for a living.\u00a0 Personally, I just like to get out there when I\u2019m on a photographic expedition and take what comes my way.\u00a0 But knowing when well known constellations like Orion will be in your field of view can help you get even better images.\u00a0 The time of the year and the time of night will determine what you will see, at least as far as the constellations are concerned.<\/p>\n The planets are a different story and move about the nighttime sky on their own erratic paths.\u00a0 That\u2019s why the origin for the word \u2018planet\u2019 is \u2018wanderer.\u2019<\/p>\n Comets and meteor showers are other occasions to photograph the night sky.\u00a0 Knowing when a comet is in the vicinity of earth can product some unique images.\u00a0 Meteor showers are a bit more challenging but with patience you can quite possibly catch one or two during a particularly active event.<\/p>\n You\u2019d be surprised at how quickly the stars move across the sky.\u00a0 A 30 second exposure can show detectible star trails given the right circumstances.\u00a0 When determining a shutter speed that will \u2018stop\u2019 the stars you need to take into account the focal length of your lens.\u00a0 If you look at stars through a powerful telescope you can actually see them move (if the telescope is not equipped with the kind of motor drive described above).\u00a0 If the telescope is powerful enough even a 1 second exposure would produce a star trail.\u00a0 But if we look at the heavens with our naked eyes we don\u2019t detect any movement.<\/p>\n The lesson here is that the focal length of your lens will determine the maximum exposure time you can get away with and still \u2018stop\u2019 the stars.\u00a0 Fortunately, there\u2019s a simple calculation that you can almost perform in your head.<\/p>\n Exposure in seconds = 600 \/ {apparent focal length}<\/p>\n So, if your apparent focal length is 20 mm you can take a 30 second exposure (600 \/ 20).\u00a0 If your focal length is 35 mm your exposure time drops to 17 seconds.\u00a0 At 50 mm the longest exposure you will want to use is 12 seconds and at 100 mm it drops even further to 6 seconds.<\/p>\n Clearly you want to use a wide angle lens for this kind of work.\u00a0 But the night sky is a pretty big thing to photograph so a wide angle lens is a natural choice.<\/p>\n Oh, one more thing.\u00a0 If you\u2019re not shooting with a full frame sensor, be sure to use the apparent focal length when performing the above calculation.\u00a0 For example, if you have a 24 mm lens on a camera equipped with an APS-C size sensor, the apparent focal length is more like 38 mm (24 * 1.6).<\/p>\n It\u2019s really dark out there.\u00a0 So, in addition to longer exposures you\u2019ll want to shoot with a wide open aperture.\u00a0 This is where fast lenses really earn their keep.\u00a0 You\u2019ll be glad you spent that extra couple of hundred dollars for the 2.8 or the 1.4 lens.\u00a0 The more light your lens can capture the better.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll also need to crank up your camera\u2019s ISO.\u00a0 In fact you may need to push it up pretty high.\u00a0 When doing this kind of photography I frequently push the ISO to 1600.<\/p>\n The challenge with high ISO is noise.\u00a0 The good news is the current crop of cameras have remarkably low noise at high ISO settings.\u00a0 Full frame sensors have lower noise levels because of the greater light gathering capacity of their larger pixels.\u00a0 APS-C sized sensors of necessity have smaller pixels which translates to higher noise levels at higher ISO settings.\u00a0 Digicams have high densities of pixels crammed into very small sensors resulting in noise levels that probably render them useless for this kind of photography.<\/p>\n One challenge of night time photography is getting the image in focus.\u00a0 Think of trying to get a sharp focus with a wide angle lens on a shadowy tree or tiny points of light in the sky on a cold, dark night.\u00a0 The camera\u2019s autofocus setting simply isn\u2019t going to cut it.\u00a0 So you need to focus manually.<\/p>\n What I like to do is take the camera off the tripod, zoom in on the brightest star in the sky and manually focus on it.\u00a0 Then I can put the camera back on the tripod, zoom back out to the wide angle focal length I want and compose the image.<\/p>\n As added insurance it\u2019s always wise to check the sharpness of your image after you\u2019ve taken a test shot.\u00a0 Your camera\u2019s LCD screen is perfect for this.\u00a0 Display the image and zoom in on a bright star to make sure it\u2019s not fuzzy.\u00a0 If it is, repeat the focusing procedure and try again.<\/p>\n Live view which is often very helpful in getting a tack sharp focus during daylight is useless in this situation.\u00a0 All you get is a blank LCD screen.<\/p>\n There\u2019s one other relatively minor consideration and that is depth of field.\u00a0 You\u2019re shooting wide open and focusing at infinity.\u00a0 We\u2019re definitely not talking hyper-focus here.\u00a0 The depth of field tends to be somewhat limited in this situation.\u00a0 But the good news is we\u2019re using a wide angle lens that has an inherently greater depth of field than a telephoto or even a normal lens.\u00a0 So it\u2019s probably not a serious concern.\u00a0 You just need to realize that you won\u2019t be able to do those dramatic near-far compositions where the foreground is inches from the front element of your lens.<\/p>\n Speaking of composition, working in the dark makes that just a little bit more difficult.\u00a0 You\u2019re not going to see much looking through your viewfinder and, like I said just a moment ago, Live View is useless.\u00a0 You might try using a flashlight to illuminate the foreground objects while you peer through your viewfinder.\u00a0 But that won\u2019t help you with the stars.\u00a0 So you\u2019ll definitely want to take some test shots to check the composition on your LCD and make adjustments.\u00a0 Also, if you include more of the scene than you think you\u2019ll actually need for the final print you can do the fine cropping in the post processing.<\/p>\n If you get hooked on nighttime photography you may want to take the ultimate step and have your camera modified.\u00a0 Digital camera sensors are complex and delicate instruments.\u00a0 Part of the complexity is a low pass filter that covers the actual sensor itself.\u00a0 This filter effectively filters out all of the infrared light, allowing just the visible light to pass through.\u00a0 But the night sky is awash in infrared light.\u00a0 We can\u2019t see it but our camera could if it didn\u2019t have that low pass filter.\u00a0 You can find companies on the Internet that will modify your camera for nighttime photography.\u00a0 But it\u2019s a one-way ticket.\u00a0 Once done, it can\u2019t be undone.<\/p>\n The other consideration is sensor cleaning.\u00a0 When a D-SLR sensor is cleaned, it\u2019s really the low pass filter that is cleaned.\u00a0 When this filter is removed it\u2019s the sensor itself that needs to be cleaned.\u00a0 I certainly wouldn\u2019t want to attempt that myself.<\/p>\n This is a really exciting form of photography.\u00a0 Once you try it you may well find yourself heading out into the dark to not only gaze in wonder and awe at the night sky but also to capture it.<\/p>\n Good shooting.<\/p>\n To see more of my photographs click here.<\/a><\/p>\n Join me on an upcoming workshop.<\/a><\/p>\n (10002)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is a growing interest in a new kind of nighttime photography.\u00a0 Photographers have been taking photographs of the nighttime sky ever since film was invented.\u00a0 These photographs were generally long exposures that show beautiful star trails.\u00a0 But now they are taking clear, sharp images of the stars and planets literally stopped in their tracks. … Continue reading “Ten Tips for Exciting Nighttime Photography”<\/span><\/a><\/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":[3,4],"tags":[13,10,269,268,93],"class_list":["post-905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-how-to-articles","tag-photography","tag-ralph-nordstrom","tag-techniques","tag-tips","tag-workshop"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Nl7-eB","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905","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=905"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3949,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905\/revisions\/3949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Clear Sky<\/h3>\n
Dark Sky<\/h3>\n
Know Your Sky<\/h3>\n
Stop the Stars<\/h3>\n
Capture More Light<\/h3>\n
Sensitivity is a Good Thing<\/h3>\n
Seeing Clearly in the Dark<\/h3>\n
Depth of Field<\/h3>\n
Composition<\/h3>\n
Zap Your Camera<\/h3>\n
Enjoy<\/h3>\n