Night Photography – Snap Great Photos

DSLRs: Photographing Fireworks

June 24, 2014June 8, 2015 by dkrashb, posted in DSLR, Featured, Photography, Photography Lessons

A 7-sec exposure captured a combination of fireworks that never appeared to the human eye

Another great thing about back-button focusing with autofocus is that you can shoot over and over again once you’ve gotten set and never lose focus from one shot to the next when you’re shooting the same scene like during a fireworks display. While I used Manual focus, I rarely remember to turn my lens to MF because most of my lenses allow full time MF. Back button focus prevents me from refocusing when I push the shutter after I’ve so carefully manually focused.

It’s that time of year again here in the US. The 4th of July promises 2-3 days of fireworks displays in many areas. For photographers, that means lots of opportunities to get shots of fireworks.

Having shot more fireworks than I know what to do with the past few years, I have several tips you may find helpful.

Here’s the short form:

Pick a location upwind and preferably high enough to get a view above the crowd and the trees.
Use Manual or Bulb exposure. Don’t worry much about depth of field. Keep ISO low and shutter speed long. Use primarily Aperture and/or secondarily ISO to brighten or darken the fireworks if they’re getting under or overexposed.
Use a wide angle zoom lens (16-35mm works well if you’re close; 24-70mm if your further away; if you’re really far away, you might need a telephoto lens) on a tripod and a remote to release the shutter.
Setup with a wider angle than you think you need–this will help you catch fireworks that go off in different positions more easily.
Manually focus on infinity unless you’re closer than 2 football fields and using a telephoto lens.
Speed up your shutter a lot for the finale when many fireworks go off at the same time.
Try to let your camera have a short rest between shots when you can–this will help it keep up with writing image files, preventing it from not firing when you least expect it, and help keep it cooler, reducing noise.

Planning Tips: Location, Location, Location

Find out where and when the fireworks will start. Look at the location on Google Earth. Even better, go to the location and check it out ahead of time. Look for a good vantage point that will give you a view of the fireworks and, preferably, the ground–you may need to get yourself invited to a rooftop party for the best view. 🙂 If you have trees between you and the fireworks, you will be limited to shots of the fireworks above the trees.

Alternatively, look for an interesting foreground subject you can put fireworks behind. Check out this famous photo by Jim Zuckerman of the Statue of Liberty surrounded by fireworks for inspiration.

Additionally, consider smoke when choosing a location. Check the weather forecast for the wind direction and speed. Hopefully there will be a light breeze that will dissipate the smoke. You want to be upwind of the fireworks with the hope that the wind will carry the smoke behind the fireworks and keep your photos clean.

Have an idea of how you’re going to get to your chosen location, how bad traffic will be, and when you will need to get there to ensure a place to setup a tripod. You will need a tripod.

Exposure Settings

Shooting fireworks is similar to shooting lightening except it’s easier because you can predict fireworks better. (See Lesson: 109 Long Exposures and Lightening).

There are two methods I have used with success. I prefer the second one, which is how I shoot lightening, but it requires imagining how much you’ve captured, so you might find the first one easier.

Method One: Manual Shooting Mode

In this method, you choose an aperture, shutter speed, and ISO setting that you think will give you good exposure of the fireworks. You then adjust your shutter speed longer or slower to get what you want and adjust aperture and ISO accordingly.

Another 1/13 sec shutter speed

Notice how this example feels a little lost in space–the cityscape far below and there is a lot of dark space between it and the firework (1/13 sec shutter speed). These work better when there is a streak from the ground up to the actual burst.

Somewhat better than the previous image, the larger burst fills more of the dark space and helps somewhat. A streak from the ground up to the actual burst would still be nice.

A 1/13 sec exposure captured the firing streak and the burst of a single firework

A .3 sec exposure was enough to capture this large display

Another .3 sec exposure–just remember that shorter shutter speeds require better timing

A .8 sec exposure

A .5 sec shutter speed

.5 sec shutter speed

A .5 sec exposure and a little bit of wind gave these fireworks a thicker texture

Most of my single-firework examples (in the gallery above) are ¼ to 1/13 of a second long using this method, but how fast or slow your shutter needs to be is partly dependent on how large the fireworks are in your frame, partly dependent on personal preference, and partly dependent on whether you want to get multiple fireworks in the same shot. Most people shoot fireworks with much longer shutter speeds.

You will likely want shutter speeds of 5-15 seconds or even longer to get multiples, but this is, of course, dependent on how frequently fireworks are being fired.

Note that you will not be able to use your light meter. You can meter while a firework is firing, but the brightness of one firework to another is quite variable and the percentage of the sky that is firework vs dark may make your meter reading deceptive. Also, during the finale, you will need a much shorter shutter speed because many fireworks are going off simultaneously–you may end up with a massive jumble with a very slow shutter.

As far as aperture goes, for fireworks it is more a factor of getting the exposure you want than getting depth of field–you are likely to have all the DOF you need (if you’re shooting wide and not too close). Because fireworks are a lot like light painting, the maximum amount of light you can capture is determined more by how long the firework is glowing, how wide your aperture is open, and how high your ISO is than what you’re shutter speed is. The one thing to be cautious of is if you use a very slow shutter and one firework goes off after another in the exact same spot, not only will they not look so good together in the same frame, but you will probably blow out the highlights where the brightest part of each firework ended up overlapping. This is one of the reasons I prefer using the bulb mode.

ISO can be minimized to reduce noise in most cases, although ISO 800 works for me when shooting single fireworks at shorter shutter speeds. But, bear in mind the longer the shutter speed, the more noise you will have.

Method 2: Bulb Shooting Mode

During the finale, a brief .3 sec shutter speed captured this group of fireworks

Part of the finale, 1.6 secs were needed to get this collection of fireworks

Another 7-sec exposure allowed for multiple fireworks in the same shot

A 7-sec exposure captured a combination of fireworks that never appeared to the human eye

17.6 secs were required to get this group of fireworks during the slower beginning of the show

Bulb simply allows you to manually open and close the shutter instead of setting the shutter speed ahead of time. Some cameras have an actual “Bulb” shooting mode (“B”) on the shooting mode dial. If yours doesn’t, bulb is probably selected by being in Manual Shooting mode and changing the shutter speed–it’s usually the one after 30 seconds.

I prefer this method. The advantage is that it allows you to control the shutter speed based on how bright particular fireworks are, how many have gone off, etc. Instead of guessing ahead of time what’s going to be fired, you can imagine how much light has reached your sensor and how many individual fireworks have been included in the shot.

Use your eyes and brain to “measure” the amount of light that has been produced by the total number of fireworks that have gone off since you opened your shutter. Mentally picture the combination of fireworks that have gone off in the image. This takes getting a feel for when to close the shutter, but isn’t that hard to do because each firework fades rather than continually adding light, meaning there’s a lot of leeway from an exposure perspective as long as ambient light from sources other than the fireworks is minimal.

To maximize the length of time you can leave your shutter open, you can set your ISO to 100 and stop down to f/22. However, you may find the fireworks look at bit dim. Each firework only emits light for so long, so you want enough light to reach your sensor to record each one brightly. For these examples, I used ISO 100 and f/16.

If you have a remote for your camera, this is a good time to use it. Pressing the shutter button can introduce vibration into your shot, which may cause some blur. In fact, it’s preferable to use a remote even if you’re not in Bulb mode. But it’s doubly important when using bulb mode.

Focus

The short answer is manually focus your lens at infinity (there should be a mark on your lens that is an infinity symbol with a line showing you where to turn the focus ring to). This will yield sharp fireworks the vast majority of the time.

If this makes you nervous, you can refer to Lesson 106: Focusing in the Dark. Or, you can point your camera at a bright object that is about the distance you expect the fireworks to be, if your lens has a distance meter you can look at the distance meter to see how far away that is and if your lens is focused at infinity. If you are shooting wide, you may be surprised to discover how close a subject can be and still result in focusing at infinity.

If there is nothing bright enough to focus automatically on, you can focus on infinity and check to make sure the first image you take is sharp.

If you are very close to the fireworks and using a lens that is longer (where infinity focus is much further away) you can autofocus on the first firework itself.

Realistically, you are likely to have so much DOF that accurate focusing is less important. I cannot say I’ve ever had a problem with focus, but then, I typically shoot wide. Focusing at infinity at 16mm, for example, with my full-frame camera at f/16 everything will stay in focus from less than 2 feet away to infinity. I have no desire to be that close to fireworks!

By comparison, if everything were the same except my focal length, at 100mm, I would need to be at least 70 feet from the fireworks. We are not usually that close either, so focusing at infinity will usually work. But, if you’re using a 300mm lens, you’d need to be over 600 feet away for infinity focus to work well. This is still pretty darn close for fireworks, but just keep in mind that if you’re using a 300mm lens and are less than 2 football fields away from the fireworks, that might be a time to worry about this–you might also want to keep a fire extinguisher handy.

Focal Length and Framing

Fireworks are a good time to have a zoom lens on your camera in my opinion. Especially if you are in close proximity. The first time I shot fireworks, I put my 100mm prime lens on my camera and was surprised when the fireworks didn’t fit in my frame–they were much larger than I expected shooting from about a quarter mile away. I ended up scrambling to change lenses.

Using a zoom gives you room to adjust for such misjudgments since you can’t tell how big the fireworks will be until they start going off.

If you like to include the landscape in the shot, you will definitely want to shoot wider. The other thing to be aware of is that you are setting up on a tripod and you will not have a lot of time to adjust between shots. In fact, my preference is to shoot wide enough that I never change the camera position once the show starts. I prefer not to miss shots by fussing with the tripod.

I do miss shots when the fireworks suddenly get fired in a different direction or the wind blows them out of the frame. But, this happens infrequently when I’m shooting wide.

Cautions

If you are firing off a series of long exposures one after another, there are a couple of things to be cautious about. First, you can fill your memory buffer in your camera. This is a little hard to predict when you are doing long exposures. For example, my camera can shoot 6 frames per second but if I fire 18 shots in 3 seconds, the memory buffer will fill and I will have to wait for the camera to catch up writing the images to the memory card. Theoretically, one would think if you are firing off a long exposure followed by another the camera would be able to write the first image while exposing the second and keep up. However, I have run my camera out of memory right before the finale and missed the entire finale while it was catching up. I was not happy.

Just pause every once in a while to see how long it takes for the busy light to go off–if it’s a really long time, you might want to space your shots a bit more.

The other thing to be aware of is that long exposures produce a lot of heat in your camera. This is why long exposures tend to be noisier than short exposures. Giving your camera a little time between shots may also help keep it cooler, keeping noise to a minimum.

Post Processing

Smoke is quite detrimental. You can use curves and levels in Aperture or Lightroom to darken the smoke and make it less obvious to the eye. However, you also loose some of the light in the fireworks in the process and can substantially change the texture of the light trails.

Here’s an example of before and after:

I like the texture of the light streaks better here, but would like it better without the smoke.

No smoke, but a different texture to the fireworks.

I like the way the fireworks look better in the before image, but the smoke is distracting and lowers the contrast.

Sometimes, a puff of smoke in the wrong place ruins an image no matter what you do in post-processing (well, what I do in post-processing; Photoshop gurus may be able to deal with this). And sometimes the smoke is positioned so that you can still enjoy the image (even if you’d like it better without the smoke):

This smoke puff turned bright pink when I tried to darken the smoke

Conclusion

Do not stress about shooting fireworks. It’s not hard and you’ll get a better view of the fireworks if you plan ahead a little bit whether your images turn out or not. Just don’t forget you’re having fun!

Lesson 109 (DSLRs): Lightening and Long Exposure

April 29, 2014October 8, 2014 by dkrashb, posted in Featured, Photography, Photography Lessons

I am testing the Noiseware noise reduction plug-in–all of these images were very noisy before post-processing. Notice the tilted building in the background–this is caused by a combination of using a very wide lens and an upward-pointed angle. It can be fixed in post, but would require severely cropping the image. 16mm (slightly cropped), 9.3 seconds, f/16, ISO 200

This is an example of a strike in the clouds with no landscape showing in the frame. I prefer images with landscape to show scale, personally. 16mm (cropped), 17.3 seconds, f/16, ISO 400

I used both the Noiseware and Nik Color Efex Pro plug-ins with some minimal post-processing adjustments in Aperture no this one to try to pull out the 3 dimensions of the clouds as well as eliminate noise. Not quite happy with it, but the lightening strike was amazing. 16mm (cropped), 9.8 seconds, f/16, ISO 200

16mm (cropped), 10.9 seconds, f/16, ISO 200

1.9 second exposure using bulb. ISO 200 and f/11.

It took 16.5 seconds to get this strike (ISO 200 and f/11)

Using bulb, I held the shutter open for 2.7 sec when this bright strike came along. (ISO 200 and f/11)

Since I promised more examples of things you can do with long exposures in Lesson 108 and then we had a storm that offered a great opportunity to shoot lightening, here’s the first follow-up example.

Before we go into how to shoot lightening, let’s start with a little background on the shutter setting I prefer for this.

For lightening shots, I think it’s easiest to use that mysterious shutter speed called “Bulb.” The first step is to find how to turn it on. In some cameras, the shooting mode dial on the top of the camera has a “B” for Bulb and turning the dial to B is all you need to do. In other cameras, “bulb” is at the end of the shutter speed options just past the setting for 30 seconds. In this case, turn the shooting mode dial to “M” (for Manual) and then set the shutter speed to “Bulb.”

So now you’re in “Bulb” and you may be wondering what the heck that means. This setting let’s you to open the shutter and keep it open until you decide to close it. To do this, you either have to hold the shutter button down the entire time you want the shutter opened or you need to use a remote.

I am currently using a Pixel Pro Oppilas wireless remote, which was amazingly cheap. In fact, I accidentally ordered 2 and decided for the $20 price tag, it was worth keeping the second one as a backup.

In any case, whether you choose a cheap 3rd party wireless remote, a wired remote, or a high-end wireless remote, you will definitely want a remote for bulb exposures. There are two reasons for this: 1) It’s very annoying to have to stand around holding the shutter button down for extensive periods of time, and 2) It’s extremely difficult to hold the shutter button down without introducing camera shake, which will cause blur in your images.

So, you’re in bulb mode and you have a remote attached to your camera. You will also need to put your camera on a tripod. This is a must. And a solid tripod that won’t allow your camera to vibrate helps tremendously. Alternatively, you need a really solid place to set your camera. A fellow photographer friend says setting the camera on a large bean bag will help keep it stable if you have a flat surface to put it on.

Next, you need a safe vantage point to shoot from. A safe vantage point is not, for example, the middle of an open field, under the one tree in said open field, on a roof top, or anywhere above timberline on a mountain. A safe vantage point generally means that you are indoors. Some folks shoot lightening through car or home windows using a polarizing filter to remove glare from the glass. This is definitely the safest thing to do. For recommendations on lightening and safety, go here: http://www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi_pls.html

I will make no recommendations and I am not going to tell you where I shoot from because I don’t want to be responsible for anyone besides myself when it comes to lightening safety. 🙂

That said, let’s assume you’ve found a good, safe place to shoot lightening from. Now that you’ve found your place, you next need to be there at the right time.

Since night time lightening is more dramatic, if you are at home in the evening, having a spot you can get to on a moment’s notice increases the odds that you will be able to capture some great shots. Otherwise, watch the weather forecast and be prepared to go to your favorite location only to be disappointed.

Let’s say all has aligned and now you have your camera in Bulb, with a remote, on a tripod, in a safe location, and there is lightening! You are 90% of the way there!

There are lots of different opinions on what to do next. This is my personal preference:

Use the widest focal length you’ve got. It greatly increases the odds that lightening will be captured inside the frame since you cannot predict where it will strike. The examples for this post were shot at 16mm on a camera with a full frame sensor (meaning 40% wider than if you’re using a crop-sensor camera). Images were then cropped in post-processing.
I use one of two options for focusing. If there is enough light to focus either automatically or manually, I like to focus on an object in the landscape that will result in getting everything in the frame sharp. I like to include foreground objects (like buildings) for scale. If it is too dark to find focus, I set my lens to manual focus and then turn the focusing ring until the mark aligns with the infinity symbol (this is called focusing at infinity). If everything in the frame is at the hyperfocal distance or further from the camera, this will keep everything sharp as well. (If you don’t know what hyperfocal distance is, it just means from that point on, everything to infinity will be acceptably sharp. You can use a Depth of Field calculator to get an estimate of this distance. See Lesson 106 for more info on calculating this.)
Stop down the aperture to something around f/16ish. I like f/16 because it gives me so much depth of field that I don’t have to worry about everything being sharp and, more importantly, allows for very long exposure times without overexposing the image between lightening strikes. That said, when you are shooting with a very wide angle focal length and your subject is far away, you don’t need to be on f/16 to get a lot of DOF, so feel free to try opening up the aperture if you find that works better for you.
Set the ISO as low as you can. I started with ISO 400, over exposed a strike that was very close, turned it down to 100, under exposed several strikes that were further away, and then turned it up to 200. This is not an exact science, but be aware that long exposures, especially at night, tend to get very noisy (speckled and grainy). Setting a high ISO will also add noise, but decreases the length of time the shutter needs to stay open. In this case, what we’re trying to do is keep the shutter open as long as possible with the least exposure until lightening actually strikes. So, we really want just enough light amplification (what the ISO setting controls) to allow for a great exposure during the lightening strike.
Get your camera all set and pointed at the sky (don’t forget to level it) and then take a comfortable seat.
Some people claim they can sense lightening before it strikes. I suggest that if you find your arm hairs standing on end or have some sense of an electrical charge, it’s time to move–quickly! I open the shutter with my remote and watch and listen.
I leave my shutter open for a while and watch how many flashes there are in the sky and how bright they are. If they are not very bright, I will wait through several flashes and then close the shutter (by pressing the remote shutter release a second time).
This next step is critical: look at the exposure you got. I do not have a scientific way to predict what exposure you will need for lightening. This is very much a feel thing. The longer you sit there watching the storm, guessing at how much light has reached your sensor and checking to see if you guessed right, the better you will get at this. The important thing to bear in mind is that when lightening strikes, if it’s very bright, it’s time to close the shutter and start the next exposure. Conversely, if you’ve been getting lots of flashes in the clouds but no bright strikes and you’ve had the shutter open for a while, it’s probably time to close the shutter and start over. If the sky gets too exposed before the lightening strikes, the lightening will not show up as well.

One word of caution: leaving your shutter open for extensive periods of time will drain your battery quickly. Make sure you have a fully charged battery (and a spare if you have it).

In a nutshell, my approach to get lightening shots is to have the right equipment, show up in the right place at the right time, get ready, and then open my shutter and adjust as things happen. Kind of like life. 🙂

Lesson 106: Canon DSLRs – Focusing in the Dark

March 2, 2014March 2, 2014 by dkrashb, posted in Featured, Photography Lessons

The lights on the bridge in the foreground provided enough light that my Canon 5D Mark III was able to autofocus with my f/2.8 lens

To focus on the trees in the foreground, I pre-focused on something approximately the same distance away using autofocus, then when the moon started to rise and provided enough light to see the trees, adjusted manually using live view at 10x magnification and a 2x magnifying loupe

Because I was far from this relatively flat scene, by focusing on the bright reflections on the water, I was well past the hyperfocal distance, keeping everything to infinity in focus

I was able to autofocus with an f/2.8 lens on my old 40D body because of the contrast provided by the last rays of light from the sun

With the 100-400mm plus a 1.4x teleconverter, the max aperture was at f/8. The Canon 40D wouldn’t autofocus with an f/8 max aperture, so I used live view at 10x magnification and a 2x magnifying loupe to focus manually. This is a case where focusing at infinity might have been easier.

Recently, I had a participant in one of my workshops ask about focusing troubles while shooting in caves. It’s always difficult to diagnose a problem without actually being in the situation and knowing what the variables are and what the photographer has already tried and not tried, but here is a go at answering some of the questions that came out of that conversation.

Focusing at Infinity

Someone had suggested the photographer focus at infinity to solve the problem. Focusing at infinity is something you can do when you can’t see to focus by turning your focus ring to the infinity symbol on your lens. The problem with using this technique inside a cave is that the closest thing that will be in focus will likely be further away than anything inside the cave, leaving everything in view out of focus. This can work well for very far away subjects at night, however, and is often used for lightening shots, for example.

In this particular instance, the photographer is shooting with a Canon 30D. If he were shooting at 50mm and f/4.0 (the maximum aperture of his lens) and focused at infinity, the closest object that would be “acceptably sharp” would need to be at the hyperfocal distance, which is 108 feet away (per SetMyCamera App DOF calculator). I haven’t been in many caves where what I wanted to shoot was 108 feet away, so this is not likely to be a workable solution.

While focusing at the hyperfocal distance (108 ft) instead would make things 54 feet away “acceptably sharp”, that’s still quite a distance inside a cave and is not something you can set blindly on a lens without a distance meter (his does not have one).

This means the only way to get sharp focus inside the cave is to actually find focus either automatically or manually. Manually is tricky because it requires him to have someone else shine a flashlight on the subject while he focuses; autofocus is preferred.

So, if you’re doing a lot of shooting in dark scenarios and autofocus is really important to you, here are a few things to consider:

AF-Assist

This (other than using a flashlight) is the cheapest solution if you have a built-in flash. Even the 30D has a built-in AF Assist beam with a few constraints:

You must be in Single Shot or AI Focus focusing mode (not AI Servo)
It only works up to 13.2 feet away
Ken Rockwell (a great resource for to-the-point info about gear and photography in general) said this about the AF-Assist on the 30D: “This is a trick: the 30D has NO AF illuminator! Sadly, the 30D instead fires off the flash numerous times, blinding your subjects. My wife kicked me out when she thought I was going to blind her dogs. The little light near the shutter button on the front of the body is only for the self-timer, not the AF illuminator. Sorry.”

For the 30D, to turn AF-Assist on, refer to page 169 in the 30D user manual:

To prevent the flash from then firing, you’ll also need to turn it off, which is on page 170:

If blinding the bats and your caving cohorts is not acceptable, the next choice would be to use the AF-Assist on a Speedlite. As it turns out, the aforementioned photographer owns two and they both have AF-assist that uses a much less annoying red grid to provide something to focus on.

The AF Assist setting is in the Custom Function menu for each of these flashes and you will want to set the C.Fn-05 setting on the camera flash menu to 2 (see the first excerpt from the manual above).

The next step is to disable the flash from firing, which is going to be in the camera menu for External Speedlite control on newer Canons and C.Fn-07 in the 30D the photographer is using (the same setting shown above for the built-in flash). This will allow use of AF assist without using the flash if you prefer to avoid flash.

“Faster Lenses”

People usually associate having a “fast lens” with getting faster shutter speeds because they can open up the aperture further. However, an additional benefit of fast lenses is the amount of light they make available for focusing. This can make a big difference when focusing in dimly lit settings.

When a camera is focusing, the aperture opens to its maximum size regardless of what aperture value you’ve set for exposure. For this reason, even if you’re exposure setting is f/5.6, your lens will admit 4x as much light during focusing if it has a max aperture of f/2.8 vs f/5.6, 2x as much with an f/2.8 max aperture vs f/4.0. Once you find focus (or release the shutter in continuous focusing mode), your camera stops the lens down to the f/5.6 setting you chose for exposure if you’re using an f/2.8 or f/4.0 lens and doesn’t change the aperture if you’re using an f/5.6 lens.

This can help with low-light focusing scenarios. A larger max aperture also allows your camera to use its better focusing capabilities. The Canon 30D manual says the following (p. 78):

This means that if you have a smaller max aperture than f/2.8, your camera is unable to take advantage of its higher precision focusing capability. All cameras have different focusing capabilities with different max apertures, but as explained here (“Canon EOS DSLR Autofocus Explained”), these capabilities have less to do with finding focus and more to do with refining focus.

If you decide to look at a new lens, here is another article from the same site that might be helpful on choosing lenses: http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Canon-Lenses/Aperture.aspx

Upgrade the Camera

Since the photographer having this issue is currently considering purchasing a 5D Mark III, I thought it worth mentioning that this may help quite a bit. The 5D Mark III claims it can autofocus down to EV -2. The 30D, by comparison, claims it can autofocus down to EV -.5. This means the 30D needs 3x more light to find focus than the 5D Mark III. Add a fast lens, making more of the available light also available to the focusing system, and you’ll find you can focus in more low-light conditions.

That said, no matter what, a certain amount of light must reach the lens for the camera to find focus. Total darkness, obviously, won’t allow for focusing (or capturing an image) regardless of your equipment. But, if our caving photographer points the light on his helmet at what he wants to focus on, it might be enough, for example, with one camera/lens combination and not enough for another.

If you found this article interesting or helpful, please like and share. If you have photography questions or challenges you’d like help with, please comment and I’ll see what I can come up with. 🙂

Lesson 92: Heavenly Bodies

December 6, 2013December 5, 2013 by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons

Every once in a while, I take my dog out after dark (which happens a lot more often this time of year), look up, and am inspired to take some photos. To be honest, the amount of noise in the iPhone night photos continues to frustrate me, even with the iPhone 5S.

But, recently, I was teaching a workshop and I asked if anyone had seen a creative use of noise (all the grainy speckles) in photography and a couple of folks commented that it could be used to create an antique effect. I’m not sure I’ll ever get to where I make noise a goal, but it does open up some possibilities.

So, tonight, I looked up and saw Venus chasing the moon. I immediately pulled out my iPhone and gave it a shot. The images in the gallery were edited using the free, iOS version of iPhoto on my iPhone (see Lessons 84, 85, 86, and 87). As you can see, they are noisy, but Venus and the moon are worth some noise.

Although the crescent moon turns into a blob, I’m pleased that Venus shows up in most of the images.

Your Assignment: Don’t be afraid to go for broke on night images just because you’re using an iPhone. Don’t let any Nokia Lumia-owning friends intimidate you! However, as you may recall from Lesson 3, zooming on the iPhone is a digital zoom, which will make the noise factor that much bigger. Instead of trying to zoom in to get a close-up of heavenly bodies at night, try artistically placing landscape features in the scene, giving the sky some perspective.

Lesson 91: Use a Tripod

December 1, 2013November 30, 2013 by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons

15 second exposure with boats in the background sitting still while boats in the foreground go by

30 second exposure where foreground boats were very brightly lit

30 second exposure while 2 boats passed in the foreground and the boats in the background also moved

30 second exposure of distant boats circling

Long ago, in Lessons 25 and 34, we talked about holding your iPhone to maximize stability and even using a tripod, particularly for using a telephoto attachment lens with your iPhone. Well, if ever there was a time to use a tripod with your iPhone, it’s with the Slow Shutter app.

Because I was on a shoot with my DSLR on a tripod, I was able to capture some cool light trails to share with you in the gallery. However, I was without the tripod for my iPhone, so the best I could do was to prop the phone up on a rock wall and try to hold it still, resulting in this:

15 second exposure while trying to balance the iPhone on a rock

Let’s talk about what happens when you use a slow shutter. “Slow” means the shutter will stay open for a long time (relatively speaking) before it closes again. When we use a “fast” shutter, the shutter only stays open a fraction of a second. The shorter the duration the shutter remains open, the less the subject can move in that fraction of time, so the less blur you will get.

When the shutter stays open for a very long time, like in these images (shot with 15 and 30 second shutter speeds), as the subject moves, the shutter is still open, so it records the moving image. If you’re moving around, you get a complete mess. Or, you can get some fun art if you’re particularly talented at moving your phone around.

I mentioned in lesson 90 that you can use Slow Shutter to get light trails, such as cars driving by at night. Since I don’t have examples of that yet, thought I would go ahead and share the light trails from a lighted boat parade even though they were taken with my DSLR. Don’t worry–I will eventually get light trails with the Slow Shutter app!

Your Assignment: Find a location where you have a clear view of a street where cars drive by on a regular basis. Go after dark–this is a great time of year for this assignment in the Northern hemisphere with the early sunset.

Either use an actual iPhone tripod or come up with a way to prop your iPhone so it will not move. You need to be able to completely let go of the phone or your movement will jiggle it. Set your exposure time for about 15 seconds–this depends on how much traffic is going by. You can do 30 seconds if you have a long line of cars that keep passing or fewer seconds if all lights pass through the frame in less than 15 seconds.

Are you able to get a nice, sharp light trail from the headlights and tail lights of the cars?