I've been having lots of fun taking photos of lights at night, but with quite a few of the shots the lights kind of blaze out, looking much brighter and more blurred than they do in real life. Sometimes I can re-take the picture and it will come out slightly better the 2nd time, although the pictures otherwise seem identical.
An example would be a picture of the moon I took tonight. To my eye, it looked like the moon, with shadows on the surface and a clear outline of the shape, but in my photo it looked like a searchlight, with a bright, blurry edge.
I would upload it to show you, but I can't see how you do that.
I would be grateful for advice on what I am doing wrong and how to correct this (also on how to upload a photo to the discussion boards)
Thanks
@jasehoad
Great picture, and I can see it worked well.
My camera manual recommended using the basic mode landscape feature for night shots, and I am a bit out of the loop with being able to make choices about shutter speeds and ISO as I haven't used SLR for years (just got my first DSLR).
I guess I will just have to accept the limitations of the basic modes and get on with learning about these settings
Thanks for your advice
To upload a photo to the discussion boards, go to your photo and look for the share bar on the bottom right. Copy and paste the code to show a photo in a topic.
Regarding taking photos of bright lights, its a tricky one. Usually, better lenses will result in nicer looking flare from bright lights. Otherwise, its just a question of nailing the shutter speed. Does this help?
Looking at the Exif details of that photo. I had it on TV - Shutter priority, and I had the shutter speed at 1/320 of a second.
So give that a try. AV mode, 1/320 of a second and point the straight at the moon.
The reason why you were getting a bright moon is that your camera was trying to adjust for the darkness and not taking into consideration the brightness of the moon.
@jenirainbow I'm no expert on moon shots, my only successful shots are with my P&S, but you want to set your camera up as if you're shooting in sunlight, as that's what a bright moon is....reflected sunlight. If you've just got a DSLR, use AV mode (I'm a Canon user, sorry if Nikon is different) set a medium f stop and a low ISO, the camera should do the rest for you.
Click on browse by tag and have a look at some moon shots and their exif info, it's a great way to find some good settings to try.
Night shots and camera's auto settings... often end up as a mess... the camera tries to exposure the scene at normal... which brings too much detail to the shadows and blows out the hightlights....
Try guessing at settings and see what works... for the moon for me with a tri-pod and a 500mm lens it would be something like 1/300 f8 iso 400 give or take a bit... remember the moon is just a reflection of the sun... so it is very bright...
As to other troubles at night... depending on the highlights in the image... at a certain point the lights will become stars... (I could tell you why, but I am not sure you care about the math) anyways... lets just say someplace often north of f/16-f/256(yes I have an F/256 on my lens, you may not) you start getting stars... the number of stars will equal the number of blades on the lens if even or twice the number of blades if odd (again, I can tell you the math if you care, this one is simple geo)... those stars can become blow outs if you over expose too much....
so if you can meter for the light you want to capture, which is often 4+ EV brighter than the medium dark in the photo, remember metering gives you middle grey, which is not want you want for highlights... so pump the exposure up 2 or more stops to move the highlights from middle grey to highlights and fire away...
or if you don't shoot film... fire away with whatever and see what you get, reset and try again...
The trick with the moon is to realise that it's still in sunshine, so you want to use the same settings you'd use on a sunny day, or around f/11 to f/16 at 1/200th (or an equivalent exposure).
That will give you a good exposure of the moon, but pretty much everything else will be complete silhouette.
@axel thanks for the helpful info @agima Love your moon shot! Many thanks for the detailed info @minxymissk Mine's a Canon too! thanks for the useful info and tip on browsing tags @meshinka another useful tip, thanks! @icywarm Love all the techie stuff (makes my head spin but I love it! @mikew Great advice to get me started. thanks!
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/jase_hoad/6221294438/
As the Moon is incredibly bright Fast shutter speed, low ISO worked for me
Great picture, and I can see it worked well.
My camera manual recommended using the basic mode landscape feature for night shots, and I am a bit out of the loop with being able to make choices about shutter speeds and ISO as I haven't used SLR for years (just got my first DSLR).
I guess I will just have to accept the limitations of the basic modes and get on with learning about these settings
Thanks for your advice
Regarding taking photos of bright lights, its a tricky one. Usually, better lenses will result in nicer looking flare from bright lights. Otherwise, its just a question of nailing the shutter speed. Does this help?
Here is a photo I took with the Australian version of the rebel.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53581097@N02/5559256897/in/photostream
Looking at the Exif details of that photo. I had it on TV - Shutter priority, and I had the shutter speed at 1/320 of a second.
So give that a try. AV mode, 1/320 of a second and point the straight at the moon.
The reason why you were getting a bright moon is that your camera was trying to adjust for the darkness and not taking into consideration the brightness of the moon.
Click on browse by tag and have a look at some moon shots and their exif info, it's a great way to find some good settings to try.
Good luck, I'll look forward to seeing them :)
Try guessing at settings and see what works... for the moon for me with a tri-pod and a 500mm lens it would be something like 1/300 f8 iso 400 give or take a bit... remember the moon is just a reflection of the sun... so it is very bright...
As to other troubles at night... depending on the highlights in the image... at a certain point the lights will become stars... (I could tell you why, but I am not sure you care about the math) anyways... lets just say someplace often north of f/16-f/256(yes I have an F/256 on my lens, you may not) you start getting stars... the number of stars will equal the number of blades on the lens if even or twice the number of blades if odd (again, I can tell you the math if you care, this one is simple geo)... those stars can become blow outs if you over expose too much....
so if you can meter for the light you want to capture, which is often 4+ EV brighter than the medium dark in the photo, remember metering gives you middle grey, which is not want you want for highlights... so pump the exposure up 2 or more stops to move the highlights from middle grey to highlights and fire away...
or if you don't shoot film... fire away with whatever and see what you get, reset and try again...
That will give you a good exposure of the moon, but pretty much everything else will be complete silhouette.
@agima Love your moon shot! Many thanks for the detailed info
@minxymissk Mine's a Canon too! thanks for the useful info and tip on browsing tags
@meshinka another useful tip, thanks!
@icywarm Love all the techie stuff (makes my head spin but I love it!
@mikew Great advice to get me started. thanks!