LED torch light with night photography.....alternative suggestions

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Dean
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Hi... I currently use an LED torch to try to illuminate subjects when out doing night photography with long exposures but find that it's not really giving me the results I would like due to the blue nature of LED lights. I am aware that coloured filters are available to fit an LED Lenser P7 which is what I use but does anyone have experience of these or other suggestions to prevent harsh/blue lighting when illuminating dark objects ?
Prime example is trying to illuminate dark rocks while photographing stars etc. Trying to recover the shadows in post processing is giving poor results and ideally I don't want to have to blend two separate images for the foreground and the stars.

Thanks for any tips
 
I use Colour Temperature Orange (CTO) 1/4 gels applied the the face of the torch. Build the layers up to match the colour of the background light sources. For domestic lighting and LED lighting you will probably need 1 or 2 layers for sodium street lighting 2 or 3 layers. You can buy sheets of gels from ebay amazon etc.
 
DB72 said:
Hi... I currently use an LED torch to try to illuminate subjects when out doing night photography with long exposures but find that it's not really giving me the results I would like due to the blue nature of LED lights. I am aware that coloured filters are available to fit an LED Lenser P7 which is what I use but does anyone have experience of these or other suggestions to prevent harsh/blue lighting when illuminating dark objects ?
Prime example is trying to illuminate dark rocks while photographing stars etc. Trying to recover the shadows in post processing is giving poor results and ideally I don't want to have to blend two separate images for the foreground and the stars.

Thanks for any tips
Click to expand...

I used to use a gradient filter in LR over the foreground and adjust the WB to suit.

These days I shoot several separate exposures for both, stack then blend. If you're shooting at a high ISO it gives much better results re noise, lower ISO not so much.
 
I think you're going struggle for perfection here.

Flickr says you use a Canon 5D and as it's old sensor technology the DR is not as good as a modern day camera.

I see you've tried to lighten the foreground and for that age of camera I think you've done a pretty good job DB.

The exif say you shot at F0 so is that a Samyang manual lens you were using for the Milky Way shot?
 
Thanks for the tips guys, it gives me something to look into.

I did try to lighten the foreground in Lightroom but it was just too dark and was introducing strange blotchy patches and extreme noise.

My "aim" is usually to light the foreground subject but I find that with the light from the LED torch the lighting ends up quite uneven and difficult to deal with in post processing so am hoping to get something a bit better at the point of capture by softening the light and selective colours seemed to be a possible benefit.

GreenNinja... Yes it was a Samyang 14mm.
 
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