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Beginner Night scene
- Thread starter Roy1212
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- Jim
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I'm sure there will be an expert along soon but until then I'll give my thoughts.
What your sensor picks up is reflected light so 2nd curtain should light up the building- if the flash is in the right place but the stars are so far away that it shouldn't be an issue. What might be an issue is getting the nearby building lit with flash in focus at the same time as a longer exposure to capture the night sky. Would you be able to set up on a tripod with first exposure focussed on building and subsequent exposure focused on stars then blend them in post processing to get both focussed in the frame?
What your sensor picks up is reflected light so 2nd curtain should light up the building- if the flash is in the right place but the stars are so far away that it shouldn't be an issue. What might be an issue is getting the nearby building lit with flash in focus at the same time as a longer exposure to capture the night sky. Would you be able to set up on a tripod with first exposure focussed on building and subsequent exposure focused on stars then blend them in post processing to get both focussed in the frame?
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Yes I'd agree with the above, its likely that you will need to combine your images in PP, particularly if you want a nice starry dark sky and the building lit up.
I would probably take a test exposure and look to getting the sky right first, so that would be at a wide aperture, high ISO and shutter speed of not more than 25 seconds ish (unless you want star trails). Focus on a star or the moon, manual focus, any vibration reduction off.
Once you have done that now frame the shot with the building in the place where you want it. Take several shots so you get a sky your happy with.
Then without moving the camera I'd light paint the building. Manual focus, put your torch by the building and use it to aid your focus. Here you will want a lower ISO 100-200 an aperture around f5.6 / f8 and shutter you will have to use the bulb setting and try a minute exposure as a starter for 10. Also long exposure noise reduction off (unless you want to take a tent and a sleeping bag!) Then you can paint round the building with your torch try and use diffused light not a pinpoint beam, diffuse your torch with greaseproof paper if you like.
I'm no expert at light painting but have done a bit in the past, BTW its a good idea to not use a LED torch as they tend to be a bit blue and use something like Incandescent for white balance, wear dark or black clothes use a red torch for setting up your camera it preserves your night vision. Take plenty of spare batteries. Look up light painting there is bound to be bags of info on line about it.
I think light painting will give you a much more subtle light on the building rather than a harsh flash, and the other advantage is you can determine where the light is going to be on the building rather than flooding the foreground and other objects with light.
Just my 2d Roy, it will take a bit of practise but worth a try.... cant wait to see the result on TP
I would probably take a test exposure and look to getting the sky right first, so that would be at a wide aperture, high ISO and shutter speed of not more than 25 seconds ish (unless you want star trails). Focus on a star or the moon, manual focus, any vibration reduction off.
Once you have done that now frame the shot with the building in the place where you want it. Take several shots so you get a sky your happy with.
Then without moving the camera I'd light paint the building. Manual focus, put your torch by the building and use it to aid your focus. Here you will want a lower ISO 100-200 an aperture around f5.6 / f8 and shutter you will have to use the bulb setting and try a minute exposure as a starter for 10. Also long exposure noise reduction off (unless you want to take a tent and a sleeping bag!) Then you can paint round the building with your torch try and use diffused light not a pinpoint beam, diffuse your torch with greaseproof paper if you like.
I'm no expert at light painting but have done a bit in the past, BTW its a good idea to not use a LED torch as they tend to be a bit blue and use something like Incandescent for white balance, wear dark or black clothes use a red torch for setting up your camera it preserves your night vision. Take plenty of spare batteries. Look up light painting there is bound to be bags of info on line about it.
I think light painting will give you a much more subtle light on the building rather than a harsh flash, and the other advantage is you can determine where the light is going to be on the building rather than flooding the foreground and other objects with light.
Just my 2d Roy, it will take a bit of practise but worth a try.... cant wait to see the result on TP
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- Craig
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My preferred technique for this sort of thing requires a lot of patience, but I feel gives the most natural results. You need to get set up whilst it is still light, then shoot your exposures of the building during the blue hour whilst there is still enough ambient light that a low iso can be utilised and good detail can be brought out in the building. Light painting can also be used, or for something different light it up from the inside. Then wait a couple of hours for total darkness, refocus on the stars go to higher iso and wider aperture and get your star shots.
Because your tripod has not moved blending these in ps is not hard.
Because your tripod has not moved blending these in ps is not hard.
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Roy, if you are doing it in one exposure you have 2 choices, one is to up the ISO and shoot with a wide lens for less than around 20seconds (what mm will you be using on what sensor?) to get the stars as pins of light and light paint the building as you say. I am certain what you will find is that you do not need to light paint for the entire exposure and you will need to be careful to move the light around evenly so the you don't burn any parts of the building out.
Once you have done this at high ISO and got a nice shot in the bag of the stars as stars you will know that you had to light paint for half the exposure time for example. Then, you can drop your ISO, (or close your aperture but probably best to drop ISO) and work out how long you will need to expose for, and in relation to the new exposure how long to light paint for. Remember if you go from ISO1600 to ISO400 your exposure needs to be doubled twice, so 20 seconds becomes 40 seconds at ISO 800 and 80 seconds at ISO 400, (160s at ISO200 and 320s at ISO100). You can then take a long exposure which will show the earths rotation in trailing of the stars, and light paint for some of the duration to get the foreground right. But like I said experiment at high ISO first and scale to your new longer exposure.
Only other tip if you are doing it in one and not blending is to make sure no stray light enters the camera, either through the lens or through the viewfinder/rear screen. I like to gently lay a black hat over the camera.
Example of a short exposure;
Crowfield Static Stars by Craig Hollis, on Flickr
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No worries Roy.
One other tip to sort out your composition if you are arriving in the dark is to take some test shots at really high iso so you can check out your framing and adjust quickly with relatively short exposures. Also I would focus on a bright star in live view with that lens as infinity will make the stars and the building sharp.
That lens of use wide open on the 5d3 at 16mm and iso 6400 and go for 30s, zoom in and check for trailing, possibly go to 25s and check again etc.
When going for trailing instead if the non trailed shot is underexposed by a stop, once you have calculated your exposure time at lower iso, step it up a stop of iso again...
One other tip to sort out your composition if you are arriving in the dark is to take some test shots at really high iso so you can check out your framing and adjust quickly with relatively short exposures. Also I would focus on a bright star in live view with that lens as infinity will make the stars and the building sharp.
That lens of use wide open on the 5d3 at 16mm and iso 6400 and go for 30s, zoom in and check for trailing, possibly go to 25s and check again etc.
When going for trailing instead if the non trailed shot is underexposed by a stop, once you have calculated your exposure time at lower iso, step it up a stop of iso again...