Night Landscape Photography: A Primer

[colonel00]

Yeah, I hear ya. That's why I make the "sacrifice" to carry a heavy DSLR and maybe an extra lens or two. I haven't weighed all my stuff but I woudl guess it can be 5lbs of extra weight maybe but having it at those times when you really need it is worth the weight to me.

 

[colonel00]

I came across some pretty nifty Lightroom presets that are donationware. They are free but donations are appreciated. I downloaded them without paying to try them out and definitely plan to donate a little for the author's efforts. Anyway, if you have lightroom, you might find them useful.

http://www.exploringexposure.com/nightscape-presets-v2/

I took another crack at another image I had. Still not the best starting image but it comes out alright. I even caught a shooting star on the left of the Milky Way about half way up.

 

[PJG]

New olympus wide angle pro lens, seems like the infinity setting is pretty spot on, photos start to get pretty grainy above 800 ISO. These where shot with ISO at 400, with shutter times close to 20 seconds.

Nice to see you posting Eric, I hope all is well with the new job.

Paul

 

[Vandal 44]

Thank guys for posting this. I am going to taking my camera on all my hunts. I tell people about the unbelievable thing I see and no pictures to show.

This is very helpful.

 

[Dos Perros]

Well I gave this a go this weekend. My wife and I bought a "nice" camera after our son was born, a Canon T6s, billed as a good DSLR with point-and-shoot capability. To this point I had been ignorant of many of the settings and capabilities it has. This was fun and I hope to keep learning. This is all right off the card JPEG, no processing, and I'm sure is pared down since I'm linking it from my FB account.

Things I learned:

1. Pay attention to the content of the photos before I pitch the tent, like not under a tree.
2. Might need to invest in a wider angle lens, this one is the EF-S 18-135. I found myself in another situation where I wanted a wider angle lens (trying to take a pic of my son steering a tractor from inside the cab, like taking a portrait in a phone booth).

 

[austinphps]

I know this is a fairly old thread, but just want to give a shout out to CrzyTrekker for the tips. I came across this thread while just reading through a bunch of old posts (i'm fairly new to the forum, so was just trying to read anything and everything on here). I have what I consider a decent camera(rebel t5), and have taken some quality photos with it since I bought it a year ago, but just couldn't quite get the night photography down. The tips you provided were awesome and i put them to use last weekend; coming away with some really cool night photo's. I even took the RAW file and plan on doing some additional editing. So just wanted to say, awesome tips and thanks for posting it!

 

[CrzyTrekker]

Hey Paul, sorry I missed this post. Haven't been on this thread in a long time. The job is good, thanks!

Great pictures. You must have the 7-14 2.8??? Great pics! Shows what a little Olympus can do. I really love my E-M5 II.

Hope you're having a great season.

Eric

New olympus wide angle pro lens, seems like the infinity setting is pretty spot on, photos start to get pretty grainy above 800 ISO. These where shot with ISO at 400, with shutter times close to 20 seconds.

Nice to see you posting Eric, I hope all is well with the new job.

Paul

 

[CrzyTrekker]

Thanks for your comments, glad a few people are having fun with this. Hope to see a few pics!

I know this is a fairly old thread, but just want to give a shout out to CrzyTrekker for the tips. I came across this thread while just reading through a bunch of old posts (i'm fairly new to the forum, so was just trying to read anything and everything on here). I have what I consider a decent camera(rebel t5), and have taken some quality photos with it since I bought it a year ago, but just couldn't quite get the night photography down. The tips you provided were awesome and i put them to use last weekend; coming away with some really cool night photo's. I even took the RAW file and plan on doing some additional editing. So just wanted to say, awesome tips and thanks for posting it!

 

[austinphps]

I'm going to try doing some RAW editing this weekend, so hopefully early next week i'll have some photos posted up on here.

 

[OkieElk]

CrzyT,

I just picked up a Canon 80D and a 50mm prime @ 1.8. Is this lense too wide to do night time photography. Saw someone was said they were using a 14mm? Also, Is there a preference for photoshop or lightroom? Would like to get some post-editing software as well.

GREAT TIPS, and thanks for starting the post. It will be very helpful in the future!

Thanks!

 

[tipsntails7]

CrzyT,

I just picked up a Canon 80D and a 50mm prime @ 1.8. Is this lense too wide to do night time photography. Saw someone was said they were using a 14mm? Also, Is there a preference for photoshop or lightroom? Would like to get some post-editing software as well.

GREAT TIPS, and thanks for starting the post. It will be very helpful in the future!

Thanks!

I would say it's not wide enough, but I'm sure you could make it work. You can get a really good Astro lens from samyang or rokinon for 300-400 bucks, it won't have autofocus which doesn't matter for night photos. 12 mm 2.0 14 2.8 something like that.

I personally like Lightroom and photo ninja. I don't like photoshop as it is a destructive program, which means every time you change or adjust something it permanently alters the files where as the previous to you can always go back to the original unaltered raw. Of course you could always make copies of every file, but that becomes a pain.


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