Night Time Photography And Some Questions on Specific Cameras

[Androclese]

Folks,

I'm getting ready to experiment with some night photography of some local architecture. I've got a tripod and a remote for my current camera, The Rebel Ti film camera. I read somewhere that I might only be able to get a couple of shots out of the camera because the longer exposers chew up the standard batteries. I've purchased a battery pack for the camera that allows you to use four AA alkaloid batteries like Duracells or something of that nature.

I'm thinking of purchasing the Nikon D40 as my digital SLR workhorse. I don't think anyone offers a battery pack that allows you to use alkaloid batteries for this camera, I'd also be interested in any experience you could pass along regarding using the Nikon D40 for night photography.

In fact if you want to also include any specific settings that I might want to try in the experiment, I'll take those too since these will be my first night shots.

Thanks

[cr8n]

I have an XTi with an auxilliary battery grip. Even with a fair number of long exposures, it takes a lot to drain the batteries.

A suggestion? Buy some NiMH AA rechargables and a quick charger. Even if you run them flat, you'll be recharged in about 15 minutes.

Paul

P.S. Combine that with a cheap inverter, and you'd be able to recharge as you drive, if you have a car.

[Androclese]

Well the first set of experiments is over, but I'm to tired to comment on it at the moment. I'll post more in tomorrow. For now, I'm going to shave and then I'm going to bed. That in it self is more depressing than It should be because my Rocket is still in transit and I'll need to shave with something else before it gets here. There goes Rocket month.

[Emile]

ok so battery life is in fact shorter with long exposures, but if its a problem, you can get a secondary body battery for your dSLR for short cash. you're not driving a flash, so you don't need the big guns. a cable release for the dSLR may be pricey. the canons are way overpriced. i am not familiar with the nikon line, but the canon sensor is pretty decent at long exposure. in fact, if it's a priority, canon released a version of the 20D meant for astral photography with better long exposure noise reduction.

the mechanisms are different but the results are the same, when it comes to film versus digital. you have this sensor logging data while its on, but all sensors have imperfections, like particular nodes misfiring periodically. the nice thing is it's somewhat predictable. what you should do therefore is take a "dark frame" before your long exposure shot on the tripod. set your shutter speed for about the same time as you think you will be taking your shot with, put the lens cap on and take the exposure. this will give you sort of a misfire map you can then use in post to pull the noise out of your shots.

look forward to seeing your work!

[Sabledog]

With film, i shot night shots (fireworks etc) on tripod and aperture priority. When the amount of light is sufficient, the shutter closes. Adjust the aperture to vary the exposure and effects.

[Androclese]

If I ever meet the guy who convinced me I could take photographs I'll

Tried taking some night shots of a Carillon located on the campus of Concordia Seminary here in Saint Louis. If you want to know what a carillon is check out this site.

Spent a little time at the Creve Coeur Camera by my house buying some new film, getting advice on how to set up and bracket the shots I was going to take later, and taking notes.

We went home and had a Taco Bell Super that could a been beat by K rations and stale water, and left for the seminary arriving about 20:00.

The Equipment

• Canon Rebel Ti with the battery pack that lets you use 4 AA Duracells instead of the CR8s
• Fuji Superia X-TRA 400 speed film
• Promaster tripod
• Maglite flash light with an extra set of batteries
• Canon RS60 - E3 shutter remote

Inexperience really hit hard tonight. Not only were these the first night shots, but the first use of the tripod as well. I thought what could be simpler? ... Silly me

Step 1: Attach the camera to the tripod (or how I discovered that this was a low end tripod)

First I thought I could just screw the camera onto the tripod, bad idea. I started to figure that if I really wanted to avoid stripping the threads, maybe I should remove the plate from the tripod and screw it into the camera. After all it had a nice big head on the screw, I could probably even turn it with my fingers. Oops fingers to big to fit into the recess and grip the screw. Never mind the head of the screw had a nice wide slot.... I, on the other hand, had no screwdriver (see equipment list above). No problem I did find a quarter that did the trick. The end result, mounting plate now attached to camera. Attaching the plate to the tripod took about 10 to 15 minutes of fiddling and but i finally got it on and locked. Turns out that the mounting head on this tripod is very cheap and hard to work with. How did I find this out. I went back to the camera store and the sales person showed me some nice, and simple to operate, Bogen tripods. The moral of the story is that you get what you payed for, but I thought I had payed plenty when I bought this first tripod.

Step 2 Frame the shot and adjust the camera on the tripod accordingly (or the wrong way to install the camera on the tripod)

This particular tripod has three or 4 different bubble levels, since the ground of the parking lot where I was shooting was very uneven, I spent a few minutes trying to get everything level. Quite a trick in itself because you can adjust the length of each of the three legs and the angle of the head and plate in almost any plane. When I finally thought I had everything just the way that I wanted it, I took one last look through the view finder. I was disappointed to see that the view finder still wasn't framing everything I wanted. I just needed to adjust the angle of the camera so that it was looking up at the bell tower of the carillon. No problem right. After all, you can adjust the head and base plate in almost any plane, just not the plain that I needed. After a little deductive reasoning, I came to the conclusion that I had installed the plate on the camera 90 degrees from how it should have been installed.

Step 3: Re-attach the camera to the tripod (the right way this time)

Pop the quick release on the head remove the camera, loosen the base plate and rotate it 90 degrees, more fiddling and ... In the meantime, the lens decides to sneakily detach itself from the camera body. Do I know how this happened? No! Do I remember pushing the lens release? No! That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Through some divine intervention, I managed to keep from dropping the lens or the body while I hustled over to the van to reassemble everything in the inadequate glow of the dome light. Using the flashlight didn't seem to help while putting things together since it always seemed to be in the wrong place no matter where my wife held it. We finally got everything together and I was able to frame a shot that wasn't exactly the way I wanted it, but it was getting late and I still hadn't shot any pictures.

Step 4: Shoot some pictures silly this is photography after all

The expert night photographer at the local camera shop said to use ISO 400 film, keep the fstop between 8 - 16 because you want good depth of field for architecture shots and bracket the exposure time. I was a good distance away from the subject I was going to shoot since it's a few hundred feet tall so I figure what the heck I'll bracket each of the stops between 8 and 16 and bracket the exposure at 30 secs, 1 min, 1.5 min, and 2 min. On my camera, you have to use the bulb setting for anything over 30 seconds.

Hmmm, how am I going to time the exposures (see equipment list, do you notice anything missing)? A watch, a watch, my kingdom for a watch. Honey did you bring a watch? "Nah." Father to ten year old son, did you bring a watch? "Dad, I don't have a watch." Remind me to get you one as insurance against the next time I forget mine. My wife's cell phone has this cute little analog clock with no numbers or hash marks, virtually worthless for timing anything less than 5 minute increments IMHO. I'm not going to reveal the name of the idiot savant who thought it would be cool to configure the phone's clock to display as a worthless tiny analog instead of the crisp and efficient (if somewhat boring) digital display, but said savant couldn't find the setting to change it back either. What does an Engineer/amateur mathematician/software architect do when he wants to tell time and doesn't have a watch? He checks the back of the van. Hourglass nah, I never timed it anyway. Water clock nah, no water. I could melt the snow but I didn't bring any matches. What about the working model of the atomic clock at the naval observitory? Nah, that'd probably be detrimental to the film. So what then? 1001, 1002, 1003... Get the picture.

Well eventually I did, but nothing about the experience went as planned. I was able to shoot about 20 photos before the camera stopped working. I don't think it was the batteries, I was working my way through the 2 minute shots when the camera just stopped accepting input from any of the buttons or the thumb wheel. The LCD display just went blank. I guess the camera might have gotten too cold. I finally gave up trying around 22:30. I didn't think it was that cold, but I don't know what else it could have been because I was able to use the last 4 exposures to take pictures of my first grader's 100 day poster of 100 empty Koolaid envelopes.

The moral of the story(Ab uno disce omnes - From one person, learn all people)

Always be prepared and do a dry run before main event. The shots should be developed by Wednesday. I'll post some of them then, if there are any recognizable shots.

[cr8n]

Pretty close to my first attempts. Nice job. Keep goin'

[Androclese]

Here you go!

[Roman414]

I know nothing about digital cameras, but when shooting with film at night you run into reciprocity failure. That is to say, the ISO of the film is meaningless; you are outside the light range for which it was calculated. All you can do is bracket like hell. 1x, 2x,4x, 8x...and make notes for each frame you expose so when you evaluate the pics you will know which settings worked. You get into the long exposures you will notice something "magic". Cars driving by, or people walking will disappear. With a long exposure, they are not in the frame long enough to register on the film.

[Sabledog]

Here you go!

Looks like it worked!

Great shots!

[Androclese]

Here you go!

This message didn't really say much so let me clarify a little. I encourage anyone interested in doing so to make any constructive criticism they'd like.

[Androclese]

Looks like it worked!

Great shots!

Thanks, I think if the camera angle were a little better, I'd be pretty pleased myself.

[mr_baseball_08]

For the first time, it looks like you did pretty well. If you have a spot light or fairly bright flash light, next time you might want to try some light painting. This way, some of your under exposed areas of the image can get exposed properly and the overexposed parts won't be as overexposed because you won't need to keep the shutter open as long.

Here's an example where I flashed the bar a few times, flashed inside the barn with green plastic over the flash to get a cool effect. Then I just left the shutter up to get the orange sky. I think this exposure was around 15 minutes. You did well, so keep up the good work!