Night Photography

Challenge #5 in the Prime Subjects of Photography series. Hosted by Mark Scott Abeln.

Challenge has finished

Submit a photograph of an outdoors scene at night. -- There are two basic approaches you can use to photograph this difficult subject. Traditionally, you use a camera mounted on a tripod with long exposure times. Alternatively, you can use a fast lens and high ISO to hand-hold an image. These trade off convenience and equipment cost versus image quality.

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Announced:

Thursday, 2nd June, 2011 (GMT)

Submissions:

Thursday, 9th June, 2011 – Wednesday, 15th June, 2011 (GMT)

Voting:

Thursday, 16th June, 2011 – Wednesday, 22nd June, 2011 (GMT)

Processing rules:

Exposure blending or HDR acceptable.

Capture date rules:

No restrictions.

Additional rules:

Follow dpreview's guidelines for image submission.
Focus can be exceptionally difficult at night. You may want to try manual focus; if photographing a landscape, you can attempt to focus on a distant light source; or you can use a flashlight to illuminate your subject during focus.
Exposure is problematic, but at least you can see the results on the screen. You may want to bracket exposures and then blend on the computer.
If you attempt to hand-hold your camera, use a very fast lens and high ISO; you may need to do noise reduction in post-processing.
Digital noise is much less objectionable when an image is converted to black and white.
If you use a tripod, use a lower ISO for better image quality, and stop down your lens for greater depth of field. If you hand-hold your camera, be sure to focus precisely.
You may want to set your camera to incandescent white balance if the scene is artificially lit. If you are using the moon for illumination, set white balance to daylight.

Maximum number of entries per user:

Maximum number of entries in challenge:

Not restricted

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609 entries

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7719 votes

Slideshow 6 / 655 Full size Next Challenge Previous

Star Wars Above Mauna Kea

by TheInfinityPoint

6^th place

3.129

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3 hour star trail on the summit of Mauna Kea. The lasers are from the adaptive optics unit on the Gemini North telescope. There appears to be two lasers since the telescope used it on two different targets on the sky.

Camera:	Nikon D5000
Lens:	Nikon AF-S DX Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR
Submitted:	Tuesday, 14th June, 2011 10:04 (GMT)
Taken:	Friday, 26th March, 2010
Focal length:	18 mm
Shutter speed:	10800 sec
Aperture:	F3.5
ISO:	6400
Notes:
Views:	319
Galleries:	View this photo in TheInfinityPoint's gallery

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