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Louis_Dobson

Louis_Dobson

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I'm getting more into natural light photos in the pitch black.

They give you a view you can't get in real life.

But they have obvious technical limitations. Advice on how to reduce those limitations please?



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http://www.pbase.com/acam/
 
Since you were using a tripod anyway this looks like a case where you could have combined two separate shots; one exposed for the sky and another for the foreground.
 
Louis_Dobson said:
I'm getting more into natural light photos in the pitch black.

They give you a view you can't get in real life.

But they have obvious technical limitations. Advice on how to
reduce those limitations please?



--
http://www.pbase.com/acam/
Click to expand...
i have the same passion, it gets deeper when you get alone there and shot in the silent.

anyway, try to bracket your shot then merge them in PS, try manual settings too, till you get what you looking for
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http://www.pbase.com/shg2
 
My fault for being unclear, I do all that, and I'm entirely happy with the black cliffs there, what I'm asking is how to minimise grain. High ISO and shorter exposure? Low ISO and long expose? NR in camera or RSP? That sortg of thing...

Cheers,

Louis
--
http://www.pbase.com/acam/
 
Thats's what I did - cheers (plus lock up etc).

Still feel the nosie is a bit hight though, for 200ISO.

Plus the resolution / sharpness seems a bit down. Tripod sinking into the sand? Or inherent?
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http://www.pbase.com/acam/
 
Long exposures show us that the world does not stand still!

Celestial objects, leaves, branches, clouds, water, boats... all move. These are the highlight and midtone and edge-forming areas of your image. The shadow foreground area -which probably did not move- is too dark to show detail. Everything that is visible moved, hence the overall ethereal soft quality of your image.

If the foreground were rendered with more detail (layering differently exposed images) its sharpness might make a nice counterpoint to the rest of the image.

Perhaps the tripod did move, too, and there are steps you could take to minimize that, but movement of the subject matter over a 60 sec interval would not change.

To some extent, then, a higher ISO and shorter exposure might render a sharper looking image.

Regards, john
 
Well obviously I WANT the clouds, sea etc to move, that's the point of the picture. But the edges of the cliff don't look too sharp either, and although they DO move, not in our time :-)

You're not the first person who has said it would look better with more exposure on the sand and cliffs. We must be using different monitor / printer profiles - here it looks, both on screen and paper, spot on - the cliffs are darkish (it is a night shot, and supposed to look like one) but have enough detail to be, as you say, ethereal. I may modify the image posted on pbase to be lighter in those areas, althought it is spot on here.

Now I have the print, I'm really, really pleased with it :-) Sends shivers down my spine...

Still like to have a bit less noise without futher losing definition though.
--
http://www.pbase.com/acam/
 
Oh quite.

Doing this kind of thing with film was near impossible unless you wanted to waste rolls of it on the offchance (even polaroids didn't react the same way as normal film). The only limitation now is standing on a cold beach with an impatient dog for two minutes waiting for the test shot appear.

I love it. Nobody has even seen a beach in the dark, because it is dark :-)

Whee!
--
http://www.pbase.com/acam/
 
The picture looks OK to me!
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zeev
 
Didn't mean to convey the wrong impression... i liked this shot & should have mentioned that, I think.

I dropped it into PSP & pumped up the gamma a bit to see what that might look like. It killed the mood.

Regarding sharpness again: compression seems to have softened the cliff edges a bit, artifacts are visible. And I was wondering if thermal currents from warm land mass after sunset might cause some softening of the cliffs in a time exposure?

regards, john
 
I don't have any technical advise. Just wanted to say that your work is beautiful:) I love the low-light photos on your site. Thanks for sharing.

pamela
 
Louis, it looks great.

Which camera do you have?

I think the slight softness adds to the mood. It wouold be interesting to see if it still looks soft with a print, I have a feeling it will look better.

Cheers
Wazza

--
Life is what happens in the middle of making plans.....
(John Lennon)
 
I'm an E500 puppy.

Looks OK as a basic shop print, but the R1800 is on oder and we'll see what we can do then.

Cheers for the encouragement!
--
http://www.pbase.com/acam/
 
Now I'm going to have trouble getting my head in and out of the airplane door :-)

Thanks very much everyone for the advice and kind comments.
--
http://www.pbase.com/acam/
 
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