Monday, November 13, 2017

Mediocre Monday: Night Shooting

Welcome back to mediocre Monday. Today we're going to take a deep dive into some of my failed attempts at night shooting.

Night time presents a different set of challenges for taking pictures. DSLRs are great for flexibility and range of sensor sensitivity settings but there are still some problems. On future Fridays we'll look at some of the technical details, but for now, let's get down to the pictures. Some of these I've gone out and re-shot, some of them I haven't yet.

The first one was downtown Newtown, CT. I set the exposure far longer than I thought and moved the camera to look at it while it was still capturing. It's kind of a neat effect, but it's not well executed enough to make a it worth keeping.


 For reference, this is what the picture was supposed to look like.


Next, a church. Looking past the under-exposure (which could probably be corrected in Lightroom) I didn't use a remote release, and pressing the shutter button jiggled the cheap tripod. If you look at the steeple, you can see some doubling. The remote release is your friend.


Downtown Middletown a couple weeks ago. Long exposure, with a really strong set of diffraction spikes everywhere. The problem is that the image has some really ugly and excessive lens flare. (Look for the green splotches and things that look like water spots in various places around the image.)



Finally, here's one from this last Saturday morning. Everything set up right; exposure time good. Problem is my tripod with the heavy camera and telephoto lens raised all the way to the top isn't really stable enough for the shot, and started shaking.


Remember, for every picture you see that you like, there are at least 10 that aren't good. You just don't usually get to see the bad ones. Have fun and keep shooting.

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