Night photography

[leowyatt]

Out of all the "styles" if you can call them that this is the one that interests me the most. Not quite sure what exactly it is but I really like looking at them and taking them. Though I'm not entirely sure how to about it.

I'd love to be able to do something like this. Is that a panoramic that has been taken and spliced together? I take it to do stuff like that I essentially need a wide angle lens such as a 10-20 etc?

[Mondo]

it may be 10-20 on a 1.6 crop but it's probably like a 24 or 28mm lens, 10mm is almost fish eye in a full frame. which will make the edges really curved out and difficult to stitch together

That I am gussing that photo is taken with a 50mm focal length and then stitched together. I can see about 7 joints (in the water) there might be more.

To take that, its pretty simple really, a tripod, camera at F/8, may be 30 seconds or bulb mode. Make sure you expose every photo with the same settings. Take one, pan the tripod round a little bit but over lap the previous frame by 1/3, repeat until you cover all you wanted.

[leowyatt]

Cool cheers, any other tips for good night photos?

[Mondo]

erm... just need to play with the settings, oh, and get a cable release, and remember. Don't use the flash.

[leowyatt]

Roger about the flash try to use it as little as possible. On a related note any tips on using the flash for indoor shots and for them not to come out over explosed?

[Mondo]

If you have E-TTL then it'll be all automatic, just use put it in manual mode with the flash. Enough light for some background light and the flash will "freeze" the subject.

[leowyatt]

E-TTL?

[Mondo]

Evaluative-Through The Lens, it's Canon's version. Nikon is i-TTL.

Laymen's term, an inbuilt light meter. When taking a picture, the flash will do a preflash a split second before the real one to work out how much light to output so your exposure will be correct.

[leowyatt]

right ok I see what you mean. The 400D fires the flash rapidly 6 or so times before taking the photo.

[Mondo]

Originally Posted by Leowyatt

right ok I see what you mean. The 400D fires the flash rapidly 6 or so times before taking the photo.

That's slightly different, what you are doing there the camera is doing 2 things. It's trying to focus as it is dark the camera can't see in the dark very well so it can't focus therefore it burst a few flashes of light. If you have an external flash like a 430EX or 580EX it will use the red beam instead to judge distances (can actually set it in Custom Fuctions). Then when you shoot, it'll do a pre-flash. it is REALLY quick just before the real one.