Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Night Time Can Be Great Time


I've never done a lot of night time photography but truth is, with digital it's a whole lot more satisfying than in the old film days for a couple of reasons.

1) Lack of reciprocity failure means that calculated exposures don't have to be anything from double to 10 times longer than predicted - what you measure is what you get.
2) Modern light meters are pretty sensitive and can often estimate the correct exposure at night.
3) the feedback of the LCD is invaluable.
4) Though digital doesn't have the dynamic range of black and white film - multiple exposures can be blended and short exposures to capture blown highlights are short and therefore painless to take.

In the case of this image, it was shot with a long lens and so depth of field was a problem. I used a blended series of exposures run through Helicon Focus to get decent depth of field. One could argue that flare from the lights is problematic, but in fact in this case it suits the image very nicely and I was happy to have it.

Colour was a bit tricky as these were sodium vapour lights, very orange, but with a bit of balancing and toning down the colour, I'm pleased with the results.

I think I'll give night time photography a bit more workout.

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