Nocturne

[Ben Egbert]

I was playing around with long exposure night shots even back in the film days, but was not happy until I had a 1DS3 camera and a fairly fast wide lens. The idea is to use the light of a full moon for all the illumination. With a full moon and long exposure, you can use low ISO and stop down to keep the landscape sharp.

The results will be too bright for others because the human eye cannot see it this bright. But like IR, it’s not unnatural, just outside of human visual capabilities. I like it, many don’t.

Here is one taken about 50 miles east of my home. This is Strawberry reservoir in winter, all frozen up and at 7612 feet. There is no light pollution here.

Like your opinion, too bright? Anything else?

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[Kyle Jones]

Not too bright for me. To me, this is a wonderful wide scene. The fact that you took this at night is somewhat incidental, except of course for the stars in the sky.

I still like creating shots like this too. It's a great way to shoot popular areas without the crowds and the moon light adds an ethereal feeling, even when the scene is rendered almost like day time.

 

[AlanLichty]

Nice - the stars and the bluish cast to the light is the primary giveaway to your nighttime endeavor here. I am surprised at how much light you got here without movement in the stars.

Like you I tried a bunch of moonlight shots in my 35mm film days but the time lag for results was too great for any useful feedback to hone the technique. I ended up mostly wasting film for my efforts prior to digital.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Not too bright for me. To me, this is a wonderful wide scene. The fact that you took this at night is somewhat incidental, except of course for the stars in the sky.

I still like creating shots like this too. It's a great way to shoot popular areas without the crowds and the moon light adds an ethereal feeling, even when the scene is rendered almost like day time.

So do I. I have many of the Icons, like Mesa Arch, Monument Valley and several others this way. I would post some of them in future. This was sort a test run.

Nice - the stars and the bluish cast to the light is the primary giveaway to your nighttime endeavor here. I am surprised at how much light you got here without movement in the stars.

Like you I tried a bunch of moonlight shots in my 35mm film days but the time lag for results was too great for any useful feedback to hone the technique. I ended up mostly wasting film for my efforts prior to digital.

Absolutely, and with film I had to guess at AF and exposure. So I had to take many shots. Then noise was always a problem. Even the early digitals were not so hot.

 

[JimFox]

Nice - the stars and the bluish cast to the light is the primary giveaway to your nighttime endeavor here. I am surprised at how much light you got here without movement in the stars.

Like you I tried a bunch of moonlight shots in my 35mm film days but the time lag for results was too great for any useful feedback to hone the technique. I ended up mostly wasting film for my efforts prior to digital.

Hey Alan,

With a full moon, even a 20 sec exposure will have the ground looking like it was a daytime photo. That's why for a more nighttime feel, most of us try to shoot with the moon is around 1/4 and is closer to setting, otherwise the moon will definitely make the ground look like day.

I used to shoot night time shots all the time with film. It was much more of an adventure back then, especially when your ISO was maybe only 64... Countless times I would set up my camera outside my tent, lock down the remote release and set an alarm clock to wake me up in about 5 hours, I would stop the exposure, and then start it again, this time would be for a 2 hour exposure and stopping it before the predawn light got too bright, but long enough to get some light on the ground layer. Surprisingly a good majority turned out okay. With those long of exposure times, there was more latitude in the exact exposure length.

And of course, all of those were star trails. Shortly after digital cameras became available, I remember the giddy feeling I felt at the prospect of one day being able to capture pin point stars instead of always getting star trails. It was awesome to envision!

Jim

 

[JimFox]

Hey Ben,

A very nice shot here. It's nice to see some of the older shots.

One thing I might do, and often do still on my night shots is to use a layer mask to even out the darkness of the sky a bit. It takes a delicate hand, but with the natural polarization that can occur even at night, its easy to get parts of the sky darker then others. But sometimes that is also me be very picky with my images.

Jim

 

[Ben Egbert]

I am going to try some less well lit shots in the future. I have done a few milky way shots but I have a hard time seeing the milky way with my eyes, which makes it difficult.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Hey Ben,

A very nice shot here. It's nice to see some of the older shots.

One thing I might do, and often do still on my night shots is to use a layer mask to even out the darkness of the sky a bit. It takes a delicate hand, but with the natural polarization that can occur even at night, its easy to get parts of the sky darker then others. But sometimes that is also me be very picky with my images.

Jim

Great tip Jim. I have not been able to align stars without using a stacking program but after reading your tutorial I know how to do it. I often use auto align to match up images for landscape blends, I just never thought it would work with stars.

 

[Timmeh]

Hi Ben,

I like it! The clean blue sky without any visible light pollution works really well with the pristine snow. My only disappointment is that you got one shoulder of Orion (Bellatrix), but cut off his other shoulder (Betelgeuse).

Tim

 

[Ben Egbert]

Hi Ben,

I like it! The clean blue sky without any visible light pollution works really well with the pristine snow. My only disappointment is that you got one shoulder of Orion (Bellatrix), but cut off his other shoulder (Betelgeuse).

Tim

Thanks Tim, I guess I am not so expert on the constellations.

 

[lightsgood]

What a wonderful scene. Well done Ben!

 

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks Lightsgood

 

[Pete Van Hamersveld]

Incredible how you achieved pinpoint stars in the sky with a daytime looking shot of snow and no blown out whites. I learned something from this post and the feedback.