Photography News Issue 39

Technique 44

Photography News | Issue 39 | absolutephoto.com

Shooting guide Don’t be afraid of the dark Night photography covers a range of subjects, conditions and locations; from moonlit landscapes to neon- wrapped cities, it presents challenges and opportunities like no other style. To help, here are five top tips from Lance Keimig’s book Night Photography and Lighting Painting: Finding Your Way in the Dark...

Introduction by Kingsley Singleton Techniques & pictures by Lance Keimig, various

#1 Get the right gear

Choosing the right kit will go a long way to improving results at night, and so Lance devotes a whole chapter to the subject in Night Photography and Light Painting , discussing choices of camera bodies and lenses, as well as vital low-light accessories like tripods and cable releases. But most important, he says, is to understand your needs, then buy the best equipment you can afford. “Toomanypeople get hunguponhaving the latest and best of everything without giving much thought to what theywill do with it once they buy it. Consider your intentions: will you make large prints or simply show images online? Will you do primarily long exposures with star trails or short exposures at high ISO to capture star points and the Milky Way? Do you favour extreme wide-angles or a normal or telephoto perspective? Can you really afford that £1500 lens? Renting equipment from a online rental company (like lensesforhire. co.uk), is a great way to try out a camera or lens before committing to a purchase that may not be what you really want or need.” Camera bodies for night photography “Almost any camera that can be mounted on a tripod has a manual exposure control and the ability to do extended exposures can be used for night photography. The biggest advantage of the most recent DSLR cameras is that they produce less long exposure and high ISO noise than older cameras. Full-frame sensor cameras will almost always produce lower noise levels than smaller sensor cameras, but noise is becoming less of an issue with each successive generation. More megapixels does not necessarilymean better image quality, and megapixel count shouldn’t be a top priority when choosing a camera. Megapixels correlate more closely with maximum possible print size than with image quality, which is more a factor of the size of individual photosites on the sensor... a camera with 12-18 megapixels has more than enough resolution.” Lenses for night-time shooting “As a general rule, fixed focal length or prime manual focus lenses yield best results, and are the easiest to work with in low light. Autofocus does not work verywell in low-light conditions. Even though autofocus lenses generally can be switched to manual focus mode, they are optimised for autofocusing. As a result, the ‘throw’, or amount the lens must rotate to focus from near focus point

to infinity, is reduced and this makes them difficult to focus manually with precision. Prime lenses also usually have larger maximum apertures than zoom lenses, which makes it easier to focus and compose with them in the dark. Additionally, astro- landscape photography requires pushing the limits of ISO, shortest shutter speed possible, and widest possible aperture. Prime lenses with a maximum aperture of f/1.4-2.8 are highly desirable for this sort of night work.” Tripods at night “Purchase a professional-quality tripod because inexpensive consumer models do not provide adequate stability and support for long exposures in even the gentlest breeze. It is important to consider stability against size and weight, as even expensive carbon-fibre tripods may vibrate or blow over in windy conditions if they are extremely light. Although these tripods may be adequate for exposures of a few seconds, the long exposures required to photograph by moonlight dictate that a sturdier tripod should be used. “Choose tripod legs that extend high enough that you rarely have to raise the centre column because doing so makes your tripod less stable, while tripods that have only three leg sections are more stable than travel tripods that have four or five leg sections.” Cable releases and intervalometers “The shutter speed range on most cameras does not extend past 30sec in manual mode, and although this is sufficient for brightly lit night scenes, most night scenes require much longer exposures. To take very long exposures, you’ll need to set the shutter speed or mode to bulb, and use either a cable release or wireless remote release. These are available for almost all cameras from the manufacturer and also as less expensive aftermarket products. “For Lenses Night photography tends to require fast wide-angle lenses. Models like Samyang’s 14mm and 24mm lenses offer an excellent mix of affordability and quality, while Sigma’s Art line-up also has some great options like the 35mm f/1.4 and 18-35mm f/1.8. At the top end of the price range, lenses like the Nikon 14–24mm f/2.8G ED AF is so good that “many Canon shooters use this lens with an adapter on their Canon bodies,” says Lance.

Above Steve’s Rock and Milky Way, Olmsted Point, Yosemite National Park. This is a 25sec exposure at f/4 and ISO 12,800, shot on a Canon EOS 6D and using a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens. A low-power LED torch was used to light the rock.