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night time shoot advice

TRSmith

Subscriber Member
Don't have an a900 but would recommend experimenting with white balance pre-sets a little. You may find that something other than "auto" will provide a decent balance, especially if the light sources are mixed. Just a thought.
 

edwardkaraa

New member
Of course, the most sensible advice is to shoot raw. Apart from that, I would say avoid blowing highlights, which is not so easy to do with night shots. I have found out that with the A900 you get much nicer results if the exposure is accurate or slightly underexposed. Even though this camera has a wide dynamic range, it does not like blown highlights. If in doubt, underexpose, and push in the raw converter.

Good luck! :)
 

dhsimmonds

New member
Hi Mike

  • Use a Tripod!
  • I use shutter priority
  • Low ISO, I use 200 for night shots
  • expect shutter speeds of around 3-5 seconds
  • For best effect go for the period immediately after sunset, about 3--45 minutes works best in the UK.

The attached was taken recently using the A900 with ZA 24-70 lens at F22 and set at 35mm focal length. I hope that this might give you some ideas to help with your own shoot. The Spinnaker Tower, Portsmouth, UK is not really capsizing! It's just my attempt to produce a creative image of a well known landmark??!!
 
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dhsimmonds

New member
Mike , I should of course have added that I switch off the "steadyshot" when using a tripod using the "mirror-up" option and remote electronic shutter release.
Half press to focus (or use manual focus), press hard once to lock the mirror up and then again to make the exposure. It's a lot easier to do than to write this! Good luck with the shoot!
 

douglasf13

New member
Great shot, Dave. Wonderful color. As an aside, you may not want to shoot much over f11 with the A900, unless you REALLY need the extra DOF, because diffraction will really start limiting your resolution. Of course, that really just depends on how big you plan on printing. For web images and small prints, that probably won't make a difference.
 

dhsimmonds

New member
Thanks Douglas, I did a 19"x13" print at 300 dpi and using a 16bit tiff produced from Capture One 5.0Pro as I was looking for any signs of diffraction but it was fine for my purposes. Showed up a few dust spots before taking them out with the spot remover in PS before printing though! A sensor clean is next on my "to do" list.
 

dhsimmonds

New member
Thanks Edward. The camera WB was set at the "daylight" setting then the raw file tweaked in C1 to 5000K. The sky colour is a natural phenomenon for sky's taken within the 60 minute "golden hour" after sunset at these latitudes. I am not sure if it would work in Bangkok or even as far south in the Northern hemisphere as say, Arizona.

The trick is to make exposures starting about 15 minutes after sunset and then every 7/8 minutes thereafter and select the one which gives the most pleasing blue tone to the sky. The nearer to the one hour after sunset the darker the blue until of course it just becomes black and the lights are then just burnt out.

It would be worth trying it as I would like to know if it works at extreme latitudes and within the Southern hemisphere.
 

edwardkaraa

New member
Thank you Dave!

I'm not sure how it works in the tropics of Thailand, but definitely not in Bangkok as the light pollution is so strong that the sky is always orange after sunset. I would usually get this nice blue if I set the WB at around 3400K.

I will give it a try next weekend.
 

mwalker

Subscriber Member
Mike , I should of course have added that I switch off the "steadyshot" when using a tripod using the "mirror-up" option and remote electronic shutter release.
Half press to focus (or use manual focus), press hard once to lock the mirror up and then again to make the exposure. It's a lot easier to do than to write this! Good luck with the shoot!

Most helpful thank you. The shoot has been postponed due to rain so I have time to practice a bit...thanks to you all!
 
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