Pentax K10D, Pentax SMC-A 50mm f/1.7 (manual focus), ISO 100, f/8, 30 sec, +/-0 EV, IS off

Taken in an alley behind an apartment building on Historic Highland Avenue in Birmingham, AL. I was drawn to the combination of lighting (sodium vapor and mercury vapor), the texture of the brick and the arrangement of the trash cans. This photo was taken with my Pentax K10D and my old manual focus 50mm f/1.7 lens on a Joby Gorillapod. I set the camera to manual mode, selected ISO 100 (for minimum noise), Auto white balance, 30 second shutter (maximum shutter time in manual mode), f/8 aperture (for maximum sharpness), and set the self timer to the 2 second delay position (to eliminate camera shake when the shutter opens). I manually set the focus at infinity and didn’t bother checking the light meter reading. Since I shoot these shots with the long exposure noise reduction turned off, I was able to review the shot immediately and saw that it was good on the first try. The alley was a lot darker and creepier than this photo suggests so after one shot I grabbed up my camera and kept moving…

Once back home, I dumped my RAW files into Adobe Lightroom where I sorted through my shots and selected this one to post. I played around a bit with the white balance but found the as-shot auto setting did the best job of capturing the variability of the two competing light sources. I bumped up the exposure a bit to brighten the shot. This was easy to do without introducing too much noise since I had taken the shot at ISO 100 (which gives more leeway for adjustments in post-processing). Had I shot at ISO 400 or above I would have had to make sure I got the exposure right in-camera as any tweaking would have introduced too much noise.

Here’s the same shot with the white balance adjusted to compensate for the orange cast of the sodium vapor lighting in the alley (I clicked the WB eye dropper on the neutral colored stone work on the brick wall in the foreground):

I use this technique a lot for long exposure urban night shots. Usually I only adjust the aperture between f/4 to f/16 or so to dial in the exposure for varying lighting conditions. Using a Gorillapod means I can easily carry the whole rig around and set it on sidewalks, streets, walls, etc. or quickly wrap it around a railing or sign post. I like to keep moving with a purposeful walk. Anyone I encounter on the streets I look square in the eyes and greet confidently. This tends to discourage too much unwanted conversation and draws attention away from my fancy camera. Using my little 50mm lens also helps to make the camera seem less significant to anyone that might be having unscrupulous thoughts.

Here are a few more photos from last night shot using the same technique:

Nothing really amazing here but I only spent about 10 minutes walking around this one block and snapping about a half dozen or so exposures. Using the same technique I’ve gotten much better results with not much more effort by just scouting better locations. Practice like this then when you come across those great scenes you’ll be ready to go with a minimum of fumbling around!

Pentax K10D, Pentax SMC-A 50mm f/1.7 (manual focus), ISO 1000, f/1.7, 1/25 sec, +0.7 EV, IS on

Lots of rain here tonight. Good thing my Pentax K10D is weather sealed ;-) Nice video to set the mood: Rain Song

UPDATE: Apparently this photo was just the beginning. This morning the Auburn area was hit by a series of tornadoes. Fortunately, we escaped without damage as two tornadoes passed just to the north and south of us. There was some damage to houses and businesses but so far we are hearing that there have been no injuries. There was lots of lighting and wind and a crazy amount of rain. Our entire back patio and yard was flooded and the alley turned into a white water river. I took a second to venture out of our bathroom closet to take this picture during the height of the storm:

Here’s the view out front. What the heck are these folks thinking?

Now they are forcasting snow tonight after this front moves through. Got to love Alabama weather!

Pentax K10D, Pentax-A SMC 50mm f/1.7 (manual focus), ISO 640 (auto), f/1.7, 1/100 sec, +/-0 EV, IS: ON (converted to b/w and toned in Adobe Lightroom)

Snapped on my way back from Milwaukee Friday. I’m going to start posting more of my Flickr photos here in an effort to make it easier for those of you who follow my blog to follow my pictures as well. I’m planning on posting the large version of my photos but would appreciate feedback on that decision. Please feel free to post any questions about my photos in the comments here or on Flickr (photo links back to Flickr page).

I’ve already blogged here once about taking sunset photos but after taking this blue hour shot tonight I just had to share how easy this is.

I had to run downtown around 6pm to pick up some fresh oysters from the Fish Market. On the way out the door I grabbed my Pentax K10D, 16-50 f/2.8 DA* (borrowed) and tripod. I made a bee line down 21st Street South (past the Fish Market) to the viaduct that goes over the railroad tracks into downtown. From this elevated vantage point over the tracks I knew I would have a decent view west with enough streetlights for some killer starburst action.

Here’s the set-up for this shot:

• camera mode: MANUAL (you can’t do this in AUTO!)
• aperture: f/22
• shutter speed: 30 seconds
• ISO: 100*
• white balance: AUTO
• flash: OFF (!!)
• IS: OFF
• auto focus: OFF (manually set focus to ∞)
• self timer: ON (2 second delay)
• focal length: widest setting (here: 16mm)
• battery: fully charged (!)

*Nikon users with ISO 200 as the lowest setting may have to back off the shutter to 15-20 seconds.

That’s it. Mount the camera on a tripod, compose the shot, trip the shutter (using the self timer prevents camera shake), step back, and wait. If you time the light right that’s all you’ll ever have to do. The small aperture ensures everything is in focus and creates dazzling starbursts. The long exposure pulls in all kinds of light and colors and the low ISO keeps things s-m-o-o-t-h. I did shoot this photo in RAW but all I did in Lightroom to this shot is apply my standard import settings and touch up a little sensor dust.

Truthfully, I rarely look at the exposure meeter for these shots. I usually just take a 30 second f/22 shot at ISO 100 and check the LCD. If it’s too dark I’ve probably missed the magic blue hour and it’s either time to pack it up or break out the DIY bulb switch (though I usually try a few in vain at f/16 and f/8 just to be sure). If the shot is too bright I’ll just back off the shutter to 15 seconds and try again. If that doesn’t work I just wait a bit until the light drops off some more. The only real hard part is getting the timing right (most people are packing up to leave about the time I’m setting up for my best shots) and being patient (30 second exposures can seem like an eternity sometimes).

It’s really one of the few never-fail shots if you use these settings. Trick is you pretty much have to use all of these settings to get decent results. Break out the tripod and give it a try tomorrow night!

Here are a few more examples on my Flickr stream if you’re interested.

Dusk is my favorite time of day. I love the rich blues of the sky and the contrast of dark trees and such in the foreground. Normally, these shots require long exposures and a tripod to capture and a bit a tweaking post-process to get the lighting and color right.

This shot required a 30 second exposure at f/9 and ISO 100 with +1EV exposure compensation. I chose f/9 for two reasons. First, f/9 was the smallest aperture I could use and still keep the exposure under 30 seconds in Aperture Priority mode (maximum shutter time without switching to Bulb mode) at ISO 100. I wanted to keep the shot at ISO 100 to ensure tack sharp details, rich saturation and no noise. Second, I have found that my kit lens is its sharpest between f/8 and f/11, so f/9 was a logical place to start.

This photo was processed in Adobe Lightroom to look as close to what my eyes saw as possible. Here’s the original RAW shot straight out of the camera (SOOC) with nothing but my default import processing:

Since I was shooting in RAW I left the white balance at Auto and simply used the histogram display on the LCD to verify a good mix of highlight and shadow detail. After downloading I started off by cropping and straightening the shot a bit. Next I tweaked the white balance to 3700K to get the blue to pop (the sky was too purple at the Daylight/5500 setting and too blue at Tungsten/2850). I then pushed the exposure up another +1EV and dropped the Black slider to 3. Nudging the Fill Light slider to 21 pulled even more shadow detail out. I set Clarity to 11, Vibrance to +25 and Saturation to +21. Finally, I added a touch of Sharpening and Detail (50 & 50) and Defringed all edges.

The Clarity, Vibrance, Sharpening, Detail, and Defringe settings are pretty standard for most of my shots with the Pentax K10D. I find the SOOC RAW files are a little flat color-wise and softer than I like. Also, the kit lens leaves a bit of color fringing on hard edges that Defringing seems to fix well.

The final result turned out very true to what I recall seeing that night in Birmingham. It was a bit windy so the tops of the tree branches are motion blured. The tiny star trails were an unexpected surprise.

With Christmas just a couple of days away there is no doubt that many of you have been enjoying taking artistic photos of your Christmas tree and other Holiday decor. All those colorful and tiny lights make perfect bokeh fodder. And highly processed detail shots like this are also fun.

Problem is, many of us (present company included) forget to take good documentary photos of our holiday decor that we can pull out and reminisce over with the grand kids 30 years from now. While all those artsy detail shots are nice, none of them capture the full majesty of your 2008 Holiday decor. Going through my photos a few days ago I ran across this image I took of my mom’s Christmas tree back in 2005:

This is one of my favorite Christmas photos of all time. Even in black and white (shot in B&W mode so there is no color version) I can totally feel the warmth of the twinkle lights and even smell the fresh pine fragrance of the Frasier fir tree. With this in mind I decided to figure out what makes good Christmas tree photos and do a bit of a tutorial aimed at DSLR users while I was at it.

Step 1: Turn off your flash!

Out of the box in Program Auto mode just about all DSLRs are going to pop the flash in an attempt to achieve “proper” exposure. While this may accurately capture the image, I doubt that anyone will find the results very warm and inviting.

Switch your camera into Program mode and turn off the flash. With the flash off you’re likely to get something like this:

This is a 1/8 second hand-held exposure at f/3.5 and ISO 400. I actually had to dial in +1EV of exposure compensation because my Pentax K10D’s matrix metering was underexposing the image considerably trying to compensate for the brightness of the tree lights and lamp to the right just off frame. While the image more accurately captures the look and feel of the decorated tree, it isn’t very dynamic and compelling.

Steps 2 & 3: Get out the tripod and close down the aperture.

This shot is essentially identical to the previous shot except it is a 15 second exposure at f/16 and ISO 100 (shot in Aperture Priority mode). The small aperture does three things here. First it creates all those dreamy starbursts. Second, and more notably, it forces a long exposure. This long exposure time pulls in more ambient light, giving the entire scene more apparent dynamic range. Finally, it sharpens up the details. Zooming into this image you will find much crisper detail than the rather soft previous f/3.5 shot. As a bonus, using a lower ISO means richer colors, better detail, smoother gradients, and less noise.

Step 4: Attend to the details.

While the previous shot had come a long way from the Program Automatic blown-out flash shot, I felt there was still room for improvement. I didn’t like the reflections in the windows behind the tree coming from the upstairs lights and the lamp to the right was a bit harsh. Also, there were a few unsightly items cluttering up the foreground of the earlier shots and I wanted to add a better sense of grandeur to the shot.

For this final shot I turned off all the lights in the house except for a single 60 watt desk lamp behind the camera to add just a tad of ambient fill to the high ceilings. I moved the dog kennel and Where’s Waldo book. I then repositioned the tripod closer to the tree and lower before zooming out wider to exaggerate the scale of the tree and height of the room. This ended up being a 10 second exposure at f/16 and ISO 200- I bumped the ISO to 200 because the rest of the family was complaining about sitting in the dark during all my 20+ second shots ;-)

RAW file post processing in Lightroom was limited to setting the white balance (tungsten) and dialing in a bit of Sharpness, Clarity and Vibrance. You may want to tweak the Recovery slider a tad to compensate for any blown-out Christmas lights from the long exposure.

While I recommend shooting your Christmas tree photos at night, depending upon the situation, decent results can be achieved during the day. The wall of windows behind the tree here made daytime shots pretty much impossible. However, waiting until dusk I got this shot which was pretty nice:

Step 5: Share!

This is a picture of my Christmas tree I took last week using the small aperture/long exposure technique described above. The photos for this tutorial were shot at my in-laws house. When you travel to visit friends and family this Christmas be sure to pack your camera and tripod. Take pictures of your non-photographer friends’ trees and send them a copy as a Holiday treat! Tis the season of giving, right?

Merry Christmas!!

The only thing missing is any mention of what to do for night parades. A lot of Christmas parades are at night with the only lighting coming from the holiday decorations. Here a fast lens (f/2.8 or better) is a must have. Also, shooting wider angle shots can help reduce motion blur at slower shutter speeds. It goes without saying that you will have to bump your ISO up to get hand-holdable shutter speeds. Finally, don’t be afraid to brace up against a light pole and get some long exposure motion blurred shots!

ISO 100, 18mm, f/20, 30 seconds, IS off

I grew up in Mountain Brook, Alabama and these Christmas decorations always put me into the holiday spirit. I took this 30 second exposure back during Thanksgiving. I used a tripod and the 2 second self timer delay to prevent camera shake. I experimented with a few settings while in manual mode to get the right balance of ISO, aperture and shutter speed. I love all the starbursts from the small aperture and the way the wet streets reflect all the lights. I had another shot with no headlight trails but I liked they way they added some motion to this otherwise static shot.

This photo is a good illustration of where shooting RAW pays the most dividends. I know that you can get wonderful JPEGs straight out of the camera (SOOC), but I hate standing around in the rain tweaking white balance presets and hoping I got it right. Here, I just played around with my WB settings in Lightroom in the heated comfort of my living room until I got the right mix of white for the twinkle lights and blue for the sky. This is especially useful when you are shooting in mixed lighting conditions like this. I hate the orange cast sodium vapor lights give to everything. It is very difficult to remove this color cast in a JPEG but one click of the Temp slider in Lightroom and it’s all gone! (This shot = 2250 on Temp and 0 on Tint).

Here’s the original unedited shot. You can also see that I had to straighten it a bit as I didn’t realize that my tripod was a little cock-eyed on the sloping sidewalk where I was shooting.

original unedited RAW shot

Anything else you want to know?