mong kok nights

mong kok nights
Originally uploaded by rogvon.

This really caught my eye in the group. I love the colors and how busy it is, though its not so abstracted that you don't know what you are looking at. Overall a very cool shot indeed

Feed Issue

Some subscribers (and by some I mean all) might notice that there are random pictures nestled into the feed from last night. This was a mistake by me. I was fiddling with feedburner and switched the PhotoSplicr on with the Group ID inserted. However the PhotoSplicr doesn't support Group IDs so it got random pictures and inserted them instead. I apologize for any problems this might have caused. Rest assured this will not happen again.

Selection from LE Pool: Night shoot St james Square Grimsby (Thanks

Night shoot St james Square Grimsby (Thanks Brassai)
Originally uploaded by cabstar1.

I've deicded that the LE of the Week has gone far too long without a post however. I also thought that a weekly post is a little too demanding for me right now so I figured I'd make a post to the LE of the Week when I could and when I felt a picture need further exposure. Therefore the LE of the Week has now become Selections from LE Pool

My first selection is this the image about by cabstar1. Its hard to get a good black and white long exposure and this one is great! It really draws the viewer in. And it exudes mood everywhere. I simply love it!

My 3rd Night Shoot

Continuing to post my learnings as I journey from daylight into the dark side of night photography.

Went out on my third night excursion last weekend with my old man. 2 Hr trip up in the mountains to an old derelict blast furnace. I was happy with some of the shots I took.

So What Were The Learnings?
1) I realised when I was down there that I had no idea about how to find the North or South celestial pole.... I do now. Click here to find out how to do it for Nth or Sth hemisphere.

2) My new little Xenon torch was the bomb! No colour casts at all and perfect size and power.

3) Getting into a routine with exposure calculations is important (I only left it on 1600 ISO once).

4) Praying to the gods for clouds seems to work.... it was clear when we started shooting then we got perfect cloud cover through the night.

5) Bottle of red wine definitely goes down well for night photography

Contributions from a Newbie Entering the Nocturnal World

Hi Folks

I am a pretty passionate landscape photographer who has just recently taken a step into "the dark side" and started experimenting with night photography. I started blogging about it in my own blog and Otto cajoled me into being a "contributer" to this blog and also writing about my learnings and observations as I enter the nocturnal world.

For those of you that are out there that are "Masters of the night", perhaps you can comment on my posts and help me climb the learning curve a little bit faster.

I've been doing Landscape work for years, mainly seascapes, if you want to see the type of stuff that I do, here's someof my landscape photos on Flickr. I shoot with a Nikon D200, main lens is a Tokina 12-24 and I enjoy Photoshop work as well. So thats me.

My journey into night photography was to push me out of my comfort zone and try something different. So I will be contributing pretty regularly on my learnings over the coming months.

In my first blog I showed the results of my first outing. Here's the first two night shots that I took while experimenting.







I was pretty happy with them and they certainly "got me hooked". After this first excursion out the key issues I immediately had to grapple with were.

1) How the hell do you compose your shot when it's pitch black
2) What's the impact of ultra-long exposures on noise
3) How do you work out exposures when your camera meter only meters to 30sec

The good news is that I have answered all three of these questions pretty quickly.

Answer to number 1) Shoot a test shot at ISO3200 so so you can quickly see the image in your view finder and adjust framing (note: the pictures above were taken only under starlight - no moon at all).

Answer to number 2) I did some pretty extensive noise tests, for the geeks amongst you, you can read the full test results in my blog

Answer to number 3) I think I have a neat little answer to this which I will describe in the next few days.

Stay tuned for quite a few updates over the coming weeks as I get out and experiment with night landscape work.

Brent

What is Long Exposure?

Going back over the blog pasts it has become increasingly apparent that this blog focuses on so of the more technical aspects of long exposure photography. It also assumes that the reader has been working with long exposure for sometime. This is great for the remember so the Flickr Long Exposure group who have been experimenting with the genre. However this site is not very helpful for uninitiated. The ones who might not be sure what LE actually is. Since this site is supposed to be the LE group's way of branching out into other realms I figured it would be helpful to discuss the basics of Long Exposure. What it is and how to do it. The next series of posts will try to do exactly that.

There are two ways to approach defining Long Exposure photography. One is the technical definition the other is the artistic definition. The technical definition is as follows; any picture take has been taken with a long shutter speed. This begs the question what is a long shutter speed? That is obviously open to debate.

In the group itself I've had my own ideas on what Long Exposure is. I define it as the rendering of light and motion in time through photography. Now that's a little cryptic. What does the definition mean? Well to use a terrible cliche, pictures are worth a thousand words; in that spirit here are some examples from my own long exposure work. As you can (hopefully) see I came up with the definition by looking at some of my own LE work and trying to describe it. As time went by in the definition expanded and enveloped ideas I did not originally conceive as long exposure. A great example is the current group icon titled: transubstantiate by fallsroad. Which he achieved by using computer visualization. When I set the definition for the group I did not even imagine that computers could achieve images like the ones he creates however they certainly fit into the guide lines.

Now that we have defined long exposure photography technically and artistically the next logical question is how do the definitions relate to the real world? The answer lies in a combination of both the technical and the artistic definitions. Long Exposure photography is the capturing of light and motion by using a long shutter speed. Still too vague a concept? Well that's actually the point Long Exposure photography is a new concept that has not fully been established as a genre yet. That means one can go out take some pictures and add to the definition.

The next post is going to cover the history of long exposure photography and some examples of famous artists who are masters of the concept.

UV Photography -Cookbook Style

LE Group member kds135 has been experimenting with UV Long Exposure photography for years now. He recently announced his work in the Long Exposure group and I enticed him to write a condensed tutorial for the rest of the group. Without further ado here it is!

1) get a suitable lens, uncoated or single coated, simple lens design like a triplet. You have to try things out, some work, some don't. EL Nikkor enlarger lenses are not bad, get a 75 or 80mm >older<>UG11xx<) ist the best you can get, 300...400nm tranmission range, IR perfectly suppressed which is important for most DSLRs due to their high IR and low UV sensitivity. Be prepared to expose 8 stops more than normal. My usual setting on an sunny to overcast day is 2..4" @ f11 ISO200 using a Nikon D70.

2) get a suitable filter. The new 2" Baader U-filter (I call that >UG11xx<) ist the best you can get, 300...400nm transmission range, IR perfectly suppressed which is important for most DSLRs due to their high IR and low UV sensitivity. Be prepared to expose 8 stops more than normal. My usual setting on an sunny to overcast day is 2..4" @ f11 ISO200 using a Nikon D70.

3) get a suitable UV enabled camera. My finding is that the Nikon D70(s) is the best value for money for UV. D80 and D200 are said to work well either, but need the internal filter removed first. CANON shooters - sad day, does not work with Canon DSLRs, their filters and used chips do NOT allow UV.

4) Use a sturdy tripod to allow 2...4" exposure time, sometimes much longer though. UV is strongest 90 degrees to the sun, don't shoot in bright sun due to high IR content (no longer a big problem with the UG11xx!)

5) for comparison shots I shoot visual light first and then attach the filter and shoot UV with exactly the same framing. Be careful not to move the camera. If using an older lens, focus closer. This needs to be tested out, my finding is that the f8...f11 position on the DOF scale works best. Shot RAW files or high resolution JPEGs. Pro's do RAW but for simple testing JPEG will do.

6) Upload pictures and process pictures. They will look very red, but what you see is UV, depending on camera mainly in the green and somewhat blue channel (D70). So either you process them to black/white or whitebalance. then adjust to taste. UV has no "color" so you may do what you like.

7) for UV differential combine the visual and UV shot as you like and depending on software used. I have a special one and do the UV-VIS as a mathematical operation on pixel level.

8) enjoy the sometimes strange and exotic results!

9) This is in condensed form the result of some years of research and test. So if you need some equipment, let me know, I have plenty of filters, lenses etc available since I tested so much for the last years.

Thanks kds315 for enlightening us on a part of long exposure I never thought of before.

If anyone else has some clever techniques they have developed and want to share it with the rest of the world please feel free to FlickrMail me, my user name is Ottoman42.