First attempt at night photography

[dannybgoode]

For those of us who don't know, what is AEB? Your pictures are amazing!

You take 3 or more of the same shot but vary the exposure by 1/3 of a stop or more either side of the ‘correct’ exposure.

So, you take one normal frame, one overexposed and one underexposed. You then use software to merge the three shots so you get more detail in the shadows and highlights.

It is also know as HDR photography (High Dynamic Range) and many cameras and drones now have a built in feature but it’s never as good as working with actual RAW files.

As with anything it is easy to overcook the processing and make the picture look very false. This picture of mine is on the edge of being overdone.

The more frames either side of a normal exposure you take the more detail you can usually pull out.

Works best on static scenes of course and it’s a technique that requires practice.

For reference AEB stands for Auto Exposure Bracketing.

 

[musicjeremy]

What were your settings, shutter, fstop and iso?

Mine was a 1.3 sec exposure at ISO 100 - taken with a Mavic Pro so no aperture control. Also upon inspection of the photo metadata I realized this was actually a single shot in DNG, not an HDR merge.

 

[Justakinpics]

Lakes make a good subject. When The thrill of flying wore off I found a photography habit (mostly at night ) o years of experience.

 

[Nosebump]

You take 3 or more of the same shot but vary the exposure by 1/3 of a stop or more either side of the ‘correct’ exposure.

So, you take one normal frame, one overexposed and one underexposed. You then use software to merge the three shots so you get more detail in the shadows and highlights.

It is also know as HDR photography (High Dynamic Range) and many cameras and drones now have a built in feature but it’s never as good as working with actual RAW files.

As with anything it is easy to overcook the processing and make the picture look very false. This picture of mine is on the edge of being overdone.

The more frames either side of a normal exposure you take the more detail you can usually pull out.

Works best on static scenes of course and it’s a technique that requires practice.

For reference AEB stands for Auto Exposure Bracketing.

Many Thanks for the education. I'm an "Old School" photographer who use to use a (big) Hasselblad camera with a Gossen Luna Pro light meter. We would bracket our shots, but not do the combining thing. "Touching up" a picture was usually done on the negative using an Adams retouching machine and razor knife. In the darkroom, we could "dodge" and "burn in" areas, but you were very limited, and color paper would lose contrast if you tinkered with it too much (-sigh). The "good old days" were not so good!

 

[Inspirephil]

Excellent night shots of the cityscape! Unfortunately where I live there’s not a lot of buildings/traffic like that but I have given it a try several times with my Inspire 2 using AEB and several different TV’s that didn’t turn out near what you did. But I intend on doing some more of them with my M2P in the upcoming months. I’ll post some after the winter gets done. Way too cold to be doing them right now.

 

[Lamar Watson]

Wow! You're really talented, that's amazing!

 

[crlmjohnson]

Every once in a while, I see a drone flying at night up over my house. the last time was on the 4th of July, this year. fire works was also going. I am pretty sure it was a Mavic.

 

[JanB]

When I flew one nice day someone switched the light off and then there were those nice photos you can see in the attachement.
IMO best time to make night photos is the time after sunset when there is still a little little glow on the horizon. Filming in the night is more interesting with scuttered clouds at a ceiling around 1000 to 2000m...