Night Shots - LED signs - Settings Advice

[NJT]

I took this photo last night of two cranes with LED backlit signage. The cranes look awesome, but I could not clearly capture the signage at night time. This was obviously because they are bright and the camera over exposed them to get the night scape.

I tried HDR and Hyperlapse. The one below was the HDR, it worked a bit better. I didn't try manual exposure.

Does anyone have any suggestions to make the signs clear and also to get the awesome night scape?

Thanks

 

[Meta4]

I took this photo last night of two cranes with LED backlit signage. The cranes look awesome, but I could not clearly capture the signage at night time. This was obviously because they are bright and the camera over exposed them to get the night scape.

Does anyone have any suggestions to make the signs clear and also to get the awesome night scape?

You cannot expose properly for blackness and bright light sources at the same time.
The camera cannot handle that much difference between darkest and brightest.
One fix is to compose with more lit and less black areas, if your subject offers that possibility.
Or go out earlier while there is still some colour in the sky like this:

That was shot without any HDR tricks, just straight single images which I stitched.

 

[NJT]

Great photo. Thank you for the suggestion, I will try it again at dusk when the sky is still a little lit. When I took my photo it was a very black night.

 

[peterowensbabs]

Expose for the highlights and bring up the shadows in an editing software (photoshop lightroom etc) perhaps?

 

[BadWolf1]

Pretty much what @Meta4 said. You've got a point where the camera sees so dark it calls it zero, or so bright it calls it "max." , depending on the range of the camera's sensor and the output format you might have more range than you can fit in a JPG. With adjustment of levels and curves, or simply changing the contrast you can change how far apart the light levels to give "min" and "max" output are but some scenes just have too big a range. @Meta4 found a time where there range was workable. You've recognised that parts of your scene are very dark and getting them light enough without the bright signs being badly over exposed is going to tough, but choosing the time will help.
. If you can't change the scene you can use HDR mode, or bracket exposure and make an HDR image afterwards, or even blend the images using layers in photoshop.

 

[peterowensbabs]

Pretty much what @Meta4 said. You've got a point where the camera sees so dark it calls it zero, or so bright it calls it "max." , depending on the range of the camera's sensor and the output format you might have more range than you can fit in a JPG. With adjustment of levels and curves, or simply changing the contrast you can change how far apart the light levels to give "min" and "max" output are but some scenes just have too big a range. @Meta4 found a time where there range was workable. You've recognised that parts of your scene are very dark and getting them light enough without the bright signs being badly over exposed is going to tough, but choosing the time will help.
. If you can't change the scene you can use HDR mode, or bracket exposure and make an HDR image afterwards, or even blend the images using layers in photoshop.

Don't shoot Jpegs shoot RAW and you will not be limited, the raw images will have proportionately more information which you can pull out in your editing software.

 

[THE CYBORG]

I agree with peterowensbabs RAW is the way to go.
If you haven't got a program to edit RAW Darktable is pretty good & FREE you can download it HERE

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

All the above.

Plus, there's a photo mode for the Pro / Zoom called Hyerplight (not Hyperlapse). I haven't used it myself yet, but I've seen posts from people that have. It's meant for the kind of shooting you're talking about. There is NO documentation on it in the manual except a mention in the specification. so search for more info on the DJI site (or search the forums here). But still, what meta sez still holds re: dynamic range.

Plus: for some shots, just let black be black. Expose for the important lit parts and do not try to raise the shadows. That doesn't help for your particular shoot, but it might for others. I have yet to do much night shots with the Mavic (and I've had it far to long to not have, but all of my night work the past coupl'a years have been DSLR based), but here's an old Phantom 3 Pro shot. Again though, the sky is still somewhat lit.

 

[BadWolf1]

Don't shoot Jpegs shoot RAW and you will not be limited, the raw images will have proportionately more information which you can pull out in your editing software.

I agree with peterowensbabs RAW is the way to go.

Small sensors don't have a massive range - little pixels only capture a little light so the difference between "just registers" and "full" isn't as much as it is on a big SLR pixel - as tech improves we get the same range from smaller pixels.
RAW (assuming you're on a drone which supports it) will count from 0 to whatever the sensor can register without having to scale it to fit into JPEGs range, but if you boost the very low values to get some detail in the shadow areas things can get noisy, and if the brightest have hit the maximum you can't separate them into bright, very bright, nearly max and max. The extra you get in RAW will help, but it won't always be enough and then you will still need to combine images (and it's better to have RAW when combining).

 

[GunsN]

You cannot expose properly for blackness and bright light sources at the same time.
The camera cannot handle that much difference between darkest and brightest.
One fix is to compose with more lit and less black areas, if your subject offers that possibility.
Or go out earlier while there is still some colour in the sky like this:

That was shot without any HDR tricks, just straight single images which I stitched.

how did you do that? can you show me your settings?
thanks

 

[Meta4]

how did you do that? can you show me your settings?

The settings aren't important, they were just whatever was appropriate to get good exposure.
The important thing was shooting a subject where there was plenty of light and the sky hadn't gone fully dark.

 

[Tee]

What should my setting be for night shots? Mavic Pro2 my shots came out blurred out of focus

 

[Meta4]

What should my setting be for night shots? Mavic Pro2 my shots came out blurred out of focus

Just like daylight photography, there's no single "best" setting.
Use the appropriate settings for the subject, the lighting and the effect you want.
Was your blurring due to movement or focus issues?

 

[Tee]

Just like daylight photography, there's no single "best" setting.
Use the appropriate settings for the subject, the lighting and the effect you want.
Was your blurring due to movement or focus issues?

Yes I believe it was now that I think about it, I was trying to do hdr at night, I see that doesn't work with a drone, I just want to get some nice shots of the city lights at night