Comments on: Night Moves

By: Larry Eiss

Larry Eiss — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 17:46:02 +0000

Hey Brian,

I agree with you about night photography. I love long exposures. I have come to be especially fond of the half-hour-after-sunset timeframe. That’s when the sky and buildings, etc. are at about equal light levels.

Shots like this:
http://photos.larryeiss.com/displayimage-10-2.html
this:
http://photos.larryeiss.com/displayimage-10-0.html
and this:
http://photos.larryeiss.com/displayimage-8-6.html
show what I mean.\

Ken Rockwell has a great article on this topic as well. Take a look at: http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/timing.htm

–Larry
http://www.LarryEiss.com

By: Brian White

Brian White — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 01:51:49 +0000

Yeah, that is a great time for photos. I’ve been limited to after-hours so far so haven’t had the opportunity to scout good locations and then be ready when that light hits.

At least with night stuff, I have several hours to look around with unchanging light.

Great pictures, by the way!

By: wabash

wabash — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 00:40:12 +0000

Really great resource Brian. Great work! Thanks for sharing

By: Larry Eiss

Larry Eiss — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 20:23:50 +0000

Brian,

Regarding the lack of time, I can totally sympathize. Thanks for the kind comments!

–Larry

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 21:11:28 +0000

Photomatix is the best HDR solution going today.

It FAR exceeds any other product on the market in regards to working with HDR. It can take a single RAW image and create an HDR iamge from that RAW — and it support most all major RAW formats out there. Try a single RAW, and try and trick Photoshop by creating some /-EV shots with some RAW converter. Good luck. . . PS will not allow this even though there is no good reason why. Noise in most cases won’t be an issue.

Use it correctly, by producing 3 to 5 -EV/0EV/ EV images and apply Tome Mapping (which is something MUCH more complex in Photoshop) and see what you get.

You’ll be amazed! I assure you…

Try a demo at: http://www.hdrsoft.com/

… and don’t forget to look at their sample images and galleries. Amazing images can be produced using this application.

By: Ian

Ian — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 19:12:20 +0000

Brian,

We’ve got Adobe CS2 here at the office, and I took a shot at using the HDR function. Works GREAT! Our little Olympus has an automatic bracketed shooting mode so you don’t have to adjust the settings (so no little wiggles between frames)

By: Brian White

Brian White — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 14:32:00 +0000

I’ve used CS2 as well. It’s nice in that it’ll import NEF files directly and lets you edit the final output without having to change programs. The only problem I’ve had with it is that I cannot manually align the images and the automatic alignment is often not perfect. I use a tripod but even so it’s common to be off by a pixel or two when overlaying the images.

Perhaps CS3 fixes this deficiency.

By: Larry Eiss

Larry Eiss — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 19:45:02 +0000

Hey Brian we miss your posting! I’ve put up a bunch of new images since I was here last, and there are new posts at my place too. I hope you find some time to post again soon. Hopefully you are out shooting.

By: ahk

ahk — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 13:26:35 +0000

Hi Brian,
try Picturenaut for your HDR photos.
http://www.hdrlabs.com/picturenaut/

I have gotten some very good results out of it, especially for night images. And the best of all, it’s free.