Night photogaphy

Night photography is something I am still learning to do. I do enjoy it and take advantage of it when I can. With that said, I thought I'd share a few of my night photos.

NS local H80 at Lyndhurst, NJ on September 17, 2005 (was told by some that this photo is overexposed)
http://octrainguy.rrpicturearchives.net ... ?id=282571

A second view of the engine before backing the cars in:
http://octrainguy.rrpicturearchives.net ... ?id=282569

An organized night photo shoot at the Black River & Western in Ringoes, NJ on August 21, 2004.

http://octrainguy.com/Brw752-night01.jpg (Train pulling into the station)
http://octrainguy.com/Brw752-night02.jpg
http://octrainguy.com/Brw752-night04.jpg

Some night photos of Conrail Shared Assets Local SA31 on the Southern Secondary (ex-CNJ Southern Division Main Line)

http://octrainguy.com/Ns3055_night2.jpg
http://octrainguy.com/Ns3055_night3.jpg (using a fish eye lens)
http://octrainguy.com/Ns5282-01162005.jpg
http://octrainguy.com/Ns5282-01022005c.jpg
http://octrainguy.com/Mar1403-4441.jpg

If anyone wants to add their night shots, feel free.

From my experience night shots can be very tricky at best. Most times to get a decent shot you have to be very skilled or very lucky. lol

Yours came out pretty good, though!

Nice work, especially the first few. Night photography isn't that hard, but does require a little more thought. A tripod helps, but you can also do it on the fly with a little practice.

I shot this hand held when I got off a train in Salem, Oregon, braced against a lightpost, using a digital point & shoot.



I've also rested my camera on my foot for a stable platform and a cool low angle.

OCtrainguy wrote:http://octrainguy.rrpicturearchives.net ... ?id=282571

Definately overexposed on the nose and forward quarter, and slightly muddy. It appears to have been auto exposure jusdging from the amount of over exposure, and noise/grain. Try shooting manually using your camera's meter to help. It's all practice, as time exposures and night photography are the heardest elements of the art for newcommers.

OCtrainguy wrote:http://octrainguy.rrpicturearchives.net ... ?id=282569

The exposure isn't bad, but it just looks kind of unnatural, and again it is noisy/grainy. The composition is decent.

OCtrainguy wrote:http://octrainguy.com/Brw752-night01.jpg

Probably one of the better shots you linked. Jerkbys are the hardest to pull off for newcommers to the genre because of the risk of headlight over exposure. This is really good. The grain/noise is your only hinderence.

OCtrainguy wrote:http://octrainguy.com/Brw752-night02.jpg

Shot is overexposed at the focal point. A personal thing is I don't really see the point of including the artifical light source such as the temporary flood light stand in yours. I think it detracts from the image looking totally out of place, but again that's my personal thing. Very grainy. You didn't include Brw752-night03.jpg, but when I looked at it that exposure was DEAD ON perfect, with some effects that strengthened it greatly. It still shared the composition and grain/noise problems.

OCtrainguy wrote:http://octrainguy.com/Brw752-night04.jpg

The glint is a bit stong on the side, but still works. The long hood's pilot and nose is over exposed. The grain is still pretty tough, but better.

OCtrainguy wrote:http://octrainguy.com/Ns3055_night2.jpg

Exposure really is great, but the grain/noise and lack of sharpness kills it.

OCtrainguy wrote:http://octrainguy.com/Ns3055_night3.jpg

Fisheye is a good idea, but the extreme level of it kills it, especially with the unsightly amount of vignetting. I'm guessing that this is from using a standard design lens on a reduced frame digital camera.

OCtrainguy wrote:http://octrainguy.com/Ns5282-01162005.jpg[/qoute]
It's muddy and grainy. Don't really understand the crossbux blocking the focal point, but again, that's a personal thing.

OCtrainguy wrote:http://octrainguy.com/Ns5282-01022005c.jpg

It's muddy, grainy, and your sky has started to shift. It also appears to be just another 3/4 roster shot.

OCtrainguy wrote:http://octrainguy.com/Mar1403-4441.jpg

Muddy, grainy, and overexposed.

You got the idea, just practice. If your using print film then don't bother. Prints are good for nothing when it comes to night photography and time exposures, unless you are in full control and using the good stuff. Your best bet with film is to start with Fuji Provia 100F. If your using digital, your camera obviously can't handle auto exposure at night. Frankly, not all that many can. Just keep it up and you'll get it. And don't be afraid to ask those around you. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can only help you learn.

Peace man!

Wanderer, you seem to know your stuff any advice on how to photograph railroad crossings at night? i tried last week to take a picture at a crossing with gates and overhead flashers, but the camera wouldn't focus once the lights began to flash, i assumed there wasn't enough light for the camera. there isn't good lighting at this crossing

here is a different attempt at another crossing, it came out ok to my liking, but i disliked how the flashers came out kinda blurry:


B726

any advice would be great!

thanks

I'll chime in here. I think railroads often look most beautiful at night, but they're also tricky to photograph...at least for me. Or they might be OK without a train, but once a moving train is involved things get a lot more complicated. Overall it's dark outside, but the headlights are extremely bright and easily overwhelm a camera. I feel like I need to cut the exposure down to keep the headlights from exploding across the whole frame, but then everything else can get dark and no details of the train are visible. Shutter speed needs to stay fast if I want to freeze motion, but then it's hard to let enough light in. And with a digital camera, noise at high ISO's is an issue.

Here's a few just of tracks, not trains. The really dark one is supposed to be really dark...it was night time with few lights around. Still, could probably be less grainy.









Now a few with trains. I haven't had much practice with this, but so far it's really hard.

Interesting you mention Provia 100. I'm still a luddite (which is ironic because my work in Information Technology puts food on my family's table) that prefers slides to digital. I try to shoot with this great film as much as possible.

Concerning night shots: for a typical night scene, what is the proper f-stop and shutter speed? Is it best to stop down as much as possible, or open up as much as possible? Is shutter speed a "best guess", or is, say, 20 seconds a typical shutter opening? Any informed opinions are very, very welcome, and thanks!

These are a couple of night shots I got a while back . The first was shot with Kodak 400 speed film in my Minolta, all I had on hand at the time was the 400 speed but it came out ok. The second shot was during some light snow flurries, hence the "shooting stars" all over the place! I shot that one with my Olympus D-380 digital.

Mike

hebron_hapt wrote:Interesting you mention Provia 100. I'm still a luddite (which is ironic because my work in Information Technology puts food on my family's table) that prefers slides to digital. I try to shoot with this great film as much as possible.

Provia 100F is a great all-purpose film, but I've found what makes it so great for daytime photography can make night photography more awkwardly green than usual. The compromise I settled on a few years ago was to use Provia 100F for daytime photography and Astia 100 for twilight and night photography. Then Fuji went and replaced my beloved film with Astia 100F which is still as good as the original for night photography. Kudos to Fuji!

Concerning night shots: for a typical night scene, what is the proper f-stop and shutter speed? Is it best to stop down as much as possible, or open up as much as possible? Is shutter speed a "best guess", or is, say, 20 seconds a typical shutter opening? Any informed opinions are very, very welcome, and thanks!

There isn't any reliable way for me to tell you how to meter a scene without seeing it for myself. That said, it's always better to err on the side of smaller apertures and longer exposures. The smaller aperture setting will minimize the appearance of light sources in the frame and reduce them from a giant glob to a more manageable one. Remember that the longer the exposure the less important timing it is. Being one second over on a minute exposure is much less critical than being one second over on a three second exposure.

The best way to attack night photography is to take plenty of notes and learn from your mistakes. Bracket each shot, use at least three frames if not more, and reference your notes when you get the film back to see which settings worked best in a given situation. Yes, you'll throw out a good chunk of film in the process, but the lessons learned will be carried on with your camera bag forever.

~BS

Hi,

Interesting shots. You might just go all the way, use a tripod and cable release and go for exposures of several minutes at F-16 and F-22. You wind up with unbelievable colors and color saturation, and photos that are true landscapes of color. You probably have seen nightime time exposures of busy freeways and traffic with all the various reds yellows and whites.

I have a few more photos to share. I haven't had much opportunity for night photos recently, but have these to share.

Ex-DL&W East Stroudsburg tower in September 2004.
http://octrainguy.com/EastStroustower.jpg

New Hope & Ivyland's New Hope station on December 2, 2006 after the evening Santa Train left. I have photos of the night train, but they aren't scanned in yet.
http://octrainguy.rrpicturearchives.net ... ?id=854723

Just wanted to throw in a night shot I did recently. This was my very first time trying this sort of exposure. It's with a digital camera (Fuji S5200). It's a 5 second exposure at 7.1 aperture and ISO 64. I will be trying more of these shots in the future because it seems they produce a "cool" result without compromising image quality too much. Trying to freeze this train's motion would have resulted in a totally under-exposed image, or absurd amounts of digital noise.

It would be hard to stop a moving train without some form of artificial light in addition to the ambient lighting even if you were to run rails down the middle of Times Square and rolled a locomotive by at 5 mph. It wasn't the figuring out when and where to be and how to expose the shot that made Link a master of nighttime photography, it was his ability to figure out how to light the scene so that even at night there was a landscape full of things to look at besides the locomotive. His knack for doing this came from being an industrial photographer. With that said there are plenty of interesting things to do with a blur shot to make it interesting. The biggest thing with night photography is to explore and practice and reverse analyze your shots so you can figure out how to improve.

I have been experimenting with a Pentax digital SLR that accepts their older manual focus "A" line of lenses and have found it to be very easy to use for time exposure shots at night. My favorite lens for this is the 35mm f2 "A" series, which is approximately equivalent to a 50mm on the digital camera. Using the manual focus lens removes all the autofocus mechanism involvement, you just set distances by the old fashioned focus scale. With an electronic release and a tripod, you get to see the results instantly and can immediately make any needed adjustments.