Read more

And then there are the sky trackers, which are predominantly made for wide angle lenses, to track the Milky Way or do Deepscapes in an easy to set up package and with the smallest amount of equipment. The MoveShootMove Nomad (MSM) system has been a very popular entry establishing that market, making its device even smaller than the smallest hobby mounts for deep sky photography.

The latest entry to that last category is the Asterra tracker, which started as a Kickstarter campaign, where I backed it and got it at a premium cost saving. The company is based out of Hongkong, I believe.

I mention the StarAdventurer and MSM Nomad and compare the Asteraa Z+ to these two, because I have and used both and they are very popular.

The premise of this type of tracker is that it doesn’t need as much precision, because the equipment is much smaller (wide angle lenses are much lighter and less long than deep zooms) and because wide angle lenses can follow the Rule of 200 or 400 for longer exposure times before star trails get formed. With this kind of tracker setup. it is easy to get 4 minute exposures, perhaps more, vastly minimizing ISO for much less noise in the images. On top of that, the polar alignment is very simple by using a laser pointer to visually point at Polaris, the north star in the northern hemisphere. Southern hemispheric polar alignment is always more involved, as there is no star right at the southern axis point.

What intrigued me about that device was that it has a built-in laser pointer (the MSM Nomad needs a lengthy pointer to be screwed on), and that it also has options for polar alignment if Polaris is obstructed, which is the case, for example, in my backyard, there’s a huge pine tree.

Here is the tracker shown in my main backpack, the Tamrac Anvil Slim 11, the tracker takes up the space of a smaller lens, the ballhead with V-bracket even less. Both together would go sideways into a longer slot:

However, what I wanted to explore is, if one can use that tracker during the day for solar alignment (solar eclipses!) and also if it is usable for deep sky photography, because the torque is actually 10x stronger than that of the StarAdventurer hobby mount. The company does not advertise it for deep sky photography, but both torque and the advertised payload of 5 kg (about 11 pounds) would certainly accommodate that. My Nikon Z6III with 180-600 mm lens and ballhead are 3.6kg heavy, well within that spec. I could even add the 2x teleconverter to get to 1200 mm focal length.

So, how does that new Asterra tracker perform? Here are some of my first tests.

Read more

Dark Sky International Contest Results

For solar eclipse instructions, look at my recent post.

And not to stop there, we have a forecast for a potentially strong aurora event, too. Since our camera will already be pointing north-east, we could get a composition with both aurora and meteors in it. I got that once a few years ago, when the aurora was a total surprise - AND we had some green air glow in the south, too!

So, here’s a very brief summary of what my actions are.

Read more

The eclipse will be total only in East Iceland and Spain. Everywhere else, we will only see a partial eclipse or none at all. Below is the eclipse path from my favorite site TimeAndDate.com. That dark red band that you see going through the center is totality. Lighter shades of red indicate various percentages of partial eclipse. Greenland, for example, gets an 81% eclipse, Newfoundlund a 60% eclipse, Nova Scotia 33% and in Boston, MA, where I am, we will only have a 16% eclipse (as shown in the last photo), but even that makes for a nice, unusual treat in the sky. Alaska and northern Canada will see a little as well, but most of the contiguous US will not see the event.

Click anywhere on that map on TimeAndDate.com to see the local timing, which varies a lot. For example, there is a 3 hour difference between Iceland and Spain.

If you have never photographed a solar eclipse, or if you need a refresher, and particularly if you have the chance to see the total solar eclipse in Europe, I recommend to download my eBook Hello Darkness, which describes every version of eclipse, how to prepare for it, how to scout out locations, what equipment to use (you need a solar filter and you should order that ASAP!), camera and lens settings, and what to do when during the event.

A total eclipse gets pretty intense during those very short few minutes of totality and you want to make sure to prepare well so that you can enjoy the event without missing the best photos.

A partial eclipse is easy to follow and photograph, all you need is a solar filter, tripod and remote control. These filters are specially made for this purpose, but in a pinch you could also use 17 stop ND filters (10+6 will work).

Here are a few suggestions. I personally prefer the solar film and make my own filters by gluing those onto step-down rings (as described in the eBook). But you can also buy fairly expensive ready-made filters.

• You can buy a 4x4 inch (10x10 cm) solar film for one filter

• Or an 8x8 inch (20x20cm) patch for multiple filters (recommended, they do kink occasionally).

• Here is a step-down ring from 95 mm (check if that fits your lens!) to 82 mm

• Here is a glass filter, but it provides a rather white sun without any yellow.

Here is what I do with that solar film: I buy a step-down reducing ring for lenses, which fits my long 180-600mm lens (95 mm thread) and it steps down to 82 mm, which provides you with a nice, 5mm rim, to which you can glue a cut-out of the film (lay the film flat, put glue on the ring’s rim, then push that down on the film. When it’s dry, cut off the excess film). Check to make sure which thread your long lens has, it might be 82 or 105 mm. Because you will zoom in on the sun, the step-down ring does not cause any vignetting.

You might also want to get some solar glasses to watch the event. Make sure not to hurt yourself by looking directly into the sun. That can damage your eyes! Here is a cheap 6-pack for you and your friends, but there are also more fashionable ones (which also fit better), but come at a higher price (but also in a 3-pack).

Take a photo of the sun every 5 minutes or so when it starts, make sure to keep it nicely centered in your camera view. That frequency makes for a nice timelapse or composed image.

Go out and enjoy the event, if you are in its path, it is always a special treat for me.

Follow my photography. Find all links at https://LinkTr.ee/JMLobert/. Find the gear that I recommend here.

As an Amazon affiliate, I earn a commission from qualifying purchases with the links I provide throughout my posts. Amazon is a certified Nikon reseller, product purchased there will have full local warranty.

This time, it’s all about learning Photoshop by doing.

Every class in PROJECT PHOTOSHOP is project-based. Instead of simply demonstrating a collection of tools and techniques, our instructors will take you through a complete creative project from start to finish.

You’ll see how Photoshop experts approach real-world projects, the decisions they make along the way, and the techniques they use to get to the finished result.

And we have another incredible lineup of Photoshop instructors, including some of the biggest names in Photoshop education:

Whether you’re interested in photography, compositing, retouching, graphic design, special effects, or just discovering new ways to use Photoshop, there will be plenty of projects to inspire you—and new techniques you can put to use right away.

Just a reminder of how it works:

✓ Sign up for a FREE PASS
✓ Watch the classes online (48 hours of access to each session)
✓ Learn from some of the world’s top Photoshop instructors
✓ Discover new techniques and creative possibilities

To take full advantage of the summit and get the project files, please consider signing up for a VIP Pass. That gives you lifetime access to the class recordings, project files, class notes and bonuses.

If you’ve ever watched a Photoshop tutorial and thought, “That’s a cool technique—but how would I actually use it?” PROJECT PHOTOSHOP is designed to answer that question.

Come join us for Photoshop Virtual Summit 8 and see what you can create!

Sign up now for your FREE PASS or VIP PASS to PROJECT PHOTOSHOP!

https://www.pssummit.com/

This was late July, at the peak of summer when the sun never sets in the Arctic (above 63° latitude). I had two seats for myself and chose to sit at the window to take an occasional photo. Sometimes you can see inversion lines, some stars, and even aurora when it’s completely dark.

However, on this flight I noticed that the horizon never got dark. it only got a little darker, with the brightest part to the left where the sun had gone down, but behind the plane. As we kept moving, the brightest part moved as well, to what was the forward front by the time we got close to sunrise.

The reason for this is that we flew along the edge of the Earth’s shadow, close to that line where the sun never sets in the summer, but just barely in persistent twilight. The plane’s flight map showed this quite nicely when I looked for it:

This was a neat experience and realization why it happened. Eventually the sun rose as we approached Ireland and the UK. The images were taken with my cell phone, so quality isn’t great. Sunrise was a full 10 minutes late due to a very thick haze layer.

Along the flight, I made a few observations. One was that a plane was flying right next to us in parallel and good visual distance. We were a tad faster and eventually left that one behind, but the contrail behind the plane looks great (and makes it much more visible, too).

At some point, the crew turned on the lights and when I quickly took another photo before it got really bright, I thought I captured some high sprites, those red flares that one can see above storm cells. But when I zoomed into to the photo, I realized that it was just a reflection of something, you can see my face in the upper left, too.

I did, however, capture some noctilucent clouds in this image, those irridescent-blueish clouds that one can only see at a certain angle of the sun below the horizon, and only northward (which this view was):

Airplane windows consist of three layers, the outer window is a dual-pane window that can withstand a lot of pressure, but the innermost pane is made of plastic and has a small hole in it for the air between the panes to breath and to avoid condensation. But that layered design is why you cannot avoid reflections, even if you put the phone flat on the window, the distance to the next pane causes those reflections to be visible.

To avoid reflections, I used a trick with my neck pillow, which is black and soft. I held it up to the windows then slid the phone in from the right so that the camera is surrounded by darkness, even in the reflective parts of the window.

There you have the latest iteration of in-flight night photography.

Read more

The Nikon Z6 series cameras that I use, and which I think are THE best cameras for night photography, have a 24 megapixel sensor, with each pixel being about 6 micrometers large. The Fuji GFX 50S II medium format camera has 50 megapixels, twice as many, but the pixel size is about 5.3 microns, roughly the same as my Nikons, because the sensor is about 1.7x as large:

So, curiosity (and perhaps boredom?) finally led me to buy a used GFX 50S II on eBay. I got it for about half price from a wedding photographer who switched to analog film only (the latest wedding fad). My goal was to compare it to my Nikon cameras and see if that might give me a resolution boost for night photography.

I also bought a K&F NIK F - GFX lens adapter, which allowed me to use any Nikon F-mount lens with it. I still have a few, which I intended to use, but there are some 400 lenses to potentially use, some great fast ones for Milky Way photography and all substantially cheaper than any dedicated Fuji lens. The adapter is fully manual without feedback, good for night photography, but limiting if you need auto-focus.

And finally, I wanted to know the performance of a Fuji lens and bought the Fujinon GF20-35 f/4 lens for the full experience.

So, how did it perform?

Read more

I was a smaller fireworks on the beach this year, away from the city and also one day before the actual celebration. It’s lovely to take photos here, because one can stand close to the water and get the reflections in the foreground, something you don’t usually get when standing on land or in an elevated building.

I wrote an extensive tutorial about how to photograph fireworks a few days ago, you can read that here.

Read more

Here is my experience with that new functionality. It has some way to go to become a new standard, but it is already useful.

Why remove duplicates?

• To save disk space. Yes, it’s become cheap (although SSDs are getting more expensive, thanks to A.I.), but it’s always good to be frugal and keep your collection clean. This becomes more important if you have lots of duplicates.

• To not confuse two photos, which you may end up editing in duplicate or differently and then you don’t know which one is the latest, which one was uploaded to the gallery or shared on social media...

• For simple house-keeping, to only store unique photos

How do Duplicates Happen?

To start with, how does one get a lot of duplicates? Here are some reasons that apply for me, you may have others:

Read more

Watch for timing, a lot of towns do them purposely one day early or late, and there may be a rain date in case of bad weather. Keep reading the news. They typically start around 9 pm when it gets dark enough. Sunset is at 8:25 in early July in the northern hemisphere, the first 30 minutes after that is civil twilight, which is too bright for a good fireworks display, but the action may start as early as 8:45 or as late as 9:15. Make sure you are prepared.

This is how it may look at the beginning of the fireworks, still civil twilight or just beginning nautical, but I am looking north-west, which is where the sun was setting. Being on the other side would have given me a much darker background, but then I wouldn’t have had the skyline in the composition:

Here are some tips for correct exposure, how to capture the most interesting portion of each blast, how to kick it up a notch by adding interest that nobody else has as well as a few tips on composition or your location.

How to Photograph Fireworks?

The most important part, of course, is timing. To get that full blast just at the right time, and without too much from before but also perhaps without the trails of falling glow right after. Or maybe you like it that way. Either way, depending on your preferences, but more importantly the length of the bursts, exposure time will vary widely and you can’t just set one shutter speed for all images. That will be the #1 setting you will constantly change. And, needless to say, you don’t want to keep rotating that dial for it, so here are are two principal techniques for how you can use a custom exposure time:

Read more

Aside from the usual update for new cameras and lenses and many bug fixes, there are some good other feature updates this time around.

Read more

The group will be holding an annual update on light pollution, you can register for free using the link below.

Thursday, June 18, 2026
2 p.m. PDT (5pm ET)
Virtual via Zoom

Each year, DarkSky’s Artificial Light at Night: State of the Science report brings together the latest research on light pollution and its impacts on people, wildlife, ecosystems, and the night sky, translating complex science into practical tools for advocacy and action.

Join Dr. John Barentine, the report’s lead author, for a guided tour of this year’s findings. Explore how the latest research on light pollution is shaping DarkSky’s work and discover practical ways to apply this science to advocacy, education, and community initiatives. The session will conclude with a live Q&A.

Register here

In Photoshop, you would have to export one image at a time or batch export, but export presets would need to be saved as Actions. Camera Raw allows you to save export presets, but they are more limited and can only be applied to whatever is currently loaded in CR, which will typically only be one image at a time (even if you load multiple images initially, you will want to edit them in PS first. If you only edit in CR without needing PS, you may as well switch to the much more user friendly LR).

Lightroom lets you export one or thousands of images, all with the same settings and watermarks applied as you chose. And you can switch export presets for every time you export something. It takes only seconds to export an image in many different ways back to back, by simply choosing a predefined Export Preset.

Read on how to use and configure export presets and download a few of mine to get you started.

Read more

Sometimes progression happened because of family or friends, sometimes by simply doing the right thing at the right time (for many things in my life, not just photography!). And it wasn’t until 2010 that I started to push myself to really embrace photography and from then on, progression turned up steeply.

This is part 1 of what will be a 3-part series in chronological sequence.

1959

I would love to claim to having been into photography since early toddler days, like here, on my second Christmas hoping to find a camera under the Christmas tree. But it wasn’t meant to be, I had to be content with the wooden toy train and the rocking chair horsy. I had to wait another 10 years to get involved.

In the meantime, however, I did manage to get an almost exclusive modeling deal with my dad. Many images were taken until I turned about 10, then it fizzled out. Some photographers lose motivation, I guess.

1969

My oldest memory of me actually using a camera by myself (after having my father explain what to do) goes back to 1969. At the tender age of 11, I was a complete fanatic of the Apollo space program and I was glued to the TV when the first moon landing happened. I was so enamored with it that I decided to document it in real time, sitting in front of our black and white TV, dressed in pajamas, the camera on a tripod. I actually still have that tripod from my dad, a super old aluminum frame with multiple extensions, very wobbly by today’s standards, and heavy, but it worked for this static setup.

With film cartridges limited to 36 frames, I had to carefully choose when to take photos and I remember sitting on the floor, next to that tripod, with one of those 6 inch long wire triggers in hand during many of the live broadcasts, ready to push that metal wire. which made the setup a bit more comfortable.

I ended up having these printed and then assembled them into school notebooks, with my comments as well as clippings from newspapers and magazines alongside.

I don’t remember what type of camera it was, I’m pretty sure it was a 50mm lens and I was told to stick to 1/50 s shutter speed as to not get any dark bars across from the frame rate or power frequency. The (black&white) TV screen photos were rather flat grey, without much contrast to it, but here is the sequence from take-off to splash down. And all the way back to this very first photo shoot, I have been moon struck! I should have known...

And talking about Henri’s decisive moment in photography, here is me triggering two back to back photos when Eagle, the lunar lander fired its engine and then took off. The two photos were less than 1 second apart. I must have taken these from repeated broadcasts, because I can’t imagine forwarding the film roll that fast and motorized cameras didn’t arrive until some 12 years later.

1970

The first time being on my own with a camera and without useful instructions was one year later, I was 12, when my mom sent me to go with our house maid on summer vacations, she went home for the summer to what used to be Yugoslavia, present day Croatia. When she wasn’t working in Germany, she and her entire family lived on a farm outside the city of Zagreb.

I encountered farm live and took it all in, chasing after geese, collecting eggs and taking chickens up to the 2nd floor of the unfinished new home construction to toss them down from what became the balcony, to see if they can fly. And yes, they flap wildly and make it down safely. You can’t call it graceful flying, but it is enough to survive. The scientist’s mind to experiment was already forming! :)

I had a compact camera with me, which produced square photos from color negative film. I don’t remember if my dad gave that to me or if he lent me his. Here is me taking random photos of everything I saw, the barns, the geese, the farmer and his grand child posing for me next to some horses and that child with the farm’s German Shepherd. The photos faded a lot, I didn’t edit them at all. Not much of a feeling for composition, interest or impact on my end yet.

It was also on that trip that I learned how to make Slivovitz, the popular national drink of Yugoslavia (and some other countries around there), a brandy made from plums. The farm had a large plum plantation and August is the time to harvest, put them in huge drums, let them ferment for two weeks and then distill them in a large, home-made copper distill in one of the barns. I was instructed to let the first pot go to waste (it contains the bad alcohols that make you blind), then switch the pot 2-3 times to catch the good stuff and on the third pot taste the distill from time to time to see if it’s still strong enough. Remember, I was 12, but I gladly followed the instructions, lol. I wish I had taken a photo of that distill.

1973

It took three more years for me to be in 8th grade, when our class went on a trip to Helgoland, a large island off the North Sea coast of Germany. I remember us going on a barefoot hike through the tidal mudflats, which was way too long and far. My teacher thought it was great, but everybody else hated it. I stepped into sea shells that embedded themselves into my foot for years.

During that trip, I took photos with what I believe was a regular 36mm film camera, black and white film, and documented our journey.

The compositions appear rather random, whatever I found interesting, I took a photo of. One thing that stands out right away is the photos of the industrial sights in the harbor and the interesting suspended bridge, two themes that are still part of my regular repertoire these days! It seems that preferences form early in life: moon and industrial so far.

Another such continuation of preferences is that I didn’t take many photos of people, something everyone seems to be doing mostly these days, all those selfies and selfies with others. Night and long exposure photography makes people disappear, an aspect I certainly enjoy and purposely propagate these days. But here is one with my classmates lounging in the sun after the (vomit-inducing) ferry ride, and another one of myself (somebody else used my camera), showing one of our main activities during the trip. And yes, it is completely legal to drink beer at 16 in Germany! What are you saying, I was only 15 then? OK, let’s move on.

1974

My next photographic project a year later was to create photograms at the age of 16, during a summer retreat with a youth organization I was part of. Our retreat patron was very friendly, very encouraging, and he taught us the technique: sitting in a dark room, we placed objects on photo paper, then briefly illuminated it before developing it all.

That was a color process. I used a comb (yes, I had hair back then!) and some other items to put on the paper.

I have three of those left, and our tutor constantly said “todsicher, einfach, genial” - “as sure as death, easy, ingenious!” I actually wrote it down on the back of these photos, one word per photo. Teaser question: which band of the 1970s was my favorite back then?

1975/76

I started going to music concerts of my favorite bands rather late. My first concert was the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO!) opening for Black Oak Arkansas after Cheap Trick in 1974. Shortly after, ELO came on tour as the main act, with Barclay James Harvest opening for them, and BJH was as good, if not better, than the main act. BJH became very popular in Germany and returned for concerts quite often, I think I saw them at least five times between 1974 and 1987 (I still have those tickets! They were very colorful and elaborate). It was around 75/76 when I went there with camera in hand and took photos.

Yes, of course, back then that was perfectly allowed and nobody bothered to check bags or got worried that you might throw a heavy lens at the band. Times have certainly changed to the worse since then. Here is Barclay James Harvest, John Lees and Les Holroyd on the left, John in the middle with a cool laser projection behind and Mel Pritchard on drums and Wooly Wolstenholme on keyboards on the right. I still love that music, gentle, aggressive, haunting, fall in love or kill yourself, all at the same time. Highly recommended.

Strictly speaking, concert photography was both low light and night photography. It was indoors and because of that, doesn’t qualify for my definition of what night photography is, but those concerts were surely at night, and in fairly dark conditions, either way. Another trend starting here!

I went on to do that more often, the best photos were from documenting a German band named Grobschnitt, a progressive rock band with an awesome light show:

On their second tour, we actually met the band in person behind stage to show them prints of my photos and their singer said “These are better than the photos from our paid photographers!” He was probably being polite to one of his big fans, but it was surely a nice compliment, making me feel very gebauchpinselt.

Their light show was awesome - including spark arcs from angle grinders being pushed on metal posts in the rhythm of the music. Yes, pyrotechnics on stage, 10 ft away from the audience and probably without much concern by the local fire fighters. But we all did survive the 70s. :) The 2nd to last frame on bottom right is us behind stage with the band.

Late 1970s

I often used my dad’s and brother’s film cameras or the compact camera we had to take along on vacations. Straying from my usual approach, I have a number of films showing me and my friends on winter holidays, camping, sledding and my brother and father sailing, something I gladly missed out on.

And these are, literally, all snapshots without much concept, trying to capture that moment and not always succeeding with the focus, let alone the composition. Operating today’s digital cameras with all bells and whistles, I am still surprised how well and often I got exposure right. Give somebody who is used to his latest Sony auto-everything an old camera and let them manually choose shutter speed, aperture and focus. That would be fun to watch. :)

1982

I started studying chemistry in 1979, the beginning of a very different chapter of my life. After an intimidating first semester, I became involved in the student representative organization during my 3rd through 10th semester, the Fachschaft as it was called. I was introduced - or indoctrinated as the professors insisted it was - by people who used to be very active during the late 1960s student revolts. The student body still carried some of that reputation, even though it became quite harmless.

During that time, I focused on introducing freshman to chemistry, explaining the good, the bad and the ugly about it, but always in a mentoring kind of way. One of our main outlets was a news magazine, which I founded and created with others and which we called TNT (the short form of trinitrotoluene, an explosive). Find me in the photos! The others were taken by me.

This was long before computers and word editing software, so our magazine was hand-made by cutting comics out, typing text on a typewriter and pasting it all together into a two column layout using white-out, glue sticks and scissors. Below are some of the photos I took for various purposes, the main one here was to take these portraits for the upcoming student elections. Also showing us goofing around for an upcoming article about our main cafeteria and its food, which reminded us of the physics law about bending light (us bending over and pretending to vomit) or inertia (us fainting from the food poisoning, then dying) etc. We had fun doing what we did!

These images were much more purposeful, taken with intent, and composed accordingly. Some cut-off feet here and there, but generally very usable photos for their intended implementation. Our TNT magazine was copied on a low resolution Xerox in black and white, so there wasn’t any need for fine art quite yet.

Early 1980s - Photos on vacations, the end of randomness!

I have photos from various vacation trips I took, to France, to what used to be Yugoslavia (I went back several times) and other places. I believe at this time I was using my father’s Yashica film camera, which I inherited after he passed away, and actually sold around 2015 when I was weeding clearing out cabinets and figured I have no more use for it. Once I went digital with my cameras in the late 1990s, I never looked back. I understand that film photography is still a niche, very much like vinyl records, but I find the mere thought of the limitations prohibitive to even think about embracing film again. And the few advantages that film still has over digital won’t change that decision.

What I can see in retrospect is that my photography certainly got more purposeful. I either chose a specific topic, like photographing my own toad and newts in my self-made terrarium (it was huge at 2x2x4 feet or 60x60x120 cm):

Or by taking my camera to a busker festival and capturing the fire breather. I think I did a bang up job with this, both for composition as well as exposure. Photographing fire is not easy at all, but I managed to not blow it out, with impeccable timing (no burst mode spray-and-pray here!):

And, of course, that adds to my evolving trend for low light photography. Unfortunately, many of these early negatives are gone, I didn’t do a good job at archiving them. That also only started only in the 1980s.

And perhaps the very first photo, which I could call artsy-fartsy, a photo where I intended to simply create an interesting viewpoint without any other purpose to it is the below photo of my electronic organ, which I attempted to play around that time. I had started working for a music shop, which sold organs and I was the person to deliver them. I went there to buy an affordable one for myself and the owner asked me if I wanted to upgrade to something better, because I could work it off instead of paying for it. Talking about being at the right place and the right time! I worked there until the end of my Ph.D., years later. So here is the artsy shot with selective focus through short depth of field:

So there you have the first two decades of Jürgen’s photography. Some fun stuff, but the most interesting photography had yet to come. Starting with my Ph.D. work in 1986, I documented our experiments and got particularly many photos from my excursions, which started to take me all over the world, adding travel photography to the mix. And my desire to explore the world and bookmark as many interesting places as I could.

Stay tuned for part 2 of my history. It will show a lot of very interesting images from interesting places.

• Exposure time

• Aperture

• ISO

• White balance

Those are the four settings that you will change all the time as you switch from one composition to the next. Having to go through the menu to change them, perhaps not knowing where the ISO setting is or what the white balance options mean will cost you precious time during which you won’t be taking any photos and it will be rather frustrating having to do this in darkness.

Beyond these four settings, however, there are quite a few other things that you will need for night photography, both in settings and with equipment choices. Preparing your camera becomes essential, especially if you participate in limited time workshops where you really want to focus (!) on taking photos.

I created an eBook a long time ago to go through all those preparations and it grow over time from 1 to now 4 pages.

This post is that eBook and it is for people starting out with night photography or those who want to brush up on the basics. It outlines how to prepare for a successful night shoot by getting the necessary equipment and changing camera settings that are important and different from daytime photography.

You can also download it for a few bucks as a PDF from my shop.

Personal Preparation

It is difficult for us to see in the dark. Fiddling in the dark or with a flashlight, trying to find ISO, aperture, white balance settings is frustrating and wasting time that could be spent taking photos. Night photography, especially with artificial lights, needs frequent changes of the basic settings, because the brightness and dynamic range of the scenery changes often. And all of that in darkness.

The photographer is strongly encouraged to practice the below settings and specifically to change them in darkness, so that the use of flashlights is unnecessary or much reduced. This can be done at home on the living room couch: turn the lights off, but leave them on in adjacent rooms, then take photos pointing the camera into bright rooms, then out the dark window. Do this often and change settings using different trade-offs between exposure time, aperture and ISO. Adjust white balance so the image looks like what you see with your eyes.

The goal is to learn using your camera blindly, in the dark, without having to go through menus or figuring out where which button or dial is to change the settings. This is particularly true for workshops where any time searching for settings will take away time the instructor can spend with you on composition, right settings etc.

Equipment Needs

Camera

• A camera with the ability for manual exposure (aperture, ISO, exposure time, white balance). Just about any DSLR, mirrorless, SLR camera will work for this.

• Remove the strap or tie it down to prevent movement by wind (which can blur long exposure images).

• Don’t forget to charge your battery before the photo shoot.

Tripod

• Use a sturdy tripod; with individual leg adjustments. Ball-heads are more flexible than 3-way heads, and much easier to use in darkness.

• Use Velcro strips to hold the timer / intervalometer and camera strap etc. to prevent them from moving in the wind.

Lenses

• Most common range is below 100 mm full frame (70 mm crop sensor). Wide angles are often used. You will rarely zoom in further, as lens motion is amplified. A combination of 14-24 and 24-70mm (full frame, 11-20 and 12-50 cropped sensor) is most useful to get started. Wide apertures (f/2.8 or less) are only needed for astro-landscape photography (shooting the Milky Way etc.)

• Remove any filters, they create reflections and flares.

• Bring your lens hoods! They avoid flares from bright street lights.

Intervalometer or Timer

• Many night exposures are longer than 30 seconds, but many cameras (and internal intervalometers) are still limited to 30 s exposure time.

• If your camera provides long exposures up to at least a few minutes, you are all set. These cameras often have a TIME mode (e.g. Nikon, to be found after the BULB mode or in the menu), which allows you to press the shutter button to start the exposure, then press it again to stop it, while you time the shot with your phone or watch. Other cameras have a built-in BULB TIMER (e.g. Canon), which is in the menu and times need to be set in that menu as well. More modern cameras (Nikon, Fuji) provide long exposures up to 15 minutes (Nikon) or an hour (Fuji) with the regular exposure time setting. You may have to enable long exposures in the menu once (Nikon doesn’t show them by default)

• Intervalometers are more powerful than remote on/off control. They are a must-have for star trails, where the camera takes back-to-back photos with only 1 s interval.

• The layout below is recommended. Don’t use detachable cables (the device can fall off unseen) or overly complicated layouts. Use off-brands, they are 1/10th of the expense compared to camera brand devices. Here is one for Nikon cameras, search the one for your brand/model.

Flashlights

• Get a DIM, red light (pen light or key chain light) for camera or lens adjustments, these won’t blind you and don’t show up in other people’s shots.

• Bring a (multi-level) brightness or colored flashlights for light painting.

• Be considerate of others when using flashlights! Minimize use, do not blind yourself.

• Head lamps are strongly discouraged. They create a very flat field of view when walking and it is only a matter of time when (not if!) you blind somebody with it.

Other stuff

• A practical bag to carry your equipment. Backpacks are most useful, as they are out of the way. Don’t leave your bag on the ground and walk away. Put them under the tripod, if needed.

• Hiking boots, water, snacks, suitable clothing (it’s cooler at night and you are standing around without moving),

• A microfiber cloth to clean your lens, 1-2 spare (charged!) batteries. Camera batteries drain much faster with long exposures.

• Spare batteries. Long exposures drain camera batteries faster than short exposures. I do not count my battery life in the number of photos I can take, but rather the number of hours they work, which is typically 3 (for about 100 long exposure photos).

Camera Settings

• Set your camera to take RAW image format (or RAW+JPG). It has much more latitude in recovering highlights and shadows and gives you the best image quality

• Turn autofocus off, the camera can’t focus well in the dark

• Learn to use LiveView and zooming in with +/- controls for focusing.

• Turn auto-ISO off, we want to control the ISO setting.

• Turn motion compensation (VR/VC/OS/IBIS…) off, it blurs images when on a tripod

• Turn off LENR = Long Exposure Noise Reduction (default: ON), it is a long delay after each photo, which you don’t need when shooting at low ISO.

• For shutter speed / exposure time, use your camera times up to 30 seconds, then use the intervalometer and the camera in BULB mode. Stick to full minutes to keep adjustments easy.

• White balance: set it to “K” (Kelvin temperature): 5500 is daylight, twilight is 6000-10000. At night, white balance temperature drops quickly to 3450. Use cloudy (civil), shade (nautical) and incandescent (city) if you don’t have the K setting.

• Set your LCD screen brightness to -3 (darker), it is too bright at night and makes you think the photo is well exposed when it is underexposed.

• Image review: turn on highlight clipping indicator and RGB (not just the white) histogram, maybe also the shooting info.

Consideration

• You are not alone at night

  • Be considerate of residents, workers, fellow citizens and other photographers

Don’t be noisy, don’t litter, don’t vandalize or remove items.

• Don’t wildly shine your light around, keep it down and spot on your equipment

  • Ask to make sure you don’t ruin somebody’s 8-minute light painting

  • Your LCD shows up in other people’s shots: shade it with your body, or turn it off, it drains the battery.

• Your tripod is larger than you think, don’t turn around and knock someone out!

• You may be watched, be friendly to people and law enforcement approaching you

  • But know your rights, too. If in doubt, walk away, it’s just a photo.

Exposure Settings

ISO

• Do not use auto-ISO, it doesn’t work at night. You want to control it and shoot at the lowest ISO necessary for the scenery

• Set camera to lowest native ISO (most common: 100, some are 64 or 200)

  • Exceptions: want longer exposure or even less noise: ISO 50 (32)

  • Not enough light, don’t want to expose for 20 minutes: go up to ISO 200 or 400

  • Star dots and Milky Way: 800 to 6400; try to minimize ISO, shoot wider aperture

Aperture

Choose the aperture for creative reasons or to compromise on exposure time

• Shallow DOF: low f-stop: 2.8 – 4, focus on your main object

• All in focus: higher f-stop: 8-16 (also gives you nice starbursts from lights), focus perceptually about 1/3 into the scenery

• Startrails? Balance light and DOF: f/5.6, focus on the stars

• Milky Way and star points: f/1.8-2.8, focus on the stars

Exposure time / shutter speed

With ISO low and aperture chosen for creative reasons, exposure time is defined

• All you need to do is figure out exactly how long you need to expose

• For star dots (no trails): use the rule of 400: 400/focal length (sec) for full frame; 300/focal length for crop sensor cameras. The rule of 200 is more conservative

Focusing

To focus in darkness, there are a few different methods to use.

• To compose, use a flashlight to illuminate the scenery, use LiveView to see your composition or take a test shot at high ISO and a few seconds

• While in LiveView, illuminate the point to focus on. Zoom in with +/- controls on that spot, focus, then get out of LiveView

• Use a cheap laser pointer (to measure distances from your home improvement store) to see a sharp dot and not ruin anybody’s photos.

• Take a small light and put it where you want to focus, then focus on that light (pointing at the camera), retrieve it and take your shot.

• For star points, star trails, Milky Way, aurora, zodiacal light etc., you need to focus on the stars. Pick the brightest one you can see, open your aperture and go to high ISO to increase brightness.

High ISO Preview (be HIP, save time)

Don’t waste 10 minutes just to figure out that it wasn’t enough or too much. Here is how to determine your exposure time (for a given aperture/ISO combination):

• Set ISO 6 stops higher, which gives you exposure time 6 stops shorter

• Example: your native ISO is 100

  • 6 stops higher is: 100 -->200 --> 400 --> 800 --> 1600 --> 3200 --> 6400

• An exposure time of 1 second at ISO 6400 is as bright as 1 minute at ISO 100

  • 6 stops lower: 60” --> 30” --> 15” --> 8” --> 4” --> 2” --> 1”

• With camera at ISO 6400, figure out how many seconds you need for the right exposure. “Right exposure” means that you expose to the right, without clipping any desired highlights. Use your RGB histogram for this. This step is trial and error, but costs only seconds.

• Example: you determined 3” exposure time at ISO 6400 for best exposure

• Set your camera back to ISO 100 and the seconds become minutes (in this example: 3 minutes).

1 second at ISO 6400 becomes 1 minute at ISO 100!

• What if my camera’s lowest ISO is 200?

  • 6 stops up: ISO 12800. 1” at 12800 is the same as 1 minute at ISO 200.

• My camera’s lowest ISO is 50 (or: I want to shoot at ISO 50 for noise and longer time)

  • 6 stops up: ISO 3200. 1” at 3200 is the same as 1 minute at ISO 50.

• I changed my mind, instead of f/11, I want to shoot at f/8 (or f/16)

  • 11 to 8 is +1 stop more light: select half the exposure time (double for f/16)

Practice all of these settings! Make it second nature, especially if you shoot outside the city in darker environments. Also, it becomes much easier, if you stick to full stops for the settings: doubling or halving time or ISO is much easier than dealing with thirds.

Exposure time: 1 – 2 – 4 – 8 – 15 – 30 - 60 (seconds or minutes)

ISO: 50 – 100 – 200 – 400 – 800 – 1600 – 3200 - 6400

Aperture: 2.8 – 4.0 - 5.6 – 8 – 11 – 16 – 22 (doubling = 2 stops!)

Enjoy Night Photography, it is serene and beautiful

You can sign up here.

As usual, the summit is free to attend and you get access to each presentation for 48 hours. If you want longer access, plus all the free goodies, templates and examples, you can sign up for a VIP pass for $99 ($159 after June 1).

There will be 17 world-class instructors teaching 46 classes over 5 days, see below for the schedule.

I have always enjoyed these and still learn a little bit every time, even though I am considering myself to be an expert (I teach Lightroom!).

Well worth the time, I think, go ahead and register yourself.

The channel itself has changed very little, the skyline and foreground are similar, with some exceptions. However, the area behind it, Seaport has changed dramatically, which I have talked about in an earlier post.

Read more

Read more