Night School - A Tutorial - a photo on Flickriver

I've been wanting to do night photography in Bannack, Montana for some time now and inspired by our night outing on our recent Yellowstone workshop I decided to make the 2 hour drive for an evening of fun. The old Bannack school house made a nice foreground for the Milky Way and remnants of a glorious sunset an hour earlier.

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A word about technique - This type of photography is really quite simple to do. A full frame, low noise sensor yields the best results. I find it hard to focus on a star even using live view at full magnification. I calibrate infinity on the lens I'm am going use in the daylight and mark the scale so I can easily go to that point in the dark. The camera is set to manual mode and I typically use the settings below. The image that results is somewhat over exposed but I find it produces less noise and better detail to darken a slightly light image rather than lighten a dark image. This philosophy is akin to the saying "expose to the right" which produces less noise in the dark parts of the image.

George Lepp has an article in the November 2012 issue of Outdoor Photography about Milky Way photography. He fails to mention one essential setting and that is always turn on "Long exposure noise reduction!" Your camera will then take a dark frame after the exposure which greatly decreases the noise and "hot pixels."

Finally about the light painting. With the camera set to this very sensitive technique to capture the Milky Way and stars, use indirect lighting of the foreground and building. In this case I shinned the flashlight across the street on other buildings and the reflected light was enough to light the school house.

Camera Nikon D3S
Exposure 30 sec
Aperture f/2.8
Focal Length 14 mm
ISO Speed 6400

For information on our winter Yellowstone Workshop see my blog at JamesNeeley.com

Taken on: October 9, 2012

Tags:

Montana

Bannack

School House

Night Photography

Milky Way

James Neeley « less

Sets appears in: • Ghost Towns • Night Photography more » • Low Light Photography • Selected Recent Work • Night Sky • Light Painting • Workshops, Tutorials, and Insights • Montana « less

Camera: Nikon D3S, f/2.8, 30 sec, 14mm, ISO 6400 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Nikon D3S
Lens:	14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture:	f/2.8
Exposure Time:	30
Focal Length:	14mm
ISO:	6400
Exposure Bias:	-2/3 EV
Flash:	No Flash
Exposure Program:	Manual
Exposure Mode:	Manual
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Gain Control:	High gain up
Sharpness:	Hard
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop CS6 (Macintosh)
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