Comments on: Guide to Photographing Light Trails at Night

By: Darlene Hildebrandt

Darlene Hildebrandt — Mon, 06 Oct 2014 21:27:00 +0000

In reply to Colin Green. Infinity and back a little works okay for stars or sky shots but not necessarily everything. Your photo didn't load Colin?

By: Colin Green

Colin Green — Thu, 02 Oct 2014 15:51:00 +0000

As Darlene has said about the iso, try and reduce it down, even to 800. When focusing set to manual focus, focus on infinity and then gently just ease back a tad and leave it at that. As you said you are in your back yard, I assume you live in a city ? If so you will be hampered by light pollution. Try and get a nice dark spot in the country and use the above method. Make sure there is no moon as well. That can really interrupt your night sky shots.
As described here, it has worked for me but may not work for others.
This is a shot I took last year using these settings. I did use some PP in photoshop to brighten it slightly but the noise was kept to a minimum.

By: Darlene Hildebrandt

Darlene Hildebrandt — Wed, 17 Sep 2014 20:31:00 +0000

In reply to Steven Valkenberg. You can try some noise reduction in Lightroom or a noise reduction plugin but unfortunately it has to do with the age of your camera which is 3.5 years old. The newer cameras have much improved lower noise at higher ISO than do ones only a couple years ago. Have you tried doing any reduction in post-production?

By: Steven Valkenberg

Steven Valkenberg — Wed, 17 Sep 2014 05:01:00 +0000

I have been working on some Night photography in the back yard and seem to get my photos very grainy. I use a tripod with my Canon Rebel T3i and I am shooting at ISO 6400, f/3.5 for 25 sec using a 18-55 mm lens @ 18 mm How do I reduce the grainy feel to the shot?

By: Darlene Hildebrandt

Darlene Hildebrandt — Fri, 05 Sep 2014 01:30:00 +0000

In reply to Colin Green. Very nice! What happened with the focus, just missed it? Try and find a bright area like where the lights are on the church and focus there, then shut off focus on your lens so it doesn't hunt. Or use back-button focus.

By: Colin Green

Colin Green — Wed, 03 Sep 2014 17:15:00 +0000

Not really happy with my focus on the church but this is one I took recently, last month in fact and used two separate images to get my light trails. As Darlene has said its waiting for that right moment to click.
One of the images was taken from a different perspective so I had to resize. It was brighter when I took it so made the church stand out more and wasnt as dark. Using a layer mask I was able to blend in the “blue” sky more for the end product.

By: Ellie Priestley

Ellie Priestley — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 21:37:00 +0000

In reply to Darlene Hildebrandt. It makes for some beautiful and eerie photos :) though night photography is near impossible, but in the winter it is a massive time frame to get good shots. My brother is in Alaska, I envy his night shots!

By: Darlene Hildebrandt

Darlene Hildebrandt — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 20:31:00 +0000

Nice to have so much blue hour. Go even farther north in Canada or Alaska and in the summer the sun never sets so it’s sunset for about 8 hours a day.