Thanks everyone- I enjoy shooting at night when possible.
Pretty incredible, especially knowing the details of the shot.
I'm curious, how do you know the proper exposure time? I assume you took a few different shots to dial it in properly. Or is your camera able to properly pick exposure in low light environments like that?
Also - no wind? I would have expected those flowers in the foreground to be blurry. Really really awesome.
James-
Exposure time can be calculated a couple ways. If you are into the math of exposure, aperture, and ISO the easiest way is to shoot F2.8 at ISO 1600 and get a proper exposure time at those settings. Then you simply adjust your exposure by the same number of stops you adjust your aperture and ISO.
Personally I shoot more by feel than by numbers and can often get pretty dang close by just looking at the scene and doing some brain calculating. For this shot in particular I knew I wanted as much detail as possible (I like shooting F15-F22) but didn't want to wait 30-40 minutes for each shot. I opened the aperture to F11, used ISO 400 because it would allow a good amount of light in without being too noisy, and from looking at the scene (and having shot at night a few times) figured 6 minutes should be pretty close. The moon was 97% on this night with mostly clear skies but we did have some light clouds streaking through. Truth be told I did have to bring this up a little over a stop in post but that was a pretty good first go. :ylsmoke:
As far as the wind, I had been out along several parts of the coast for a few days and I knew that the calmest part of the night is usually between 11:30pm and 2:00am. I also these particular flowers having a good size stem were not being affected by subtle breezes.
Hope that helps.
