nckwltn
Explorer
This is a side thread from http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/118903-Death-Valley-Weekend-Nov-8-10-2013, someone asked what I used for these three night shots. Instead of hijacking my own adventure story thread, I figured I would start up something over here.
All of the photos from me were shot on a Canon 5DM2 with the F4.0 24-105L.
The night pictures in particular I cranked the aperture down pretty far, something like 7.1-8.0 or so. I also bumped the ISO somewhere in the 2000 range. Because I don't have a shutter bulb, I can't hold the shutter open forever, so I had to use the camera's maximum time of 30 seconds.
The photos were REALLY noisy, but my wife was able to cut out the noise a bit using Lightroom, and then take down the red, which is what most of visible noise was. So some of the stars in the sky are really bits of noise that just now look like stars.
The flash was a 580 EX2 at 1/16th or 1/32nd power. I fired the flash about 8-10 times in each photo, from about 10 feet out. The key thing with the flash is to fire it at 45 degree angles from the lens. With this type of manual firing, just be sure to always keep moving around, and fire the flash back into the area you were previously blocking as you're moving around.
I also try not to light up the ground too much, so this usually means pointing the flash upward a little.
The first thing I do for these is to expose for the available light. Thankfully the moonlight on the hills behind the trucks was quite bright. Then, keep trying the flash for a few frames until I found a power and amount of strobing that worked. You can always fire the flash 10x at 1/32 power to get the same illumination power as 5x at 1/16th power. Generally though, I usually like more strobing at a lower power as opposed to fewer strobes at a higher power. The shadow's you see behind the vehicles is mostly caused by the moonlight. Probably the most pronounced behind the LR3.
All of the photos from me were shot on a Canon 5DM2 with the F4.0 24-105L.
The night pictures in particular I cranked the aperture down pretty far, something like 7.1-8.0 or so. I also bumped the ISO somewhere in the 2000 range. Because I don't have a shutter bulb, I can't hold the shutter open forever, so I had to use the camera's maximum time of 30 seconds.
The photos were REALLY noisy, but my wife was able to cut out the noise a bit using Lightroom, and then take down the red, which is what most of visible noise was. So some of the stars in the sky are really bits of noise that just now look like stars.
The flash was a 580 EX2 at 1/16th or 1/32nd power. I fired the flash about 8-10 times in each photo, from about 10 feet out. The key thing with the flash is to fire it at 45 degree angles from the lens. With this type of manual firing, just be sure to always keep moving around, and fire the flash back into the area you were previously blocking as you're moving around.
I also try not to light up the ground too much, so this usually means pointing the flash upward a little.
The first thing I do for these is to expose for the available light. Thankfully the moonlight on the hills behind the trucks was quite bright. Then, keep trying the flash for a few frames until I found a power and amount of strobing that worked. You can always fire the flash 10x at 1/32 power to get the same illumination power as 5x at 1/16th power. Generally though, I usually like more strobing at a lower power as opposed to fewer strobes at a higher power. The shadow's you see behind the vehicles is mostly caused by the moonlight. Probably the most pronounced behind the LR3.
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