Thursday 17 January 2013

Long exposure night shooting

I wanted to try out some more manual shooting with the EOS 350D. I read a couple of online articles that gave me some inspiration to have a play.

I needed to set the ISO, the shutter speed (manual) and the aperture of the camera to get what I wanted. I also had to wait for a night that wasn’t lousy with clouds.

To start with, I set the dial to Manual Exposure (M). Next, I set the ISO value to 100-200 and then the aperture to 8-12 (page 86 of the manual for info on how to do this.

I used the tripod (Manfrotto 190/#115 2-way head) and a remote control shutter (Canon RC6).

IMG_0004

F-stop f/8
Exposure time 28 sec
ISO 100
Focal length 18mm
Flash mode none
Capture RC6

Okay, that’s nice … so I tried again with a slightly different angle.

IMG_0005

F-stop f/8
Exposure time 16 sec
ISO 100
Focal length 18mm
Flash mode none
Capture RC6

The only difference is that the exposure time is 16 seconds. Plus I moved the camera slightly.

IMG_0006

F-stop f/8
Exposure time 18 sec
ISO 100
Focal length 18mm
Flash mode none
Capture RC6

Moved the camera more and 18 seconds for exposure time.

IMG_0007

F-stop f/8
Exposure time 72 sec
ISO 100
Focal length 18mm
Flash mode none
Capture RC6

Finally, I went for a very long exposure, capturing the lights of the cars going up Pass Road and along Cambridge Road leaving light trails. The pinpricks of the stars in the sky are pleasing too.

I have also done some level correction in the pictures in Photoshop.

Overall I’m happy with the results.

Before the twilight started to come down, the clouds were starting to look very nice … so I took a couple of shots. I had to crop these down a little so that the balcony.

IMG_0002

F-stop f/5.6
Exposure time 1/60 sec
ISO 100
Focal length 28mm
Flash mode none
Capture single shot

IMG_0003

F-stop f/5.6
Exposure time 1/40 sec
ISO 100
Focal length 18mm
Flash mode none
Capture RC6

Wednesday 16 January 2013

Creating a panorama in Photoshop

This is a technique more for Photoshop than it is for photography.

Basically, the technique is to take a bunch of photographs in series that will make up a panoramic view. The images are then stitched together in Photoshop to make a panorama.

The camera is set up on a tripod and the camera base is levelled using a spirit level. This is done so that when the camera is panned, the image is in a flat plane … that’s something that I realised after taking these photos (tee hee).

The images are taken in series so that there is very little (if any) difference in exposure levels.

So we start with four images.

IMG_0001

IMG_0002

IMG_0003

IMG_0004

Make sure that when taking the photographs, you leave an overlap in the images so that Photoshop has an easier time aligning the images.

Next, start up Photoshop  and select File > Automate > Photomerge. This loads the automation interface for creating a panoramic view.

Browse and select your source images and make sure that the check box “Attempt to automatically arrange source images” is checked. This makes sure that the images are loaded in sequence.

Click on the OK button. Photoshop will then attempt to merge the images together into a new image (with the interestingly apposite layer name of Photomerge).

Now you need to crop out the bits that don’t fit into the picture … do some guide tweaking and selecting and then crop the image so that you end up with a satisfying image.

panorama

I think that Photoshop did a pretty good job of stitching

Multiple Exposure–Digital SLR–Stacking

I have a Canon EOS 350D digital SLR camera. I have had this camera for a number of years and I am very happy with it’s performance.

I am an amateur photographer. That means I occasionally get out an take a few photo’s with my camera. When we bought the camera, we had a couple of goals in mind.

  1. Easy to use in full auto;
  2. Good range of full manual options;
  3. Good images;
  4. Cost.

I should have added a couple of extra criteria since it was replacing my old SLR Ricoh KR10M camera (camera died and it was going to cost more than a new camera to fix it). The other criteria should have included … I could use my old Tamron Macro lens with the new camera and all of my Hoya filters … oh well, you live and learn.

For the filters, I just bought a 52mm – 58mm step down ring from eBay for the princely sum of $2.80, so that wasn’t a problem. My lenses are another problem for another day (and another couple of thousand dollars).

But I digress.

In the good old days of analogue photography, you could create multiple-exposure images by opening the shutter several times on the same exposure. This would overlay the different scenes over the top of each other. With care, you could come up with some pretty good creative works.

With digital photography, however, this isn’t possible in the camera (well, not entirely true, some DSLR have this feature, but they are few in number).

The alternative is to take several photos on the DSLR and then use an imaging tool (like Photoshop) and load each image into a single image as separate layers. This is called “stacking”.

The most straight forward way to do this is to open each image and then drag the background layer into the receiving image. Alter the layer transparency for each image so that it ends up with an equal level of transparency over all.

Say you have three images. IMAGE_01.JPG, IMAGE_02.JPG and IMAGE_03.JPG. where image 1 is the first one taken and image 3 is the last one.

  1. Open IMAGE_03.JPG in Photoshop … nothing more to do with this layer.
  2. Open IMAGE_02.JPG in Photoshop, CTRL-A (select all) CTRL-C (copy).
  3. Close IMAGE_02.JPG
  4. In IMAGE_03.JPG, CTRL-V (paste).
  5. Set the layer transparency of the 2nd layer to 50%
  6. Open IMAGE_01.JPG in Photoshop, CTRL-A (select all) CTRL-C (copy).
  7. Close IMAGE_01.JPG
  8. In IMAGE_03.JPG, CTRL-V (paste).
  9. Set the layer transparency of the 3rd layer to 33%

When you finish, you will have three layers that have averaged equal transparency. The idea is to divide 100 by the layer from background to calculate the correct transparency.

  • Layer 1 (background) = 100 / 1 = 100%
  • Layer 2 = 100 / 2 = 50%
  • Layer 3 = 100 / 3 = 33%
  • e.t.c.

Anita in 3 layers

The above image is a series of three pictures taken of my daughter as she ran along the balcony.

F-stop f/4
Exposure time 1/250 sec
ISO 100
Exposure bias 0
Focal length 28mm
Flash mode none
Capture servo

I took eight shots in all on my tripod and with no remote control.

Using the same principle, I also stacked with 5 images and 8 images in the series.

Anita in 5 layers

5 steps

Anita in 8 layers

8 steps

I don’t think that 5 or 8 steps adds any real value to the image, so 3 is good for this picture, but you can see that 5 and 8 work using this transparency calculation.

Because the camera was mounted on a tripod, the immobile elements of the image appear crisp and clear.

I’d like to take another go at multiple exposure where the object is running across the field of view, rather than diminishing in the field of view.

On a side note, in the bottom left-hand corner of the image … our sheep was completely motionless. Lazy sheep.

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