Portfolio review
John Jones sends in his portfolio of night-time photos which, for him, aren’t quite hitting the spot when it comes to the final photograph
Go boldly where no man (except John Jones) has gone before as we check out his portfolio of beautiful night photographs
Acamera has always been with me in some form or other, but I only started taking photography seriously around 18 months back, after seeing some amazing photos on a local social media group. It inspired me to improve my photography. While I do feel that I have a better understanding now with camera settings, I am yet to be 100 per cent happy with my images. I always feel I am missing something.
I do plan my shoots in advance now. For example, take the image of the fireworks taken from Little Orme in Llandudno [3]. I had planned this location a few weeks before the display – most of the photos that I have seen in the past are from the promenade or Great Orme and I wanted a different view.
I set up my Nikon D500 and a Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 G2 on a tripod, with a remote shutter release attached. The evening was windy, and I was happy at the time with the photo on the back of camera, but when I downloaded it onto my ipad they were a touch underexposed. I have limited talent with Lightroom mobile, but feel I managed to get a reasonable image after a bit of editing. In hindsight perhaps a higher ISO may have been better for the shot?
Back in November 2018 I treated myself to a Nikon D750. But due to many weeks of cloudy nights it was the beginning of January before I got a clear evening to shoot with it. One night I headed out to Dolbadarn castle in Snowdonia National Park, which is faintly lit by the lights of Electric Mountain, a nearby power station [2]. Upon reflection it looks like the stars are sharp, but I’d like to see the castle and foreground sharper, and I’m unsure how to achieve this in a single image.
On the way home I decided to make a stopover at one of my favourite locations, the Menai suspension bridge, which joins the island of Anglesey to the mainland of Wales [1]. I shot with the D750 and a 24-70mm lens on a tripod. The tide was high and I captured quite a nice reflection in it. Again I’m reasonably happy but, as my old teachers used to say, there is always room for improvement. I definitely regret not taking a few more steps to my right to have a bit more of the bridge showing. Also I did not anticipate seeing so much starburst on the lights when shooting at an aperture of f/8 – it was quite surprising, to say the least.
N-photo says
John, it’s great to see a variety of night-based shots in your portfolio, from firework displays to astro work. You’ve done well to capture each photograph with technical proficiency, keeping everything nice and sharp, with a balanced exposure.
You mention about wanting a sharper foreground in your shot of Dolbadarn castle [2], and we’ve had a close look at this photograph and noticed you’re shooting wide open at f/2.8 on the 24-70mm you’re using. It’s a tough balance on a shot like this to get a pin-sharp image, and also get enough light in through the lens for a decent exposure in one frame.
The following techniques can be applied to all of your night-time shots and, as we’re about to outline, it’s a trade-off of settings and creative results. The way we see it, you have
I have a better understanding now with camera settings, I am yet to be 100 per cent happy with my images. I always feel I am missing something
two options. Option one involves stopping down the aperture to f/8 or f/16 and focusing a third of the way into your frame (the hyperfocal distance). This will increase your depth of field and ensure the foreground as well as the background is as sharp as possible in one single photo. You’ve done this in your fireworks photo [3], but because the scene is a brighter you’ve managed to keep your ISO low and use an exposure length of just under 5 secs.
However, adjusting the aperture like this also makes the image much darker, so you’ll need to extend your shutter speed until the image is correctly exposed again. But this may take up to several minutes of exposure, depending on the light. That means the stars won’t be as sharp as you want due to the rotation of the earth – they’ll start to blur.
Option two is to stop down, and use your hyperfocal distance to focus, but then increase your ISO even higher. The D750 you’ve used to take this shot is brilliant at handling high ISO noise, and you can always remove some of this in software. We think it’s probably best to combine the two methods for the best of sharpness and detail. Narrow your aperture to about f/8, focus a third of the way into the frame, extend your shutter speed to around 30-45 secs and bump up your ISO to 4000.
By doing this, you’re increasing your depth of field and level of acceptable sharpness, increasing exposure length to account for the drop in light intake, but not going too long as to introduce big star trails. Then you’re also picking up the slack in loss of light with the ISO, and we know the D750 can handle ISO4000. Good luck giving this a try, John, and do let us know how you get on.