long exposure lighthouse at night

I decided to make an attempt at photographing a lighthouse at night to capture the beams of light coming out. I think I need to try again because this one came out really noisy and therefore doesnt look all that sharp but figured it was worth sharing anyway. open to comments, suggestions, etc.





shot with: 50d, 17-55mm, something like 4sec, f2.8, ISO1000


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I would try reducing the ISO down to 100 and make sure to use the mirror lock up function.


Definitely use a remote shutter release of some kind.


The noise in the photo is probably degrading the image quality.


Might be some motion in the photo as well. Maybe from wind?


Also, try a few different compositions, near and distant.

yeah it was kind of windy out. I will probably go and retry this on a nice calm night. I forgot about the mirror lockup. I want to reduce the ISO but then the beams of light get all blurred together and doesn't have the same effect since the exposure would have to be much longer.





here is another example from that night...longer exposure which makes the overall image better but then you loose the effect of the individual beams of light[img]/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer-Discussions-Components-Files/15/0045.63650_5F00_534203101574_5F00_103300356_5F00_3 1297024_5F00_5128457_5F00_n.jpg[/img]

Yes, I see what your saying. This looks a bit tricky for one exposure.


You might have to blend/layer two images together in photoshop, an exposure demonstrating the beams of light and


an exposure demonstrating the other elements.


This seems like the same scenario when trying to get a perfectly sharp moon in a evening landscape photograph.


Maybe someone else will chime in on this with other ideas.

Todd is correct in saying that this will require more than one exposure.


If you're using Photoshop's noise reduction, or some other noise reduction, you can clean up the photos that way.


I would suggest taking a few exposures (set your camera to Av, as high of an ISO that you can that will give you a fairly fast shutter speed --perhaps, 1 second at the longest), then for your first shot at 0 eV, take the shot. Do another one at -1 eV, and another at -2 eV. One at +1 eV would bring out the shadows more, but the exposure will be longer.


Time the shots when the beam is where you want it to be. Since you can hang around for a long time while the beam spins around, you have an opportunity to take lots of shots, so don't skimp.


Pick the best of the various eV images that match up. Blend the images together. You should be able to get a good blend this way.


If you try bracketing with 3 exposures, you'll miss two out of the three shots for a proper "beam" look, so I wouldn't recommend bracketing on a moving object ( in this case, the light). That's why you should wait for the beam to swing to the right spot, and take your "x eV" shots individually (I hope I'm explaining this clearly enough).


If I were you, as long as there is no wind, don't worry about mirror lockup. Go ahead and use it if you want to, but there will be some measure of overlap with the various images, and it may wipe out any benefit of mirror lockup (what I mean by that is that some blurriness may still occur with the blending).


Definitely use a tripod and a remote release cord.


You've got a great scene to photograph. I hope it works out for you.


Alan

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Originally Posted by Alan

I would suggest taking a few exposures (set your camera to Av, as high of an ISO that you can that will give you a fairly fast shutter speed --perhaps, 1 second at the longest), then for your first shot at 0 eV, take the shot. Do another one at -1 eV, and another at -2 eV. One at +1 eV would bring out the shadows more, but the exposure will be longer.


Time the shots when the beam is where you want it to be. Since you can hang around for a long time while the beam spins around, you have an opportunity to take lots of shots, so don't skimp.


Pick the best of the various eV images that match up. Blend the images together. You should be able to get a good blend this way.


If you try bracketing with 3 exposures, you'll miss two out of the three shots for a proper "beam" look, so I wouldn't recommend bracketing on a moving object ( in this case, the light). That's why you should wait for the beam to swing to the right spot, and take your "x eV" shots individually (I hope I'm explaining this clearly enough).

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will blending the images do anything for reducing the noise, If I keep the shutter speed down around a second, the ISO will have to be really high making noise even worse. sounds like you are basically describing how to make an HDR. Am I reading that right?





I haven't done much blending of pictures in photoshop. Can I just take one fast exposure at high ISO for the beams of light and one long exposure for the rest of the scene at a low ISO and then merge them together and get it to look right?

Sounds like the easiest/best method to me.

A little lateral input. I tried photographing a local lighthouse at night after a recent fireworks display. If the lighthouse

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Originally Posted by nvitalephotography

will blending the images do anything for reducing the noise, If I keep the shutter speed down around a second, the ISO will have to be really high making noise even worse. sounds like you are basically describing how to make an HDR. Am I reading that right?


I haven't done much blending of pictures in photoshop. Can I just take one fast exposure at high ISO for the beams of light and one long exposure for the rest of the scene at a low ISO and then merge them together and get it to look right?
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Yes, it's essentially an HDR, though in this case, you're looking for a realistic blend, so it's a matter of blending the images to achieve realism, and not "grunge" or painterly, or some other artistic look.


I don't know how much of an improvement there would be in noise reduction. If it were a "stack" of identical images (running a script in Photoshop), then noise reduction would be done through the elimination of the areas that are dissimilar (stacking images is another feature to read up on. Photoshop can reduce noise through stacking of the images).


You should be able to blend a low/high ISO in Photoshop. Can't say I've ever done this, but I'd give it a try. (Now that you mentioned it, I'm going to try it myself).


Someone else will have more insight on the noise reduction (perhaps, Daniel or John).