March 10, 2009
I’m also introducing a new photo gallery into this site. Watch for the thumbnails at the end of this article to see the first photos in the Gallery.
While developing the photos for the gallery, I found myself using a number of settings over and over again, so naturally, I’ve bundled these settings into two new Lightroom presets that I’m making available for download. The presets basically remove or reduce some of the inherent color casts you’ll find at night, they adjust the recovery and contrast levels to compensate for timed exposures and also have built-in noise reduction to counteract any noise or other artifacts that may develop. Ok, lots of stuff, let’s get started …
Before you go out on a night shoot, you should make sure that you’re properly prepared. The obvious things of course – check that the battery in your camera is fully loaded. There’s nothing more frustrating than getting to your destination and realizing you’ve only got enough battery life for about 10 minutes of shooting. Don’t forget your tripod! Probably the most important piece of equipment you’ll have for a night shoot! You’re going to need it (period). Unless of course you’re planning on doing some high-ISO work and your focus is street photography. Additionally, here’s a few more tips to make sure that you’re prepared for the shoot.
In this latest night shoot, it was terribly cold, it was lightly raining and there was lots of wet mushy snow on the ground. Now I don’t really like the cold or snow but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. We arrived at our first location and before taking the first shot I set up the self-timer feature of the camera to make sure I was not “touching” the camera at the time of exposure. The logical alternative is a remote release adapter (which I don’t have yet) that will allow you to remotely “fire” the camera. This, combined with the mirror lock-up, would ensure I had no undesirable “shaking” of the camera.
Equally important is to know your equipment! There’s no point in fumbling around in the dark with your gear when you don’t know how something works. Practice with your camera and learn it well. I was certainly glad that I practiced re-orienting my Manfrotto tripod. I needed to re-adjust on that night and I remember the surprised look on Michael’s face when I pulled the center post out of the tripod and turned it 90 degrees! The first thing he said was, “Hey, my tripod can’t do that!”.
“Had I gone out shooting street-life, I would have left the tripod at home and set the camera at 1600 ISO or even 3200 ISO and would have worked with a wide open aperture. The camera would have been set on aperture-priority to give me the fastest possible shutter speed for a given aperture.”
For the majority of the shots that I took on this evening, I used an ISO setting of 200. There was no need to shoot anything higher, I had a tripod and had all the time I needed to get the shot. I was typically shooting with apertures around f/8 – f/22 and exposure times ranging from 2 to 20 seconds.
Now just for the record, I’m going to say one more time – “I just hate the cold, ice and snow!” But, I would never let that get in the way of me “getting the shot”. One of the key ingredients in photography is to find a unique and interesting vantage point from which to shoot your subject. This is a lesson I learned many years ago and have been rewarded with better photos since. Don’t be content to shoot at eye level – change your elevation, and you’ll begin to “see” a whole new world!
On our last setup of the evening, we briefly stopped to photograph a shot I had seen on our way to the monastery. I had wanted to photograph it earlier but Michael convinced me we could get it on the way back. I’m sure glad I did, because it has become one of my most popular Flickr uploads. You can read the details behind this shot’s Lightroom post-processing on Flickr. It has also become one of my most viewed and downloaded photos on pixabay. Feel free to leave a comment as well – I’d love to hear from you!
While I was developing these shots in Lightroom it dawned on me that the settings I used might be a good starting point for those who want to try some night shooting. In the download, you will find two presets – one for color shots, the other for converting your color into black & white night time shots.
The color preset reduces the color casts that are commonly found in night shots. It then fine tunes your black, contrast, vibrance and saturation settings. A healthy dose of color cast reduction is applied with the hue, saturation and luminance sliders. Also, I’ve added a nice blend of noise reduction and sharpening to round things off. Now don’t forget to have a look at the photo gallery below to see these presets in action. Enjoy!
Focus Night Lights - Lightroom Presets
We're pleased to showcase these two night presets. They're a little older, however, they might just be useful in your Lightroom arsenal.
Collection:
Focus Night Lights
Version:
1.02
Updated:
March 31, 2020
Downloaded:
13,622 times
I consider this photo shoot as a huge success!
Click on one of the photos below to open the gallery. Control it’s behavior using the menu icons at the top or by using the right and left arrows. For best viewing, select the “Full Screen” option at the top of the screen. Use the ESC key to return from full screen.
Enjoy the photo gallery and feel free to leave a comment below! If anyone has a question about this article or Lightroom in general, you can contact me on Twitter (@profiphotos).
Until next time, I wish all of you, a pleasant round of night photography.