Posts in Category: night
5/19/2011: Night at the St. Francis, St. Augustine FL
Experimenting with the Night Landscape mode on the Nikon Coolpix P500. Night Landscape uses the fast capture capability of the Back-illuminated CMOS sensor to take a number of exposures in extreme low light and then stack them in camera to produce a single shot with increased sharpness, better color detail, and somewhat lower noise. There is also a Tripod setting, which uses a single exposure and aggressive noise reduction. The handheld mode is more attractive for general shooting, but it does require some processing time in camera.
This old inn in St Augustine was on my way back to the car after the opening festivities at the Florida Birding and Photo Fest. Besides the interest of the scene itself, I wanted to see how the camera would cope with the mix of bright lights and ambiance. The shot did require some additional noise reduction in Lightroom, and some fiddling with shadows and highlights…but I am impressed by the camera’s ability to get this shot handheld at all!
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm equivalent field of view, f3.2 @ a nominal 1/15th second @ ISO 280. Night Landscape mode.
Processed in Lightroom as noted above.
7/25/2010
Night Lights and Intelligent Design
Happy Sunday!
With a 6:46 am flight out of John Wayne International in Santa Ana CA, I was up early and outside the hotel waiting for my taxi. The little ornamental lake in the development, surrounded by the early lights of the buildings and with low clouds behind, catching some of the city light…well…I just had to try. Flash off, camera steadied on a convenient concrete post along the shore, standard Program mode. I took several shots.
Though this could have been a black and white shot…I really enjoy the little red highlights in the water!
Which just goes to show that beauty is where you find it. It does make me wonder though, if the architects of this office and condo development in urban Southern California saw this in their minds’ eye when they drew in the lake? Personally, I tend to take things like this as intelligent design, rather than random chance. I think the architects foresaw the possibility of beauty in the nightscape and planed accordingly.
Which is the way I look at creation itself. If I am wrong…well…no harm done. I get to enjoy the beauty either way. If I am right…well…then there is an aspect of respect…an acknowledgement that a beautiful mind has been at work…and a sense of kinship. After all, the architects only created what they thought others would find beautiful. They counted on my being enough like them to see the beauty they envisioned. Otherwise, why bother? And so it is, I believe, with the creation and the creator. If that adds a dimension to my enjoyment of the beauty, well, I think I am the better for it.
Canon SD4000IS at 28mm equivalent @ f2.0 @ 1/13th second @ ISO 1600. Programmed auto. (This is impressive image quality for ISO 1600 on a pocket P&S! Evidently the the back-illuminate CMOS sensor lives up to its hype. And there is another kind of beauty, as I see it, in that!)
Straightened in Lightroom (balancing on top of a round post is not ideal). Corrected for vertical and wide-angle distortion using the new tools in Lightroom 3. Added Contrast and Clarity. Sharpen narrow edges preset.
From Zeiss Trip CA 2010.
5/4/2009
Night Carnaval Corpus Christi
They put me on the 17th floor of the Omni Hotel on the waterfront in Corpus Christi for the ABA Convention. This is the view from the balcony. This is apparently a permanent carnival.
Image Stabilization and ISO 400. I used negative exposure compensation to save the bright lights. Cropped and pumped up the Saturation and Vibrance in Lr.
Sony DSC H50 at about 120mm equivalent. F3.5 @ 1/30th @ ISO 400. Programed Auto. -1.3 EV exposure compensation.
From Corpus Christi ABA.