Natural Night Filter for Light Pollution

[hark]

This filter popped up as being on sale today - a 72mm Nisi Natural Night Filter (72mm is the only size on sale). I've never heard of a night filter which is supposed to correct light pollution. Has anyone ever used one - looking for pros/cons of it. Otherwise, what other suggestions do you have to counter light pollution if traveling to a remote area far away isn't an option. I've never done night photography because light pollution is all over around here although I'm not looking to drop $100+ for the size I'd need.

Or are there editing options in Photoshop/Lightroom that will alleviate issues from light pollution?

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1417230-REG/nisi_nir_ngt_72_72mm_natural_night_filter.html

 

[Needa]

Interesting subject. Do a search for " editing options light pollution photography"

 

[480sparky]

Light pollution filters have been available for years for telescopes.

 

[Clovishound]

I would think the dehaze feature in Lightroom would remove at lot of the issues with light pollution.

I shot this picture of the moon last night. There was a thin layer of clouds and I live in a decent sized suburban area, so lots of light pollution. Here are two iterations of the same image the first with dehaze cranked down, and the second with it cranked up, although only about a quarter of the way towards max. Not sure if the cloud cover will react similarly to light pollution, but I would think it would.

I'm sure someone much more knowledgeable about Lightroom will check in soon.

 

[Peter7100]

I would suspect you are allows going to get better results if you can move away from the light pollution. You just need to look at the night in say the city then compare it to the night sky out in the countryside, where you will see with your eyes thousands of more stars.

 

[BF Hammer]

I have a 150mm square light pollution filter. What it does really is filter out a narrow band of light that equates to those magenta-pinkish street lights that were even more common before LED street lights. Those are sodium-based lights that are nearly monochromatic. That band is still prevalent among the light pollution, but it is becoming more of a broadband light issue as the change to LED happens more.

Where the filter works best is for wide-angle nighttime landscape work. If you are trying to use telephoto lenses to shoot objects like Andromeda galaxy or some nebulae, then there are different filters that really are tuned to pass the light those types of objects emit and block most of the rest. You really are blocking light from reaching your camera sensor for the most part, but the quality light makes it so you can take a long series of photos for stacking. Those filters are specialized and expensive. Canon shooters get the advantage there as APS-C sensor bodies for Canon can accept a filter in the body that clips in behind the lens. F-mount does not like that kind of clip-in filter.

I found that a big filter in front of my lens as the temperature drops really wants to fog-up on me. It does help make the sky look darker with Milky Way landscapes. I have seen some people's work in night cityscapes where the sky come out more natural, but not really bringing out many more stars to see.

Here is a night where I used the light pollution filter. This is aimed more or less in the direction of civilization, but it is the darkest sky location that I can drive to in 25 minutes. First shot is a single outtake of a series of photos where the trees are painted by headlights of a car. Second photo is an exposure stack of about 30 shots.





Sequitor, which is what I stacked the exposures with has it's own light pollution filtering in the options so that is why the horizon gets so glowy in the stacked image. But this run was cut short due to fogging of the filter half-way through the 60 images the intervalometer was programmed for.

 

[BF Hammer]

I would think the dehaze feature in Lightroom would remove at lot of the issues with light pollution.

I shot this picture of the moon last night. There was a thin layer of clouds and I live in a decent sized suburban area, so lots of light pollution. Here are two iterations of the same image the first with dehaze cranked down, and the second with it cranked up, although only about a quarter of the way towards max. Not sure if the cloud cover will react similarly to light pollution, but I would think it would.

I'm sure someone much more knowledgeable about Lightroom will check in soon.

The moon is far too bright for any need of light pollution filters. As a matter of fact a full moon often is light pollution itself as it will obscure many nighttime objects that are visible when there is no moon in the sky.

 

[BF Hammer]

I just want to resurrect this one for future research purposes.

I took out 2 cameras last night to a spot on the edge of my hometown. I shot into a light polluted area. The Milky Way was positioned south where there was a neighborhood on the other side of some higher ground. With my D750 + Sigma 20mm f/1.4 I started a series of 99 photos with my light pollution filter in place.


Since it is night and we are approaching dewpoint, this filter fogs up quickly. I had to remove the filter about half-way through the series. This is a no-filter image.


Fogged image sample. These first 3 photos are jpegs straight from my D750.


This is about 34 images with the filter stacked. Had to remove the fogged ones and some other rejects.


And this is what you get stacking the no-filter images. Similar amount of images used.


I never changed the exposure settings during the run, but should have turned down the ISO after removing the filter. But this illustrates the biggest issue with using these filters I have. My big 150mm square filter fogs up every time I use it. I have a dew heater for the lens, but it does not warm the filter holder well. But the filter does make a small difference when it works. And you might notice the stacked sky color is close to the same in each but different straight out of the camera. That is because there is a light pollution reduction setting in my image stacking software that does a fair job of fixing that. But the blob of light pollution at the horizon sticks out in the non-filter photos.

And bonus image, stacked set of 88 images from my Z5 + Zeiss 15mm f/2.8. No filter (mount does not fit). However I forgot I had been using a film-simulation profile instead of standard color in the camera. Think I lost color due to that. Light pollution definitely better due to lower exposure setting (shot at f/2.8 instead of f/1.4) and also by using over twice the images to stack.

 

[Peter7100]

Interesting results BF Hammer, but I would still suspect nothing beats getting completely away from light pollution where possible, which will always yield better results even with a filter or not.

 

[BF Hammer]

Interesting results BF Hammer, but I would still suspect nothing beats getting completely away from light pollution where possible, which will always yield better results even with a filter or not.

True that. I was in experimental mode for the photo shoot, as I wanted to know if I really could capture Milky Way core here. Eyeballs definitely cannot see it at location. But I have a plan for December to shoot the greater Orion section of sky rising in the east over the frozen lake. That area is darker.

 

[Bikerbrent_RIP]

Interesting results BF Hammer, but I would still suspect nothing beats getting completely away from light pollution where possible, which will always yield better results even with a filter or not.

Unfortunately, it is taking more and more travel to get away from light pollution! especially for those of us stuck in a nigh light pollution area.