First night shot

dickelfan

Senior Member
We were at the in laws lakehouse this past weekend for Easter. I was up feeding the baby at 430AM, so when I finished figured I'd try to go out and take a few pics. This was around 5 AM, and was using my Nikon d7000 and 35mm 1.8 lens. Was shooting in manual mode at about 20 sec, f13, using auto iso.

I have touched it up using lightroom 4.....hardest thing I had doing was trying to focus, used manual focus as best I could in the dark. Any tips on getting the stars to pop out a little more?

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Moab Man

Senior Member
I have that same lens and find that I can auto focus on the brightest star in the sky at night with this lens when I open up to f1.8. I shoot at an ISO of 200 for 8-10 seconds and have far more stars in the suburbs. f13 would have really choked off the light.
 

Dave_W

The Dude
I agree with your Moab man, I have no problem using auto-focus on bright items like the moon or stars. And yes, f-13 is way too small for night photography. Crank that lens wide open and then back off a stop to a stop and a half and you'll get the sharpest images the lens can produce (not to mention a much faster exposure = less noise).

On a similar topic, I've been reading that NR on long exposures is not necessarily a good way to go. I'm planning on doing a side by side here soon since several night photographers I'm friends with swear that NR will remove sharpness in your images and that you can do much better with your own noise reduction programs, not to mention removing that long wait while the NR does its business.
 

Moab Man

Senior Member
On a similar topic, I've been reading that NR on long exposures is not necessarily a good way to go. I'm planning on doing a side by side here soon since several night photographers I'm friends with swear that NR will remove sharpness in your images and that you can do much better with your own noise reduction programs, not to mention removing that long wait while the NR does its business.

Dave,

That sounds interesting that noise reduction might be hurting a pictures sharpness. At what point does long exposure noise reduction really come into play? I ask because you're shooting on a D800, bowing before your camera, and I'm shooting the much lower on the food chain D5100. I suspect like many things it probably handles long exposure noise better than mine without any help. So my point... when does NR really come into play. I think I will do a similar test on my lower food chain camera testing it, but need to know how long I should leave open for NR to really come into play.
 

Dave_W

The Dude
The default setting on the D800 for NR is for exposures of 1 sec or longer. It can be adjusted, however, but I've kept it at the default because I figured it was a good place to keep it. However, when bracketing low light shots with the hope of turning them into HDRI's I've ran into the NR problem and was held up waiting for the NR to complete, thus giving me massive ghosting. The noise that comes from long exposures is slightly different from the noise of high ISO, in that long exposure noise comes from sensor heat. That said, there's really no reason to think the D800 would produce less noise than your D5100 on long exposures.

My plan is to take 3 equal images, one with NR off, one with NR set to Normal and one with NR set to High. And then compare the raw output vs. the NR off with minimal noise reduction software run on it. You should do the same experiment and compare some random spot on the image as 1:1 and see which is noisiest vs. which is sharpest. From what I'm hearing, doing the noise reduction yourself will net you a sharper image as well as less overall noise. But until I do the experiment, it's all just hearsay.

PS - my apologies to the OP for hijacking this thread.

Edit - I misspoke when I said NR kicks in after 1 min exposures, the default is actually 1 sec or longer exposures. Sorry about that...
 
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crycocyon

Senior Member
Ok for that second one the stars are there and looking at how much light there was there's a balance between how much star light you can actually capture above the background intensity of the sky. Yes for night shots shoot wide open or for better sharpness go one stop down from wide open. I wouldn't use auto ISO for night shots because the camera will want to go very high on the ISO to reduce camera shake, and then apply the NR on top of that to compensate. I can see plenty of noise in that image and it looks like the ISO was at least 1600 or more, maybe even 6400. I never shoot above 200 ISO and keep it that way in manual mode and then can always adjust it manually using the camera buttons to override that if necessary. You would only stop down if you wanted to get star trails with exposures on the order of minutes, and even then you would still keep ISO down. Or at least I wouldn't push it beyond 1600 but different sensors have different high ISO performance.

I can actually see the stars moved a bit as well in the second shot. What was the difference between that shot and the first one? Taken earlier? Also a 20 s exposure?

The noise that is introduced with longer exposures results from dark current in the chip and with a darker background that noise shows up more clearly. I'm not sure if the 5100 has long exposure NR like the D800 has, but it might be safer to not apply NR and then do the NR in post and that way you have more control over the kind of NR you are applying.

Nice shots though....
 

patrick in memphis

Senior Member
the d3100 can take astro photos just fine so im sure the d5100 can do it. lol 30 sec max in bulb mode without a remote controller.a part of your prob is foreground lighting use an iso of 800 or 1600 and try different shutter speeds maybe 1.5 secs to start and adjust from there it is an art to get a balance between light sources and stars. but im sure with practice you will succeed.also use manual mode and manual focus
 

patrick in memphis

Senior Member
in the above pics are orion constellation and jupiter.just to show you that you can capture stars on a d3100.you may have to do a photomerge in order to get the dark skies and the building in your foreground.
 
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