Long Exposure – The Common Sense Photographer

Shooting Fireworks

Posted on December 12, 2020December 12, 2020 by Jim Roberts

I’ve tried shooting fireworks for some time now with some but not a lot of success. I finally found the advise I needed from a four year old David Bergman YouTube video.

December may be a weird time to talk about firework as they are usually set for the fourth of July but this has not been a usual year by any means and being in Florida means that November can be a good time for fireworks too.

Holiday Fireworks : Fujifilm X-T2 XF 18-135mm F8 ISO 200 8 seconds at 45.6mm

We have a local holiday parade which besides jamming up traffic for several hours starts with a pretty good firework display. I used David’s settings, got my focus point set just before infinity, and was able to get a number of pleasing shots. We did have an almost full moon that evening which was just behind the clouds. With an 8 second exposure I did get a small airplane on the left side of the image below.

Holiday Fireworks, Airplane, and Almost Full Moon

Flowerworks : Fujifilm X-T2 XF 18-135 F8 8 Seconds 70.2mm

Images were processed in Capture One Pro 20 and additional tweaking in Nik Software 3.0.

Trick is that the exposure of 8 seconds means you have to wait a bit before you can verify that you have the right focal length to get all of the fireworks in frame but not to far away.

So thanks to David Bergman for the best version of how to shoot fireworks. Can’t wait until we can have a real 4th of July or maybe get Disney to bring back nightly fireworks.

Capturing Neowise (with nothing but our wits and our series 7 de-atomizers)

Posted on July 21, 2020July 21, 2020 by Jim Roberts

Everyone seems to have gotten great images of the comet Neowise, everyone but me. From others images it looked like it was very bright and high in the sky and that anyone with a point and shoot could have gotten a good image of it. Not so much. So the question is how much persistence do you put into getting a shot. I had a number of challenges that I had to overcome to get an image.

You may have to click on the image to see all the stars that are in this shot along with Neowise. When I exposed this image I could not even see Polaris (the Big Dipper). Has a lot to do with the street lamps in my area. That and that due east (this shot was facing northwest) is a sports complex with about 15 baseball fields all lit up for some summer night games.

I shot this on my Fuji X-T2 with the XF 10-24mm F4 R OIS lens open to F4 and an 8 second exposure. ISO was 3200. I used a compass to get to the proper orientation for the shot. The time stamp on the camera was 9:35pm so it was about 45 to 50 minutes after sunset.

It can be really easy to get flustered and miss shots when things are not perfect. If we could only take pictures of the comet in the studio. So it take a focus (pun not intended) to keep after the shot until you get it. I may just go out tonight and see if I can get a better image with a different lens. I could have used my XF 16-55mm F2.8 R lens (above was shot at 17.5mm) and see what the extra stop affords me. Same image would be 4 seconds at 3200 ISO or 8 seconds at 1600 ISO. Of course there is alway the chance that the clouds here in Florida will move in and obscure the sky.

Moral of the story is to be persistent. Use you knowledge of your camera and photography. And learn a thing or two along the way to getting an image.

Note in passing: the XF 10-24mm F4 R OIS is on sale at Amazon (at the time of this article for $300 off which is a really good price. Not sure how long that will last.

Sky Above

Posted on January 27, 2017 by Jim Roberts

The Fujifilm XF Lens Roadmap hasn’t been updated since last year. Now rumors are about that they going to be producing a XF 8-16mm F/2.8 lens sometime this year. It makes sense to me as that completes the Pro series equivalents of constant F/2.8, 12-24mm, 24-70mm, and 70-200mm lens other manufacturers offer. For night sky photography wide angle fast glass is the way to go. Last night I dashed outside to capture a few images of Orion and the surrounding stars. I used my XF 10-24mm F/4 R OIS lens and I really did wish I had that extra stop of aperture. At F4 i had to keep the shutter open for 20 seconds at ISO 1600. You may not notice it (in fact you may not see many stars in the small image presented but click on the image for a larger image) but there is definite movement at that shutter speed. With a lens the opens to F/2.8 I would have been able to cut the exposure time down to 10 seconds and it probably would have made a difference in the sharpness of the image.

Images shot with Fujifilm X-T2 and XF 10-24mm F4 R OIS

It’s nice to live in Florida where even in Winter you can have a clear night with temperatures not too cold.

Carnival

Posted on November 14, 2016 by Jim Roberts

Even with the best of intentions you sometimes get really interesting images by accident. I apparently did not have the tripod head tightened down when I clicked the shutter. The camera drooped down during the 2.5 second exposure.

Which brings us to the point that when you have 2.6 seconds to play you can make some interesting images. Another possibility would be to zoom the lens during a long exposure. Always experiment, always be looking for the unexpected. There is no such thing a a mistake once the shutter button is pressed.

Equipment used for this image:

Fujinon XF 16-55mm F2.8 R LM WR at Amazon

Fujifilm X-T2 Camera at Amazon

Shot at F16 2.6 seconds ISO 200.

More On Light Pollution

Posted on August 18, 2016 by Jim Roberts

Sriram Murali posted a nice video on the effects of light pollution on long exposure images of the night sky. I thinking that I need to add Death Valley, CA to my list of spots to get to.

Shooting Night Skys

Posted on August 13, 2016 by Jim Roberts

With the recent meteor showers those of you that could stay up late (or get up early) not only had to deal with possible clouds but with all the light pollution we live with. Thursday night I thought I would set up just in case I could try and catch a meteor or two after the moon went down. I set up my camera on a tripod with a manual focus 8mm lens and tried some default setting that I had rattling around in my head.

ISO 1600 at F2.8 with a shutter speed of 30 seconds. My first exposures captured way too much of the leaking light pollution in the sky. It was around 10:30 with the moon still in the sky. I reset for a more reasonably ISO of 800 and a shutter speed of 15 seconds. Looking at the back of the camera I was not seeing anything worth getting up at zero dark thirty for. Way to much light or so I though. So I just put it all away and gave up for the night.

When I finally got around to processing the image I was more than surprised to see how many stars I actually did capture. It did take a little fiddling in Lightroom to get the image to so itself but I was happy with the result.

It just goes to show that you need to practice, practice, practice. If I’d done this more than once or twice I would have known that it is possible to get the image and I should have stayed on it rather than giving up. Click on the image to see full sized.