Mare Island with the Nocturnes
tisun
Registered Users Posts: 435 Major grins
Last Saturday, I roamed around Mare Island with April, her friends, and others during a workshop organized by the founder of The Nocturnes. It was a lot of fun painting buildings and steel structures with flashlights. It definitely helped to bring powerful flashlights to paint objects and, also as important, to light up an object for the camera AF to work. I brought four powerful bike lights: 2 15-watt halogens, 1 600-lumen white LED, and 1 200-lumen red LED. Too many lights, in fact, that I lost track of things, including leaving my wireless shutter release somewhere on the island. Thankfully, Alvin ((a110p0) found it and it's in the mail. Thanks, Alvin.
1. It took some practice before getting used to the exposure and light painting. Here is a shot of a steel structure that was painted with a halogen light:
2. Before we moved on, I wanted to try the red LED light on the same structure and was surprised at how well it turned out:
3. I had seen these buildings captured by other Nocturne participants in the past and those shots usually include a steel structure in the foreground. My 24-70 lens was not wide enough on a cropped sensor. In fact, it wasn't wide enough for many structures because I needed to be fairly close to them for painting them with flashlights.
I think I lost my remote shutter release taking the shot above. After this, I had to bump up ISO to do 30-second exposure with lots of light painting.
Two benefits of shooting with April are that she usually brings bake goods and she carries an arsenal of lenses that I don't have. The latter fact had escaped my mind until she asked whether I wanted to borrow her 10-22mm lens. Snack on head! Thanks, April. The following few shots of a crane are with that lens.
4. Crane with reflection on puddle.
5. Same crane
6. April's fish-eye shots in this thread took the cake for the night. Clearly, the 10-22mm lens is no match against the fish-eye. I couldn't include the legs of the crane in the following shot from underneath, with the camera nearly on the ground.
7. Last shot of the night
This place is vast and a few hours barely scratched the surface.
1. It took some practice before getting used to the exposure and light painting. Here is a shot of a steel structure that was painted with a halogen light:
2. Before we moved on, I wanted to try the red LED light on the same structure and was surprised at how well it turned out:
3. I had seen these buildings captured by other Nocturne participants in the past and those shots usually include a steel structure in the foreground. My 24-70 lens was not wide enough on a cropped sensor. In fact, it wasn't wide enough for many structures because I needed to be fairly close to them for painting them with flashlights.
I think I lost my remote shutter release taking the shot above. After this, I had to bump up ISO to do 30-second exposure with lots of light painting.
Two benefits of shooting with April are that she usually brings bake goods and she carries an arsenal of lenses that I don't have. The latter fact had escaped my mind until she asked whether I wanted to borrow her 10-22mm lens. Snack on head! Thanks, April. The following few shots of a crane are with that lens.
4. Crane with reflection on puddle.
5. Same crane
6. April's fish-eye shots in this thread took the cake for the night. Clearly, the 10-22mm lens is no match against the fish-eye. I couldn't include the legs of the crane in the following shot from underneath, with the camera nearly on the ground.
7. Last shot of the night
This place is vast and a few hours barely scratched the surface.
0
Comments
I know that I have a few similar frames, but mine are no where as sharp as yours. Use-error? Camera? I don't know, but I like your photos better!
And who knew that a red bike light could paint something so far away?
I think this image surprised me the most.... I expected it to be wider! What was the focal length that you used? 10mm? My fish is only a bit wider at 8 mm! I expected so much more of the crane in the frame!
Great stuff. I think we all got shots that we like. It's hard to go
wrong at Mare Island.
My buddy actually spotted your remote. We were making our last
pit stop at the port-a-potty and walking back to the car when Ken
spotted it. Don't worry, we used hand wipes before picking up the
remote.
I just mailed your remote. It should probably arrive by Friday
via USPS.
Alvin
Fremont, CA
SmugMug Gallery
Cuong
Good catch! It's 10mm but depends greatly on how close I was to the ground. I have to admit I was not as close to the ground as you were. Both shots below are 10mm but one is on a tripod with 2 leg sections extended and the other one on the tripod with just one section extended.
Perhaps, getting the camera even closer to the ground may encompass the structure a bit more.
With the 24-70 lens, I was able to zoom in to 70mm, focus, switch off AF, and zoom out to 24mm. The problem was that I occasionally forgot to zoom out and discovered after a long exposure that it wasn't the shot I was aiming for. Like this:
The bike tail light is expensive, extremely bright for being seen by other motorists during my commute and worths every penny... like camera equipment.
It's great to see your perspective on the evening. The first two shots are really cool.
Great to see you out shooting!!! And isn't April's camera bag a treasure!
ann
My Galleries My Photography BLOG
Ramblings About Me
Regards,
-joel
Link to my Smugmug site
Andrew, I was surprised when I saw the intense red tones after completing the exposure. Who could have thought a small flashlight could completely change of the tone of that metal structure. I have two more shots that were painted with different lights:
1.
2.
By this time, I had already lost my remote shutter release and could use only 30-second exposures. To get reasonable exposure, I stood close to the stairs and focused the light only on the stairs. I used two halogen lights at the same time on the first shot. To bring even more focus on the stairs in post, I increased black in LR to darken everything.
Photos that don't suck / 365 / Film & Lomography
Moonlit. It's so interesting to see the same subject lit three different ways and they look so different!
Schmoo, I don't have anymore (good ones). Besides a lot of walking and each shot taking between 30 seconds to 2 minutes, I couldn't take that many shots. When will you be out here?
Indeed. It's great seeing such different results of the same scene from other photogs. I like your shot.
Cuong
It was good to walk around with someone, who may see things that I may skip. I would have waked pass the stairway if April didn't stop to shoot it.