Disneyland night photo help...

Dupont24

:dunno I am going to Disneyland in California in August. Can someone give some tips for taking photos at night at Disneyland. Mode, apertue and shutter speed. Which lens should I use. I have a list below.

Scott_Quier

My thoughts are that DL will be crowded, meaning that you will have issues getting any large amount of clear space between you and your subjects. For this reason, I would suggest your 17-50.

I would also bring along your 550 as it will give better flash coverage, in terms of both power and more flattering light, than the on-board flash.

Finally, I would recommend you gain an understanding of "dragging the shutter."

One good source is found here. To quote part of that page:

It is crucial to understand that within a certain range, shutter speed has no effect on flash exposure. This key will allow us to better mix flash with available light - by controlling the shutter speed.

With TTL flash, the camera & flash will follow our chosen aperture and iso combination - but this will also affect metering (and exposure) for available light. So this conveniently leaves us the shutter speed to control only the available light. It's very important to grasp this.

By bringing the shutter speed low enough that available light registers on the image, you can retain most of the mood of a setting by not over-powering it with flash. This is called dragging the shutter.

Your objective will be to shoot with a slow enough shutter speed to allow the caputre of things in the background that are illuminated with ambient light (light that is not supplied by your flash). You also want to keep your flash power low enough so that your shot's don't have a strong "I'm flashed" look. It's a delicate balance, but not hard.

It is nearly impossible to give specific recommendations on shutter speed and aperture. I have had good success photographing receptions (also called very dark caves!) at 1/60 and f/3.5 or f/4. But, inside, I have the advantage of bouncing light off ceilings, other people, walls, that sort of thing. You probably won't be able to bounce off anything.

Come to understand the concept and practice of Flash Exposure Compensation (FEC). This is critical to help avoid under/over flash exposure.

Finally, I would seriously consider that you practice between now and then and that you really look into the practice of shooting in manual mode. Practice is always a good idea and shooting manual mode will allow you to control all aspects of the exposure.

Stu Engelman

Dupont24 wrote:

I am going to Disneyland in California in August. Can someone give some tips for taking photos at night at Disneyland. Mode, apertue and shutter speed. Which lens should I use. I have a list below.

Hi,

I do not work with outdoor flash, so I can't expand on Scott's excellent input, but I may be able to offer some advice for your non-flash shots of distant objects (I do alot of sunset shooting).

The lens you use will depend on the subject distance and subject size, but in general you will probably be using normal to modest telephoto focal lengths (50-300 mm, before sensor size conversion factor). Let the composition drive which lens you use.

Night time shooting can be very difficult, because you need to "map" the subject as illuminated to the dynamic range of the camera. Said more clearly, the low ambiant light level forces you to permit alot of exposure to fall on the sensor in order for the sensor to actually record anything.

Achieving the "mapping" as described above is mechanically simple, but introduces artifacts into the output. Basically, you need to meter your exposure to achieve a histogram that (mostly) falls within the dynamic range of the camera's sensor (i.e., white/black clipping not excessive). In daylight this is easy to do with good results; at night it becomes more complicated to do well.

Proper metering will enforce one or more of the following at night: high ISO, slow shutter speed, or wide aperture. Each of these can cause problems. High ISO can cause luminance dots to appear in your photo, especially in dark areas like shadows. Slow shutter speed causes the sensor to overheat, resulting in colored splotches throughout your image (chroma noise). And wide apertures can result in out-of-focus areas and/or color misregistration (like when CMYK printing plates are not lined up correctly).

Each component of exposure has a "safe zone" (artifacts correctible in Photoshop), which depends on your camera type and lense quality. ISO safe zones for entry level SLR's might be in the 100-400 range, but can be much higher for expensive cameras (maybe up to 1600). Apertures much below F5 or so will cause color misregistration, except with very high end professional lenses. Shutter speed issues (chroma noise) will start to manifest at speeds slower than 1/60 second or so, unless you are using a full size (35 mm) sensor camera.

The basic upshot is this: in order to get enough light at night to properly expose the image, you will have to violate one or more "safe zone" rules. My advice is this: use full manual exposure mode, so you can "spread" the violation accross ISO/aperture/speed somewhat "ratably", rather than letting your auto-exposure keep some of the factors in the safe zone, and grossly violate the safe zones of other factors. This philosophy maximizes your chances of getting a great image after post-processing in Photoshop.

Stu