Myself and Linda were in Edinburgh one evening recently and while up at the castle I took a few photos! I would like to know what others think of these and how they could be improved... however, please bear in mind these were taken on a mobile phone and other than resizing them I haven't adjusted them in any way!

Anyway, here are the photos:

Don't know much about night-time photo taking.

I have tried it a few times and most of mine turn out as just blobs of light in the dark, that's using a camera whereas my partner gets better pictures just using his mobile phone. I havn't tried the actual nightime setting on the camera so next opportunity I get I'll experiment with that.

I like the first and last of your photos because they are the best lit, don't know that you could have improved them on a mobile phone camera.

Many years ago when I bought my first SLR, the little (OM10) brother of the iconic Olympus OM1 & 2 I was working shifts and ventured out in my middle of the night breaks to play with the camera and try to learn some night-time photography.

I will offer a little advice here, but I apologise in advance if this is too obvious:


1. Don't even try this without a tripod!
2. A cable release is also highly recommended as even on a tripod, just pushing the button can cause enough camera shake to blur your photo.
3. Don't use a flash, but do use extremely long exposures. Depending upon location and light pollution you may wish to try various exposure times between 10 seconds and 40 seconds.
4. Do try various exposure times for the same shot, especially in these digital days there's no developing cost for photos that didn't work out.

I hope this helps,
Keith

Here's another wee attempt at night photography:


Jupiter & Venus seen in the western sky from Denny at approximately 19.15 tonight!

For this shot I did actually follow some of the advice as mentioned by Keith previously:

1. I did use a tripod!
2. My camera doesn't appear to allow the use of a cable release (tho I do have a couple in the house if it did) so there is some blurring... maybe using the shutter delay would solve this problem? Or I could buy a remote control!
3. The exposure was 10 seconds at F/22, which with a fairly long focal length (123mm) gave a reasonable result; no flash was used, which given that the shot was taken through a window was probably a really good thing!
4. Only a single shot was taken, but that was because the only one came out better than expected... maybe the next will come out better with some of the lessons learnt!

Following on from the photo taken on Friday night, I decided to take another shot of Jupiter and Venus tonight. Below is a combined photo showing the relative positions of the two planets on the two nights; the only difference between the shots is the zoom (123mm for Friday and 102mm for tonight) and the fact that I used the shutter delay (tho I don't see that it made much difference to the shot itself)!

Here's another "combined" shot of Jupiter and Venus, this time showing their relative positions on the 9th and 18th of March... and this shows a bigger change in their positions than the previous "combination":



Again the only real difference between the two shots was the zoom (123mm for the 9th and 94mm for tonight!

A tip I found that turned out some good shots from Stars was the rule of 600, divide your focal length by 600 and that will give you the time in seconds that your shutter should be open to record the stars without capturing them moving (bearing in mind your crop factor of the sensor - times 2 if you still have the Olympus DSLR) so your 123mm would be 246mm on a 35mm film camera - roughly 2.5 seconds and your Aperture open up to f5.6 to let more light in, then adjust your ISO, start at 400 and increase it till you get a result you are happy with.

One of my favourite shots was with a wide angle lens @ 10mm (16mm on 35mm format) ISO 6400 and around 30 seconds on Manual mode

http://www.jfmcnair.com/img6204a

It is not an exact formula, but with some practice you can get some good shots without the stars moving

Thanks for that Fraser... I keep meaning to do a bit more night photography (tho having a clear, dry night would be good!) so I will keep your post in mind!

We've had a further attempt at taking some night time shots using the advice offered by jfm1977... the photo shown below was taken with a 30 second exposure at f5.6 and I for one am very happy with the result:



More photos from last night can be seen in the Northern Lights from the Crow Road gallery!

It's a stunning photo, Bruce, I would have liked to see it with my own eyes.

Wee flower, if you ever get the chance to see the northern lights, then take it. The photo is good but to see it with your own eyes is just breath taking xxx