# No/low light photography on Toni's green rose.



## edstreet

I have been playing with this for several years now. The situation is all to common, very low light and you want to see good detail yet you don't have a monolight to use.

Long exposures   These were taken very long shutter speeds (yes the shutter was open for 30+ seconds ). Fstop was F/22.  All I used was a white pillow case, a shutter trip cable (about a $7.50 investment at b&h) and a tripod.  Don't really need a tripod either, just something solid to put it on that wont move.

I also used my expodisc to set the color balance as I am 50% colorblind and don't want to deal with shifting that back.

These are 30 seconds:
















This one is 90 seconds.





And 3 minutes ( 180 seconds)


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## Joe S.

That's beautiful! The pictures are nice too. :biggrin:


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## stonepecker

Those are lovely.  It is nice when you have something so beautiful to work with. 
Pictures like these could be in a booth setup just to show what can be done.


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## ed4copies

Hey Ed!!

Next time you do this, could you take one picture with normal exposure, just so we get a reference as to what the light conditions were.

Thanks!!!!!!


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## edstreet

ed4copies said:


> Hey Ed!!
> 
> Next time you do this, could you take one picture with normal exposure, just so we get a reference as to what the light conditions were.
> 
> Thanks!!!!!!



The first 3 images was no lights on in the room, just the setting sun in a window.  The last 2 was the room lights on.


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## edstreet

This one was done in a dark room, no lights on  at all.  25 seconds and just a flash light, it is a 2x D cell mag-light.






This was the light source.





F/22, 25 second exposure, iso 100.


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## Joe S.

WOW!


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## ed4copies

Thanks, that sheds some light on the experiment, if you'll excuse the pun!


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## edstreet

Let me kick it up some more and show some amazing things you can do with exposure control.

This image I took in 2004 at port columbus national civil war naval museum.  It was for the 'haunted museum' exhibit they have every halloween.






This is a pot belly stove.  55 second exposure using TMX film (kodak black/white film iso 100)  This is not a double exposure, it is a single shot, no image manipulation via photoshop or the like.

I set the camera up on a tripod, tripped the shutter in bulb mode and started the stop watch.  About 15 seconds before the end Jerry got into position and I had a hand strobe that I fired manually, capturing his hat, face and hand opening the stove door.  To the right of the kettle you will see his face and bottom of the door you see his hand.

This second one is of me, I was doing some experiments in exposure trying to dial in the settings.  This was in the film days and with today's digital cameras advancement of skill is much faster.







From there other objects shows up good as well.

The light source for this one was a single low powered low intensity single LED.  I shoved kleenex in the breech of my M1 Garand rifle and put it on the bed and threw the blanket over it. camera on the tripod and a very long exposure, something like 5 minutes or so.





This shows up the rifling lands and grooves quite well.  Another example of hidden detail brought to life.


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## MichaelD

Try the techniques astronomers use.  Many multiple images, then stack them, compounding the accumulated light into one image.  When I dabbled in astronomy imaging about 15 years ago the popular program was Registax and it was free.  Take 100s of images then run them through the program and it would align the images and produce one final picture.  Then, of course you could also separate them into RGB channels and stack the images in varying levels and strengthen or subdue areas of interest.  You didn't think Hubble took pictures as good as your iPhone did you?


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## edstreet

Naa, that's HDR stuff and not worth it for me.  There is a huge realm of data in a single shot that can be brought out with out manipulation like that.


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## Yegg

I am partially color blind as well.  I can see blue, yellow, black, and white.  Everything else is a shade of gray.  

You referenced an expo disc.  Is that a gray card?  I use that before every shoot to set my color balance.

Elliott


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## Boz

As a museum curator I take a lot of images at high f-stop for sharpness and long exposure since I use a low uv light source for preservation of the cameras and photos.  When taking images in low light common sense dictates that 2 seconds of exposure is twice as much as 1 second 10 seconds is twice as much as 5 and so on.  However if you are shooting on analog film there is something know as reciprocity failure.  When you get out to very long exposures 20-30 seconds or more the exposure curve starts to flatten out an twice as long does not give twice the exposure and even more time is required.  Every product has a different curve and you have to get to know the product you are working with.  I have not heard much about reciprocity failure with digital and have not done any testing myself.


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## edstreet

Expodisc is a device that you hold in front of the lens and take an image then you just set a custom white balance to that image on the camera.

ExpoImaging - ExpoDisc White Balance

Ahh yes reciprocity, I was thinking about touching on that one but did not.

This might help with that 





Reciprocity (photography) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## brownsfn2

I have to ask what kind of mount or tripod you have.  Pretty sharp images for the how long the exposure it.  Nice work Ed.


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## Sandy H.

For those of us who are really new at this, would it be possible to use a second camera (iphone etc) to shoot a shot of your whole setup from a distance?  An overall shot might help explain other details or at least give a frame of reference.

Thanks!

Sandy.


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## edstreet

Sandy H. said:


> For those of us who are really new at this, would it be possible to use a second camera (iphone etc) to shoot a shot of your whole setup from a distance?  An overall shot might help explain other details or at least give a frame of reference.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Sandy.



Sorry, ment to reply to this earlier.

http://www.penturners.org/forum/f24/beads-venus-both-toni-114087/  Post #11 is the setup that I use.  On this series I used a tripod and just the light from the window while it was getting dark then the 2x D cell flashlight.


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## JohnGreco

Ed, what lens do you use?


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## edstreet

JohnGreco said:


> Ed, what lens do you use?



Sigma 50mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro Autofocus Lens for Canon EOS 346101  This is what I use. I shoot everything in all manual mode, including focus. Essentially the camera body just holds the image and that's about it.


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## JohnGreco

Interesting. I'm using a Canon 40mm f/2.8 on a T3 but you're images seem remarkably more crisp than mine. I shoot everything manual/tethered.


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## edstreet

JohnGreco said:


> Interesting. I'm using a Canon 40mm f/2.8 on a T3 but you're images seem remarkably more crisp than mine. I shoot everything manual/tethered.



When I was lens shopping years ago my criteria was "a lens so sharp that it could cut diamonds".  I am not familiar with the canon 40mm lens you have but a search on b&h shows it to be a pancake lens that is non-macro. 

When it comes to sharpness it does not stop at the lens.  The angles need to be right as well; that is the angle of the light, angle of the object, angle of the film plane.  Not to the angle itself but in relation to each other.  I have found that often times one of the mentioned things may be angled correctly but the other 2 are not and that leads to more fuzz, loss of details and loss of depth.


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## JohnGreco

Yes it's the pancake lens that I have. I'll have to play around with angles more...I had been happy not getting blow-out, but clearly there is more to the angles than that  Thanks.


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## edstreet

Perhaps this would help some.






Note the light source and the camera is not optimal for the blank.

Compare these two shots, same pen, same camera/light/setup.  Biggest difference is a change in angles, background.

A)





B)





Quite a large difference there.


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