Wednesday 13 November 2013

Outdoors at night

Exercise: Outdoors at night (12 to 20 photographs)

This exercise was to photograph different scenes at night, with the aim to show the variety of lighting effects and colour in artificial light.   

The photographs were to include the following - 

  • A floodlit building 
  • A brightly lit store front
  • A large interior of a shopping centre with many people
  • A raised view looking along a busy road 

Floodlit building


f16 @ 3 sec ISO 200 Auto WB

For the first set of photographs I chose the floodlit front of the Duke of Cornwall Hotel in Plymouth. 

With the camera set to auto WB (3300k) and so many different types of lighting in the scene, the camera has done a fairly good job of selecting the required WB.  

You can clearly see the difference in the types of light that are present.


f16 @ 3 sec ISO 200 Tungsten WB

With the WB set to Tungsten (2850k) the floodlit frontage looks slightly bluer in colour. The street lights and other lights present look similar to the first photograph. 





f16 @ 4 sec ISO 200 Fluorescent WB 

I altered the position of the camera for this photograph and selected fluorescent WB (3800k). More of the street lighting is present that has given the foreground a yellow glow. 






Brightly lit store front


f11 @ 1 sec ISO 200 Tungsten WB 

Princesshay shopping centre in Exeter on an early evening in November.

With tungsten WB (2850K) the photograph is very similar to the light at the time of shooting. Indicating that the majority of the lighting on the 'Fat Face' store is tungsten. 




f11 @ 1.3 sec ISO 200 Fluorescent WB 

With a slightly wider view and a fluorescent WB (3800k) gives the frontage of the 'Fat Face' shop an orange glow. 

However the shop to the right of the photograph looks to have the correct colour temperature indicating that this shop is lit by fluorescent lighting.



Interior of a shopping centre 

All of the photographs so far in this exercise have been taken using a tripod due to the shutter speeds used. However the next two photographs were handheld, as instructed by the study notes. Therefore I increased the ISO so that I could achieve a shutter speed that I could take these photographs without excessive camera shake being present. 


f3.8 @ 1/30 sec ISO 800 Auto WB

The camera has selected a WB value of 3200k and is very similar to the colour of the scene at the time of shooting. 







f3.8 @ 1/30 sec ISO 800 Auto WB

The auto WB has selected a value of 3350k which is almost in-between the Tungsten and fluorescent values. This is no surprise as the photograph is almost split down the middle, with tungsten to the right and fluorescent to the left. 





Raised view along a busy road


f20 @ 13 sec ISO 200 Auto WB

Back to using the tripod for these photographs. This raised view is of the M5 near to Exeter. Taken about 30 minutes after sunset looking towards an approaching storm. 

The 13 second exposure time clearly shows the head and tail lights of the passing vehicles. The yellow sodium street lights give the scene the yellow glow, despite the passing vehicles. 


f13 @ 6 sec ISO 200 Auto WB

A slightly shorter shutter speed of 6 seconds, has reduced the number of light trails present. However the yellow tint prevails. 

It is interesting to note that any moving vehicles are not recorded by the camera, only their lights. 



This exercise shows the wide range of different types of lights present during typical night scenes. Like any photograph the WB has a marked effect on the finished photograph. As was shown on the store front photographs, this sometimes has to be a compromise between the lights that are present at the time. 

No comments:

Post a Comment