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Nothing really special about the image - other than how I took it.



Normal dark backyard with only the slightly overcast skylight.

D70 with 18-70mm kit lens on a tripod. Camera set to f/4 and Bulb. I used my Jaycar remote to start the exposure and let it go for around 2 minutes. Turned it off again with the Jaycar remote. Two minutes wasn't long enough, but as I shot it in RAW, I was able to increase the exposure by 2 stops. The only other thing I did to the shot was resize and a bit of unsharp mask.

I'm quite pleased. I think the red in the top left corner may have been from the remote.

And, yes, the lawn needs a mow.

Wow - was there much ambient light? It looks almost as clear as day!

Wow, two minutes at night can turn it back into day!?!?


The top left corner's red is due to sensor's heat creating noise at very long exposures.

Yi-P wrote:Wow, two minutes at night can turn it back into day!?!?

I did have to push it by 2 stops so I guess it really needed 16 minutes.

The correct exposure for full Sun would be 1/200s at f/16 (I was shooting at ISO 200). That would be 1/1600s at f/4. Now I shot this at effectively 468 seconds (117 seconds and then 2 stops). If I have done the calculations correctly, there is somewhere around 750,000 times more in full Sun than last night.

Very very clever!

Btw...you need to mow...*grin*

This may be a stupid question, sorry if it is, but.... if you wanted a shot to look like it had been taken during the day, why not take it during the day? I'm not sure I understand the point of the exercise.

macka wrote:This may be a stupid question, sorry if it is, but.... if you wanted a shot to look like it had been taken during the day, why not take it during the day? I'm not sure I understand the point of the exercise.

I had never tried this before and so had absolutely no idea how it would look. It was really just an experiment.

I am a bit disappointed that it doesn't look all that different from a daylight shot as I was hoping for something more eerie. On the other hand, I was quite surprised how much it does look like a daylight shot.

Now knowing how it turns out, I might start playing with some ideas like painting with a torch or flash.

ATJ wrote:I had never tried this before and so had absolutely no idea how it would look. It was really just an experiment.

I am a bit disappointed that it doesn't look all that different from a daylight shot as I was hoping for something more eerie. On the other hand, I was quite surprised how much it does look like a daylight shot.

Now knowing how it turns out, I might start playing with some ideas like painting with a torch or flash.

Fair enough. I didn't realise you were just experimenting, I thought the point was to make night look like day, hence the confusion, sorry.