Real Trains, Cameras and Night Shoots

As for settings, you'll want high, fast, and wide open if you've never done this before.  But since you have a good fortnight before, I'd say the best thing is to go do a lot of shooting every night until the trip.  Every lens/body combo will handle differently.  One setup will produce nice photos at one set of settings, while another will look bad.  By going and doing shooting beforehand, you will get a feel for your camera and what you can  and can't do with it.  You'll also get experience so that you will have more confidence to shoot at night without wasting time to look at the camera back after every shot.

Matt WOW that picture of the Christmas Train with the hills in the background and the setting sun over the hills yielding the WONDERFUL SKY. WOW...Breath taking. I think you know I like the night pictures of our models and layouts but this outside is AWESOME. Thanks for sharing. Bill

it all depends on what you want. lights in motion, lower iso, slow shutter,

 

Freeze, hard at night, but hi iso and wide aperture

 

equipment just sitting there, tripod, lower ISO and slow shutter speed,

 

have fun, leave the shutter on bulb, pop a few random flashes.

 

Night photography is all about experimenting

 

By the way, shoot RAW not JPG and your camera should have a long exposure and High ISO compensation settings, use them

 

Tell me what lenses you have to work with and I'll tell you everything you would possibly want to know.  In winter I'm primarily a night photographer.  The highst ISO that gives really good results on the D80 is ISO 800, but you can use ISO 1600 in a pinch and if you are careful about not underexposing.

 

 

Kent in SD

I have an 18-135 mm lens.

In a nut shell, Chris was right on the ball.

 

Not much to add so I'll elaborate maybe.

 

The higher the ISO, the noisier the image will tend to look.

The wider the aperture, the less depth of field you'll have.

The faster the shutter speed, the better you'll be able to freeze motion.

 

Now - decide what you want and what you're willing to give up and choose your settings.

 

Because you're shooting digital, you can "cheat" and check the thumbs after you shoot and adjust accordingly. 

 

If you choose a low shutter speed and then want to swap to a higher shutter speed - just up one setting for every other setting you bring down.

 

Motion is always going to be an issue if you are shooting people - so it's often worth upping the ISO to avoid unintentional blur.  If you have nothing in the scene that is moving, or you want blur, you can lower the ISO for less noise.

 

A flash or even a spot light can help illuminate some subjects or dark shadows.

 

Good luck - have fun!

 

/Mitch

Get out your camera's manual because I'm going to mention some features I bet you're not familiar with.  First, go in the menu and set the High ISO Noise Reduction to "high."  Next, you will have best results if you use a tripod, for sure.  Turn the VR OFF when using camera/lens on a tripod.  (Trust me.)  When you push the shutter button, place your thumb under the camera and press the shutter with your pointy finger--use a pinching motion.  (This helps to prevent camera movement.)  If you have any filters on your lens, take the off.  (They will cause ghosting.)  If you have the software to process images and experience, shoot NEF (which is Nikon's "raw.")  If not, just shoot jpeg fine.  If the Christmas lights on the train are moving, you need to shoot a long exposure.  Set the mode dial to "S", which means "shutter priority."  Using the rear thumb wheel, set a shutter speed that is slow enough so the lights will cycle through at least once.  The camera will automatically select the aperture.  Fine tune by looking at the LCD. 

If you want to have some fun, try to include people in the shot.  You can go two ways with this.  One is to use as short a shutter speed as possible, to render them sharply.  The other is the opposite--use a long shutter speed so they will blur a litte (but the non-moving train stays sharp.)  I'm thinking of something like a 10-30 second exposure here.  You might have to adjust the ISO lower.  The people will appear as shadowy blurred figures against the sharp and colorful train. 

The best time to catch the train is from sunset to an hour after sunset.  this is called "astronomical twilight."  To our eye it is dark, but there is still a LOT of light left in the sky.  Shoot so you are facing the West.  With a long enough shutter speed (experiment,) the sky will appear dark blue with the colorfully lit train in the foreground.  Look for vantage points that put you a bit higher than the crowd, maybe 4-8 ft. off the ground.  this will get your camera up above the people.  If doing exposures longer than a couple of seconds, dig into the camera's menu again and set the Long Exposure Noise Reduction  to "Medium." 

The meter on the D80 tends to over expose a bit.  In this case that can be good.  To get the exposure perfect, read your manual again, looking at "exposure compensation."  That's a small button you press that's by the shutter, on the right.  The camera will see a dark scene and try to lighten, like daytime.  You need to counter this by dialing in some negative exposure compensation--maybe -1.0 stops?  Experiment, check your histogram and LCD.

Don't forget to reset exp. comp. and noise reduction back to normal/neutral when done.  The contrast/dynamic range you can see than what your camera can deal with.  Try to expose so the highlights don't blow out--use those as your guide.  The D80 histogram has a "blinking" mode on the LCD to show you blown highlights.  Use that--it helps.  A little bit of blinking is OK, maybe even preferable.  Experiment.  Practice some of this on Christmas lights a few nights in advance.  Don't forget that most lights are tungsten balanced, like the lights inside your house.  Either set your white balance to "Incandescent", or to "Auto."

Avoid using the flash on your camera.  If flash hits the colored lights, it will wash them out.  If the lit up train is more than 30 ft away, you can use your flash to light something closer. Set flash to "Slow Sync," use a tripod  Again, experiment before hand.


Good luck!
Kent in SD

And practice before you make the trip!

 

E