Lessons

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Equipment & Tools for Night Shooting

so what did we talk about here we went over a lot of different things but I just kind of want to reiterate some of these and also make time for questions I'm sure that within this section there's going to be a lot which is fine is already outside that we did yeah we do do let's start here do have questions yes please when you should move in stars you said the same super higher so like it changes like I said this is a total guessing game and it's really a hard one to do because there's no rhyme or reason there's no like light meter that's going to go cool if you want perfectly circular stars around the around the you know horizon they need to shoot for an hour at this s o this f stop it's really a guessing game um what I find is and there's so many different techniques this you guys like what I'm really here to teach you guys remember is is everything in camera so if your goal is to shoot star trails then I'm teaching you how to do it in camera not by star stacking which is basically wh...

ere you shoot thirty second exposures over and over and over and then taken into photo shop and stack them together that's that's a really cool effect and it looks awesome but it's not really my gig um and it's just not really something that I try to do I usually I'm trying to create as much of this I can as I can in camera right so for a longer exposure um you'd want the only thing you do different is obviously besides changing your settings is you that have an infrared remote which is really nice because like any camera nowadays in fred remote will will tap into this and you could just turn it on lock it walk away come back in the morning like let it off and handled be good to go or you can shoot a or you can shoot a you know actual cable release right which where you can lock exposure and that's a really good scenario if you're shooting for a couple hours typically usually if I'm doing if I'm not going to shoot attack sharp image of the milky way or stars and I want to have movement I'm usually a fan of a lot of movement not just like a little bit of a blurry sky so that's usually forty minutes toe like three hours okay I find for me at least that's that's kind of the sweet spot bit over that time and you start to get a lot of noise on the sensor one of the problems of digital sensors is that they get hot so you start to get all these artifacts and they're blue and red little dots and stuff and you're it's not noise it's actually just hot spots on your sensor from the camera running so long right another's programs that can help you with this and we're going to go over some of those things as well but yeah that doing some of those settings typically if if this was the mind if that was the night for me what I would do because I've I've shot night exposures a bit I would start by shooting a couple of shorter exposures fifteen seconds twenty seconds getting the milky way and then I'd say great when is the moon going to rise if there's a moon because if the moon rises and you're shooting a long exposure it's gonna blow out your image and then I would say okay courting how I like to make notes to you guys this is such a good thing when you shoot not exposures taken image make notes around it that way when you come back to these places you kind of know great my exposure here is fifteenth of a second there fifteen seconds at s o thirty two hundred I want to shoot star movement I'm gonna test it this night I'm going to shoot two hundred forty five minutes well that didn't work so I make a note this exposure for this shorter setting didn't work for this longer setting right this is just kind of like old school style right like just making some notes so that every time you go out you can't have a better idea nowadays I kind of know because I've done this so much tonight I have another idea and an interpretation of what this light is gonna look like for a much longer exposure is there's no way to test it I mean unless you just never sleep ever you know but that's kind of what I would do I'd probably that night I knew that the exposure at sixty four hundred I could shoot ten seconds so what I'd probably do is that bump it down to like two hundred and I would shoot for like an hour or something that if I wanted to get some star movement it just depends on how much movement you want to get right so yes um filters dues anything at all on the front or jewish filled right nothing usually if what I'm shooting night time stuff it's just harder to focus through a filter you know you're always gonna have to stop down a little bit and usually I'm fighting with the fact that I want to shoot a lower I s o and have a cleaner image and so there are some amazing filters you can use for night photography I think the only time I've ever used something is when in the past when I've used a grady int a graduate neutral density and it wasn't quite a night exposure is more of like a son like just after sunset sort of thing when I was still shooting like I s a one hundred twenty seconds you know but I feel like when you're shooting stars typically I am not looking to use filters although I think that there's some options out there to do some cool stuff with him yeah so be on the technical aspects of shooting a straw graffiti at what on how do you approach infusing adventurous elements to it and infusing people into the images I think that's that comes back to this idea of knowing your location before you get there I can't express enough how many times I've been somewhere and been like I know there's a awesome spot here this is just up this hill somewhere I'm looking around for I can't find the angle you know I think I saw something online or I saw I'd read it on like a trail map or something and I knew there's like this epic out like look out you know and I always find that it's just a it's a bummer when you're going out at night trying to find this viewpoint without having scouted your location first right it's always so much better if you have the idea in mind before you go because with nighttime you're worrying about so many other elements you're worried about your focus your exposure all these things were kind of happening your tripod to go up there and just kind of be like you know whatever happens happens it's it's it's a little harder so like to your point there's places I've shot in the daytime like maybe a trail in yosemite or somewhere on the coast where I'm like this is a great spot I want to come back here and shoot this same shot with maybe a tent lit up in someone camping I wanna camp here in and shoot that or maybe it was somebody standing on that precipice right I think one thing that I like for nighttime photography especially with fusing in people is that it gives you scale sometimes it's really hard you kind of lose perspective for how big these mountains are or how you know grandiose this incredible you know northern lights display is right because you kind of have lost the perspective with no people there and so I love being able to fuse in my subject but I tend to like to sort that out before it's one a m you know and we're tired on the beach standing around you know um if anything I think that there's this really uh you know you see all these photos people standing there with headlights and stuff and it's a funny one because I think originally that really that really started from simply people be needing to get their focus point I mean at least for me like it was always like okay I've got this cool subject right there we turn your headline on so I can so I can get get my focus from that because that's like the easiest way to do it right they take their headlight they shining thatyou are they shine it themselves andi I think I just became a interesting way to like have a subject you know you know in your frame you know adding a little more light but it's probably become a little overdone and cheesy but I think it's always a matter of just I love the idea of fusing in um obviously into a beautiful untouched landscape fusing in some type of a human element you know and whatever that might be you know there's some amazing photos of like that this norwegian photographers shot of like a guy standing with a snowboard on this ski slope and there's they're on this like the middle of this mountain and there's like northern lights over the top of them right and that was probably something that he concept it out before andr saw it and then was like this would be a great shot and they came and did it right so I think it's just a matter of you know making your book of notes making your book of creative concepts and really executing them when you have time that at least for me that's kind of a process that I go through t do that stuff right you wouldn't be opposed to blend into pictures right because if you have us not my my deal now I know that if you have a displeasure of thirty seconds it's difficult to have a person this is what makes the image is so great is getting is getting the exposure right you know so I mean because that would be the easy thing is if if everything was easy you know you could just oh shoot exposure for this you exposure for that blend the two which is an awesome thing to do and people who are good at it they make credible imagery for me it's always been more of like the challenge has always been to create it all in camera right or try the best I can and one thing you find with night exposures you guys your white balance plays a huge role I've seen people shooting like five g's on some hillside somewhere with me and he had his white balance set to some random setting I think maybe he was shooting indoors earlier and he was up there and it was just everything was like ten stops overexposed like what how's your camera looks so weird it's so like red and whatever and I wouldn't look to his white balance and he put it up you know auto white balance or whatever the like night time um and just the whole image opened up it was incredible and you always want to watch that I like to start with auto just because it's you know I'm kind of teaching more basics here and then adjust it from there if you feel like it needs more warmth refill if it needs more more coolness in it so that's always important to do uh I uh I find two that there is you know there's a lot of the a lot of the specifics really come down to your camera and your lens okay um there are a multitude of different cameras that are kind of optimized for night photography you can shoot night photography with any camera okay any camera that can shoot a long exposure in camera or you can attach a cable released two or an infrared sensor you can shoot a long exposure with but a camera like the a seven s or I think nikon has a new one that's like the d six fifty years I forget what it's called you guys notice called a ten a write those things are there optimized and what that means I see optimized meaning that they have a very very light sensitive sensor um the mega pixels air usually fairly low on the camera right which means that when you blow them up larger than there's not a lot of noise so um this camera the a seven s its native eso is thirty two hundred uh meaning that that's like what it kind of prefers to shoot out right so um this helps a lot when I'm trying to get that night focus right that focal point at night also the lens you notice I have a third party lens on here this is an f one for broking on now it's an f one for which really helps me when I open it all the way up it really helps me to see everything I never shoot this in f one for I always back it off to f one eight or left to right because I because typically almost these lenses are not the sharpest at f one for you get a little bit of vignette ing and stuff so I back it off a little bit um I I love shooting with a prime at night okay there's something about just just having one lens focusing on what you're going to get with that and kind of working through that that that's really helpful um there's also another lens I used quite a bit this is a uh this is an f two twenty eight with a wide angle adaptor on the uh on the sony and this one call throwing when I need a little bit wider exposure right um most of these lenses to the wide angles you know there is no filter you can put in front of it which is kind of a bummer things that's why these two lenses they stay together with this camera in sort of a night time kit like if I'm going on location this will be my setup right I'll bring this right here um this is also a great camera to shoot a uh to shoot a long exposure or assert sure issued a time lapse with as well and if I'm shooting a time lapse and I need that extra energy that extra juice right cause I'm shooting all the way through the night and like we said that sometimes the batteries don't last doesn't matter what cam you're shooting with if it's cold outside and it's windy and stuff that it's just going to be getting freezing inside so a lot of times all hook one of these up to like a goal zero charger usually a smaller one but this is like kind of the more expedition one that bring on a trip so I just I'd hook up something like this and uh and plug it in and use this while on their way keep my camera going right I can't tell how many times I've woken up in the morning from shooting a long exposure my camera's dead which is a bummer so that's always that's always something that you know you don't look forward to seeing in the morning but this is kind of my night kit like I would just bring this in its own little I see you it's a little pack and I would I would haul that out to glacier point I really don't I'm not shooting at any other time besides these low light scenarios right um any thoughts and questions on that yeah so if you could talk a little more extensively how you plan a straw graffiti because like things like whether things like where the stars in the times of the year and like I know it changed them location but just kind of like uh that's perfect yeah I'm going to show you that right now so I talked about this one app and by the way I have like seven of them I'm not like sponsored by the ap companies for this but I just I usually end up buying a bunch and trying to use the best one but I use one called sky safari and it's really nice because what I can do is you can find your location um you can go in here and go to there's like a bazillion different settings like this thing is way too confusing for me but all I know is that there's an amazing setting where I can look at the horizon like this and I go cool the moon is down here and uh let's see our time like if I'm at glacier point I'm somewhere like this right um I will be there obviously looking up at the sky and what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to plan according what is my anchor and my image my just hoping to get a cool shot in the night sky no milky way um maybe shoot the moon that it doesn't matter it's still this allows you to let you know like is the milky way gonna line up is the moon going to line up what's planets are gonna line up right there there's so many different styles of night photography milky way just shooting is just one thing okay but using the milky way is an example you always want to shoot it at its brightest right you always want to shoot it when it's you know kind of coming up in the core or the brightest section of it I forget what it's called maybe there's some astro dorks that know this stuff way better than me because there's amazing guys out there that that's what kind of what you're what I'd be looking for if I was planning to shoot the milky way's that would not be like my first thing is like what's my feature I'm gonna shoot half dome okay cool and what do I want above it do I just want you know the moon rising behind me kind of looking like a blown out night sky that's not that interesting no so I'm usually trying to go there when there's no moon because when there's no moon that's when you get the brightest stars okay so I'm planning I might look at my calendar for the month and say here's the sections of the month when there's no moon he's going to the brightest milky way and then I might look for my calendar in the state he's in the sections of the month when the moon is the biggest which might be actually really cool to shoot the moon right in a big bright yellow harvest moon or something right october you know parts of spring the supermoon things like that right blood moon right those are all unique and interesting times to shoot the moon one of the best times of the year to shoot the milky way summer right now literally like right now when we were there it was like and it's one of its peaks right so august july june early september these air the epic times milky way why because in our hemisphere west coast it is kind of risen to a vertical standpoint right it's not like leaning like this it's kind of resort comes right out and you get that you can actually shoot the core right and so you try to align these things up this is all pre prep you know you can go on google earth you can find out you can you know research you kind of find your feature right one my favorite place to shoot his big sir on one of the coolest features and big serves mcquay falls and there's amazing photos of the milky way rising over make way falls maybe you guys have seen them and that's something that I'm always like okay when could I go there when can my schedule lineup that I could go what a clear night shoot that place with it you know no moon and that's something that I've tried do and I I went shot a couple months ago but wasn't the milky way was kind of like yeah not that cool right so I just you know you keep going back to keep learning so I for me I'm planning that out now this app is really nice because I can sit here and I could go okay cool right now this is it I'm looking this way right say the milk you say half dome is right there so I have the moon here and it's below the horizon right you know daytime now I can watch I can play the time and I can look at when the moon will rise so I could go so this is sorry is playing slowly let's go here it just is showing me here is the sun the sun is here son setting right now or three pm for pm five p m six pm so it's showing me the time six pm seven p m cool now it's getting tonight right now it's showing me what's going to be called the moon's right there and the milky way is right there at eleven thirty five p m if you're shooting in this direction we're in san francisco so I don't know where this would be maybe the golden gate bridge I don't know the milky way is going to be literally coming right out of the horizon and that's the core problem is you have a full moon almost so you're not going to see it because it's right the moon's right next to it so that's a bummer but it doesn't mean that you know it's not there see you you can you can keep playing so this is twelve one a m two a m three am before him so now the milky way's kind of faded right you don't really have the bright part of it the bright part of its right here and it's already going away let's go backwards there's the brightest part of the milky way right they're right so this is an amazing tool there's about ten other aps you can use this for and you can see um constellations you could see the moon when the moon sets when the sun rises this app usually doesn't work when you don't have service most places you go to shoot great nighttime photography you don't have service so a lot of times you could download some of these things beforehand you can find out where it is when you do have service so that's just just keep that in mind too you guys that's a big bummer you get there you like you could not set the different location from from where you are so right from here you can not see what's happening is emma de I don't think so I mean there's problem I bet I get back either probably is away I just don't know this out very well astro there's something I dabble in you know it's something that I like and I enjoy but there's people who like they have this so dialed um they could teach entire to do workshops on just purely astro photography and nighttime but yeah there are I'm sure ways to do that I mean if you go on google earth you can go anywhere and look exactly that's one of the coolest things if you just pop on google earth you khun I could look it I wasn't havasupai when I was going to have a suit by falls and I researched havasupai and I saw exactly where the milky way will be rising according to where I wanted to stand to shoot this waterfall right and it wasn't really the most optimal time of year so you can usually plan these things out and find out exactly where it will rise and this is like all that preplanning I usually ushered people not to wait till you know you are there on location to find out what it's gonna look like right because it things happen you you don't have service you know this is that so it's kind of a bummer uh more questions yes you said you like shooting we like without the moon d ever use just like a little bit of like wait like a day or two before noon to light up then landscape a little bit with the moon ton in my favorite time to shoot really I mean think about this northern lights for example you're going to see northern lights either way moon or no moon you still see them if they're bright enough my favorite time of shoot northern lights like this image right here is when the moon is directly behind me because now it's front lit but I still have more northern lights I shot this at s o two hundred with like a twenty second exposure right which is like kind of unheard of because usually when you're shooting northern lights you have no moon you have shoot very high so but that's when you really that's I'd like the moon can really help you a lot of times too if you just have the slightest faintest moon cresting over the horizon it's like the sun okay I think that's one thing that you have to keep in mind when you were the moon when it rises and when it sets that's when it omits the most color right so it is amazing if you are able to shoot a landscape with the moon cresting over because you'll get rich shadows and color and light just like you would from the sun now when the moon is directly overhead what happens well you have shadows just like midday it's usually very un interesting right so understanding the night sky is a specialty on its own and the only way I can really ask you guys to do that is just spend more time up at night you know watching and seeing what it does I you know when I shot a lot of landscapes and I first kind of spent that time out in the desert that was when I favorite things to do is to go out and just mess around with night exposure shooting the milky way and it's never seen it brighter than out in the you know middle of the utah desert it's incredible you have the clearest skies ever you know and and so just experimenting this is all about experimentation there's really no right a wrong way to do it but it's it's for me I'm really just trying to give you guys some of the tools like focusing like using a stable tripod cem aps to kind of set yourselves up to for the best success now in terms of stability to make sure you're on stable ground okay that you're not putting your tripod into sandy into a sand dune you know or you're not you know putting your tripod into like some like wet mud or like grass that could sink is that will affect it as well a lot I also recommend to turn your auto stabilization in your camera off always turn it off okay all thes camera's mostly other cameras or lenses they have like a stabilization on the lens I turned that off on ly because it a lot of times that can actually create vibration inside your image because you're shooting a long exposure and it's trying to stabilize things just doesn't doesn't really quite work so um thoughts and more questions on that yes story but on do you shoot night lasts as much and if so how do you approach them differently I well that's a good question and night lapses are super awesome time lapses in general are amazing and like I said before when you're shooting time lapse you want movement of clouds clouds are probably one of the best things you can have to move in a timeline um so that being said you want clouds moving I mean you have to have a wind okay you have to have something pushing those clouds across right if you have win that means your tripod service or something is going to be more susceptible to kind of move and not be a cz not be a smooth as you want right so it means you have tv haven't even more stable tripod or an even more stable surface and like I said to one of the things I make sure is that if I'm shooting night lapses I have a more stable stable tripod a thicker one I also have a little hook down the bottom yes this hook this hook right there will hold a bag or a backpack or one of these things all load this thing up with weight and I will put it down here to hook onto that right and this really just helps me too make my tripod even more stable like adding you know sandbags whatever so that that helps to now the key was shooting good time lapses is movement and much time up movement in the sky but also movement on the camera right you've seen a lot of these amazing slider rigs you know automated slider rigs and and you know panning heads and stuff I mean that is really the way you wanted you want to create really amazing incredible ones but for me usually I'm that's really not my forte and usually it's kind of an afterthought for me so if I set up a time lapse I'm just like I'll just throw this thing on a tripod and I'll shoot super wide and I'll just allow myself in post to kind of move in with it like a ken burns type of thing you know now that's not like the best thing to do if if you hear your specialty is is is not lapses but it could work really great so like I said the only time that I'm really looking at something and I'm thinking this is going to make great time lapse is if I see movement in the landscape like I know that the clouds are moving like with something like northern lights they're great because they're dancing like this is not a stable thing this is going like this back and forth looks really amazing um if I see clouds moving if I see a milky way and it's a moonless night and there's nothing else happening you're not usually going to get an amazing time lapse simply because it's just yours I mean you can you get incredible one but it just it just kind of the milky way doing this or like you know rising or setting right I tend to like the ones where there's a lot of cloud movement there's there's a lot of stuff happening the foreground so to your point you know I think it's just personal preference you start to as you shoot them or you start to kind of learn more about when they look good when they don't andi I've shot a lot of bad ones so that's the only way I've been ableto figure out in source when they look uh when they look nice I think in post um good yeah I was just wondering like when it comes to putting your subjects into the landscapes how do you get them to stand out like you know from that background and from like a ce faras like do you like them up do you paint light on them carol good point let's talk about that so let's see emotions still um so I think that putting you know where you source your where you put your subject is a really important aspect I think whether it's night photography or any type it's not goingto it's not really going to matter it's not really gonna vary that much you really want to have that person in the in kind of the brightest spot you can write and so if you look at an image like this you know where did I put him I put this subject right in this center spot right here right if I would have put him ten feet back he would have been kind of meat into the hills about it put him here he put a still lit up this is where the pool of light is really hitting the water the brightest right so that's kind of a location that you could you could put him in this shot right here you're seeing a person you know very almost indistinguishable right but they're they're what I've done is I have him lighting up the trees with a light flashlight but by lighting up the trees he's creating a silhouette on himself which is then lighting him up right um where else could I have put him well I would have if I didn't have him standing like that I'd probably want him somewhere here or here in one of these pools of light but I don't think I could have gotten in there unless there was like a rock in the water or something something like that right so constantly you know this is kind of one of those things like is a great example too you know having the subject there and by the way this was a moment that just happened all of a sudden didn't plan it out didn't even didn't even know this was even feasible I just walked over the hill and saw this it was like the most crazy rushed out of the nowhere shot I've ever taken but think about it think about the fact that since they're not walking simultaneously I have two different distinct trails I have there you know silhouettes are in this pool of reflection right if I was shooting a night exposure of this scene this would be a place where I'd be like great I want to go back there I want to shoot milky way over this mountain range I want to put a subject right in this pool of reflection okay because looking out of the landscape I couldn't get the person up here into the sky or anywhere else this is going to the brightest space for them to be in okay so considering that this is a place where I would write down and mark you like I'm gonna come back here I'm gonna get this shot right it would go into my little kind of I guess creative playbook I guess you could call it you know as as every photographer should really have and you guys sorry I know I'm just like referencing my website here but some ways this is the easiest way to do it sometimes you know another night exposure I want I want to talk to you guys a bit too it was that kind of answer your question a bit like looking for that right any more questions to one they won't talk to you guys but good yeah just throwing about time lapses canada like more specifically about like what times I know that there is no control over that such a it's such a trial and error process honestly I would speak more to it but I know that I'm not a specialist on it but I definitely know that the faster your subject is moving and I subject I mean like your clouds or if it's water that's rushing up onto the beach or a lake right the faster that's moving the shorter distances between exposures you want right so the clouds are moving really fast you want like a one second or twenty two seconds like gap between your exposure's right or you want your exposures themselves to be shorter okay so this is like there's all this crazy kind of math that goes into these things but for example if I have clouds they're just racing across the sky I would want to have my exposure be like not that long maybe a couple seconds you know at a higher eso and I want my distance between exposures to be like one or two seconds if it's very slowly kind of lazily moving across the horizon I could bump it up to like a lower is so longer shutter speed or a slower shutter speed twenty seconds fifteen seconds and have my distance between the shots be like ten whatever doesn't it all depends but one thing I mentioned that video was this idea of you know making the stars I think this is this is an interesting one because I'm kind of taking you through my trial and error process there's two important factors I want to talk about first of all um there was a lot for a while this is a great example of one I didn't really quite understand the concept of like like you know shooting tack sharp stars like like for me it was just like let's just get the right exposure I could care less what the sky looks like and this is an example of a photograph that the stars are not tack sharp they're actually a bit blurry right and what I've noticed that when I print this large what happens is that although this photograph sorry it's obviously on my website and it's not very like epic resolution on this screen but what I was noticing is that it appeared when I printed this that there was a lot of noise in the image even though this photo was shot it like esso one hundred it appeared like there was a lot of noise because my stars seemed blurry does that makes sense because what I have is I have a thousands and thousands of little speckles of light in the sky and they're all slightly moving so it kind of makes your image look a little blurry and busy right what I realized was when I started understanding and shooting based on how and when the stars will be sharp and what exposures that would be my images started to look cleaner even at a high rise so for example um let's go to this image appear the one that I just showed you guys um now this was shot at a much higher esso and like I said you probably can't tell in the screen but because the stars are attack sharp when I printed it large it looked much cleaner came how do we do that what does the algorithm for that well I think there actually is a perfect science to it I don't know what that is but from what I've had it explained to me the wider the lens the longer you can shoot with tax sharp stars meaning for shooting a fisheye sixteen millimeter some like that you can shoot about thirty seconds and still have tack sharp stars if you move towards a twenty millimeter twenty four millimeter it moves down to about fifteen to twenty seconds you shooting at thirty five millimeter it moves down to about ten seconds okay now that's just because you're compressing in you're getting closer to those stars so you're seeing the movement's more minute leigh right does that does that makes sense now the hard part about that is that it actually changes your sos a bit you know because you can't just shoot thirty seconds or two minutes exposure you know you're trying to get them tax sharpe but like I said it really does help with another amazing tidbit that I know I kind of went over in the video but I wanted to just explain you guys really quick is this concept of high I s o versus lo s so mean when you guys shoot not exposures I mean I'm guessing some of you guys have attempted them and try to shoot a bit of him um you know what is the tendency like what is what is your four hundred or so and do you find that most of time your images pretty dark yeah like they were there but they almost like they don't look so much as noisy but they're like they're just like dark on your screen yeah and so what I what I realized this is mainly just me talking to a lot of friends who do this or some really talented folks that have shot this and by the way too if you guys want to see this image for what it is you can check it out like that looks awesome uh what I found is that understanding howto work with sensors in these scenarios so a lot of times I was with you okay I was shooting like if if my night sky called for if the right exposure was s o sixty four hundred at twenty seconds I was shooting thirty seconds at like eso eight hundred you know and it was a really dark image but I was thinking oh it's it's all good I could just go and you know light room later and just brighten it up well the problem is although it might look good on a screen or on a small device you gotta print something like that all you're doing every time you're brightening it up and you're opening up the shadows and you're you know you're you're bringing all that back you're just opening yourself up to a world of noise and hurt in a lot of ways it's just kind of post processing nightmare now what you really want is you really want to understand where your cameras sweet spots are what what s a range can you actually work with now a camera like this shooting eyes of ten thousand twelve thousand totally acceptable but what you really want to search for when you're shooting these long exposures you want to make sure that your history ram has a bit of information on it so hissed a gram right there all right I want to make sure that this history I'm sia's I go as I go brighter as my exposure gets a little brighter my history graham has more information on the right hand side when you're shooting night exposures I can't stress enough how important it is to make sure that you have information over here on the right hand side okay so that you can always so that there's there's information in the end tyr image right not just in your highlights or not just in your bright parts but the dark parts as well okay I find that when shooting night exposures it is totally okay to get a perfect exposure even a little overexposed because rather than trying to bring a dark image back to a perfect exposure you're better to shoot that perfect exposure at a high rise so even with a little more noise and pull it back a little bit you're gonna have more to work with you're gonna actually have more color and stuff is well and your image you're saying like usually we're shooting um I mean it's like you're shooting looking for highlights in it instead of as a post like when we're shooting normally we're tryingto get more range in the shadows you know what I mean but but here it seems like you're starting with the black and looking for those those highlights and the lighter side of the history right you're just you're just basically trying to get as much information in the file as you can and a lot of ways it's like you have to frame up your image and kind of forget about what it looks like and just worry about like the data the pure data because that's all the history actually telling it's telling you dad it's not saying to you ah thumbs up this is a good exposure or like a thumbs up this is a good composition or like it's not showing you like's on social media you know it's just all it's telling you is data and so it's important to understand and know how that data works because you can take those images you can work them later you know so question go yes courtland shooting with different cameras obviously a seven like the ideal camera she stars with its it's just one of them means five de mar three hey there's tons out there you guys this is shooting like a psc sensors and things like that how do you think the differences are like what do you think that it was all what do you need to approach differently when you're shooting cameras that aren't as good um well I've shot a lot of photographs on a psc senses that I really have enjoyed this the photograph that was on the screen before you can cut back to that uh opening screen the northern light that was on a psc sensor right so and my experience there hasn't really been much different in shooting one or the other I find that obviously more megapixels usually means more noise in a in a in a in a high s o or long exposure scenario right um also when I've shot uh like really long exposures like you know couple hours whatever a psc sensors tend to get a bit hotter I feel like because the pixels are more condensed okay so you have a full frame sensor pixels or more spread out a p a p f c sensor picks is more condensed you could have twenty four mega pixels in this cameron twenty four million pixels in that camera and that camera's going to get a bit noisier because they're condensed into a smaller space right now I'm the last person you should really be talking about tech and like all these like pixel depth this that I just know that this is more trial and error that I found um but what I notice is that if you get the right lenses you can achieve exactly the same results mean they make this same lens this f one for um lens for the a p s c says they do for these and when I've used those they work really good um and as well as uh this lens that's on here right now this is like a this is like a sixteen millimeter f two eight um on here I've shot night explosion with this guy right here a lot and it's it's had really really good results um in fact this camera's usually the one that all bringing like a backup to shoot time lapse is on or something um or really just having another night exposure camera next week's it's so small so light and I could just put on a tripod the nice things about a lot of these cameras not just sony's but anyone nowadays they have absent and this one has a time lapse app where I just push the button said it and it goes there's no interval ometer there's no like tethered thing or devices just all internal and I could just push the button I think night cons have him too and I could just let it go and it's kind of just like great I'm there my camera's not do anything it's either going to sit in my bag or it's gonna sit outside and freeze a little bit so being able to just kind of work on those and shootem is really nice right in fact any of any of the cameras in the line in this line have like apse that you can use so I don't find much much difference the main thing that I find with the a p c to the full frame to me is these focus faster um these have better brokaw and they have a shallow depth of field when you're shooting portrait's and things like that right these have better quality when you're blowing them up larger um these ones are more nimble and easier to use and ah I don't know they they I tend to love both of them equally you know for different purposes you know just just holding this one in your hand it's nice bill to shove a camera your pocket that you know you could blow up huge you know um so yeah it's kind of personal preference I think you can work with it and find it works