Hi Gang...

Working with low light can be a challenge anytime !! , So, what if we do it on purpose this month?

Even the simplest point and shoot camera has a "night"  or "fireworks" mode..

There are a lot of very creative things that can be done in low light..

For example, City-scapes are quite powerful as night shots.

Quelque part dans la nuit
by Djavad
in Photography & Urban/Cityscape
Fri, October 30, 2009 7:30 am

Night Life--Chicago Style-For Tara
by beachzz  

Night Time
by kgb224

or perhaps something like this

EXPLOSION LUMINICA
by MOSKETON  

Autumn Sky #2
by whtknight

Handbridge
by BibbyBear

You could also try some "Light Painting"

[http://www.diyphotography.net/painting_with_light

http://www.darjanpanic.com/photography/drawing-in-dark-photography-tutorial/

http://adcuz.co.uk/how-to-articles/how-to-light-painting/

](http://www.diyphotography.net/painting_with_light)You could also try some "light trails"

http://www.amateursnapper.com/photography/photographing-car-light-trails

Of course the idea of any forum challenge is to try new things and learn more about your camera and photography.. It should also be FUN !!!

Just a reminder..3 images per member..Go out and shoot something for this..don't just dig thru your archives..

Think outside the box and have FUN !!!

I'm looking forward to see the creative ideas you come up with..If you find or have a good tutorial to share..please feel free to post it to this thread..

Sounds challenging!  I'll see what I can come up with.  That's something I have a lot of trouble with!  I've done some low light interior stuff that's worked out really well, but I have a LOT to learn about shooting outdoors at night! 

Thanks Tara..I'm trying to keep this open, but give us room to explore an idea...of course, give all of us an opportunity to learn and explore..

It's not the blur I'm concerned about, btw.  I could fix that by getting out my little tripod and doing a timed shot.  It's that darned COLOR!  Oh ... the Mom is really a redhead, and the little girl is really a blonde.

As long as this is the forum, and not my gallery, I'm willing to bare my photographic soul, so to speak.  This is straight out of the camera -- all I did was resize it to fit the Forum posting parameters.

I know very little about my camera.  It's an older camera (DiMage Z3)  that doesn't have the range a lot of your cameras have.  For example, the F-settings only go to 4.0.

Given that limitation ... is there any hope for me and night photography??

First entry of mine. Green color coming from a box. I wonder, super heroes have Christmas too or they all busy saving the world or just another human...lol.

Tara! I don't know your camera options but if you can change the WB try the Tungsten setting. I made a few snap with this WB and capture warm light and almost came out without the orange tone.  Technical term I have no idea why this is happening but I might give it a good google search and find it out.

seeya T

Auntietk,

The orange cast is just a basic white balance issue. If the WB setting is left to auto, majority of camera's will show an orange cast with indoor and incandescent  light sources. Setting the WB to tungsten like suggested above will give it a cooler temp look, but might also not be completely accurate. If you are planning to take a few indoor shots and the lighting will be consistant, another option is to set a manual WB. 

A simple way of doing this is to get a blank white page (printer paper works) and place it in the area you will be taking pictures so that it is lit by the lighting that will be used. Take a picture of the white page, letting it fill the shot frame. In your camera menu, select manual WB, and it will ask you to select a picture to use. Just pick the one you just did and the orange cast should go away and you can take pics in that light. Once done, you can change back to other WB settings like auto, daylight etc.  You'll notice if you forget to change it back, because if you left it set to that specific WB and try to take pics outdoors or elsewhere, they will look like smurf village with a blue tint.

If a white page is not handy, such as when you were in the restaurant in the above pic, many camera cases are a medium gray and can be used in a pinch. If yours is, just fill the frame with a section of the gray area instead of a white page. If all else fails, look for someone that has a shirt or sweater etc that has a flat white or gray section that can be used.

Thanks, Tunde and EB!  I'll try that out.  Watch this space for my continued improvement.  (She said!)  LOL!  Well ... I hope so!  :)

Good stuff so far..yeah, glad someone brought up white balance.. that is the key to a lot of indoor low light  shots..

I have this small tripod I bought at a discount store for under $10 bucks..It has the legs telescope..

makes a nice table top stand and really comes in handy for my point and shoot.

Tundi..killer shot..

I'm glad for the info about the white balance, for sure.  Sometimes I wander around and try new things and learn a lot, and sometimes I wander around and nothing happens!  LOL!  It's good to have a little help now and again.  I'm going to a party Saturday night, and I'm absolutely going to try the white balance thing.  With that information, I might be able to get some good candid portraits!  :D

That will be a real test Tara, hope you ganna have a good snapping time.

seeya  T

Wow.  That's awesome, Bruce.  What a great result!

Wow! Some superb uploads already!

Remember that if you shoot in RAW you can always change the white balance in editing just in case you select the wrong lighting or (as I usually do) forget to adjust the WB. A tripod is going to be very useful for this challenge and, as Bruce says above, you can pick up quite good and cheaply priced tripods these days - a great way to get used to using a tripod!

I'll be looking forward to going out and shooting for this challenge as well as seeing lots more fantastic upoads here!!!

I'm not homophobic - I love my house!!! 

Bruce, great nite capture. The building looks like a modern cathedral inside out. I am sure a wonderful sight to pass by on a nite walk/drive.

seeya  T

This is a shot I took from my front porch one morning when I was bored....I just set it on full auto, focused it on an oncoming car and followed it as it passed.

F25
ISO 100
Exp 30 secs

wow..some really great work !!

The drama is their business but a red tone looks cool.

The other's  "car/bus light show"  great too.

seeya Tunde

Excellent work so far !!

are we learning anything ??

I am learning plenty. Not so much about what to do with my camera but I'm working with types of lights and the spectrum they radiate. I have a jeweler's light that has a nice pure white but it is so intense it is difficult to use. I have a regular light bulb and it produces a softer light but has a lot of orange in it and makes hot spots if I'm not careful. The smaller lights I have are not always better because they are more concentrated and white out areas with intensity. It's important to look in my viewfinder and assess what I'm seeing and adjust angles and distance before shooting. Sometimes the orange glow is a good thing for what I want. Other times it really boils down to angles. For whatever reason, I'm finding that controlling the environment is working better for me than controlling the camera settings...

I learned that white balance kicks a$$, and I'm looking forward to trying it on some outdoor night shots!  I got a good photo of my brother at the party the other night, and I'm totally impressed.  I've been thinking about where I might be able to shoot something interesting ... If I find it, you'll be the first to know!  LOL!

Maybe I'll try some light painting next..Anyone ever try that before?

I tried it once several months ago when I was doing a lot of setup/low light/tripod shots.  It takes some practce, that's for sure!   I think you would be really good at that, Bruce.  I'd love to see what you come up with!

I can't seem to figure out how to make my camera cooperate. I put it in Manual mode and set it up for a long exposure, turn the lights off and click...but without the focus lock (and it can't do that in the dark with no subject, I get a blurred mess if I get anything at all. Now, if I can get a focus lock with the lights on and be close enough to the light switch to turn it off and continue to keep my finger on the camera button to hold the lock in place while I do that and not jiggle the tripod, then get back in place, click and jump for my light for "painting" with...well that might work... if I'm Houdini.  any suggestions? Its a high end point and shoot so it isn't built primarily for manual operation and I think that is the biggest problem I have with it. Most of the time I'm in semi-manual modes.

MrsLubner, try using your clip on light only to set it up. Much easier  to turn off and click.

phfffffffffffffff! Why didn't I think of that?

I was also thinking that maybe by using the manual focus, I do not necessarily need the focus lock to activate so perhaps if I am smart enough to find the focus before I turn the light out, I might come up with something... I'll have to play with this over the weekend in my garage studio...

I'll go quite similar route with Pushinfaders. This sight is from my hometown, I call it twin towers. Its taken from riverbed that is illuminated with some lights. I included one third of wall to give some perspective to these creepy buildings.

Chillingly amazing! The direction and low intensity of the lighting really sets the stage for drama and you have coaxed tremendous depth out of the shadows!

Wow! Now that brings out the depth.  I like the detail it brings out in the stone wall. 

Does the evil one live there?  ;D

Quote - Wow! Now that brings out the depth.  I like the detail it brings out in the stone wall. 

Does the evil one live there?  ;D

He just might but then again I saw 666 on post box on one island near here. Maybe that is his vacation home? :D

PJ - you can get the focus with the lights on and then filck the auto-focus over to manual - it will then be already set up then to just press the shutter

Excellent capture Shane - gotta love that one!

Uh PJ, I know ur camera has a timer and I know u have a tripod. That should solve ur lightswitch problem.
fm ;-)

Some really good info and examples.
Nice work ya'll.
fm ;-)

@PJ Flannelman has a good point with a timer. I do a PWL pictures as you discribed it but I have a cable realese so I have a bit of the freedom to move to switch a light of and get back to the camera.

About the orange coloration of the light. Is it possible you can change a bulb to white fluro? You know, those curly funny looking bulbs. That would give you a nice white but cold light. The good thing in those bulb they allready diffused if you after the nice even light.

@Bruce What do you mean by light painting? When you outline your (any) car with a flashlight or when you pointing a flashlight in different areas on a set/subject. It can be a barndoor too not just still life.

seeya  Tunde

I did a shot last weekend for this challenge, just never got round to looking at it until now... anyway here it is, seems there is some talk of different ways of light painting so I thought it might be useful if I described how I took this shot...

The settings used were: - 12mm, iso 250, 30sec, f/4.5, manual focus at infinity, 2 second self-timer on a tripod, manual mode

I left an outdoor light on at the house (behind and to camera left) to light up some of the fallen leaves, and gave it a little helping hand with a large maglite torch, which I used to "paint" the trees as well. I'd never seen anything like this before - a huge rainbow-like halo around the moon (which was perfectly circular, what you see here is due to lens distortion), so hurried to make any sort of composition before it disappeared... shooting wide open on infinity focus as I did here is usually a safe bet for getting useable shots of star trails etc, but you will often throw any near foreground quite out of focus, as you can see at the bottom here. I could have shot further stopped down at something like f/8 but without the cable release I was limited to 30secs and was hesitant to bump the iso up too high to avoid introducing too much noise into the dark areas. Anyway hope that was of some use to someone :)

Look forward to seeing some more interesting entries, some nice work so far.

Adam

Very cool, Adam!  We see that ring around the moon here quite often.  It's because of the thin cloud layer, and the moonlight is lighting up the moisture in the cloud, forming a rainbow. 

Aside from that bit of science-y stuff ... Great shot!  I had never thought to paint such a large area.  Very cool!

Fascinating shot Adam. Mix of warm and cold light. Nice tech intro too.

seeya  T 

Excellent work Adam - very different and so eye-catching mate!

I used a wide angled lens for this capture, as well as a polariser and a tripod.

Camera settings:
Aperature - F25
Exposure - 30 seconds
ISO - 100

I've also posted this into my gallery. To view it full sized please click on the link here  www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1977888&section_id=8&genre_id=&np

...

This is one I'm posting is a lucite 1 1/2 inch cube with an etched lighthouse scene done inside. It sits on a tiny lighted platform that has a multi-colored light that rotates the colors.

....

OHH I love that leaf,  Arthur.   YUMMY!!!

I really adore that leaf! So flashy in a subtle way. and I find the garlic good enough to eat... in fact, I think I'll go put a big head in the oven to roast now...