night shots

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Permalink Reply by CameraClicker on March 8, 2009 at 1:04pm

According to Kodak, you have control over aperture -- f/2.8 to f/8, or shutter speed -- 8 sec to 1/1000. ISO ranges from 80 to 800. You also have something called night landscape mode. The camera weighs 10.1 oz without batteries so it is probably under a pound even with batteries.

Lots of night photos are possible, but probably not star trails. The photos of star trails I have seen, have had exposures of several hours if memory serves. Typically they are taken away from the light dome of cities or towns of any size and there is little if any artificial light present, which allows very long exposures without over exposing. Eight seconds is long enough to get a little blur in the moon and possibly blur a star from a circle to an ellipse. If you are taking buildings or street scenes that are well lit, you may get into sub-second exposures which you can hand hold if you have steady hands. Vibration reduction helps but is not a must. If you had an SLR and wanted star trails with artificially lit structures, some neutral density filters could be used to dim the artificial lights and balance the exposure.

With a light camera, there are many possibilities for adding stability. A well equipped camera store will have a wide selection of regular tripods and other devices -- bean bags, C clamps, table top tripods, and so on. You can put a light camera on a tripod rated for a heavy camera, it is harder to put a heavy camera on a tripod rated for a light camera -- without damaging something. If you are thinking of moving to a more expensive camera, look at the weight of body and lens, then get a tripod capable of holding about twice that. If you are going to stay with the Kodak, almost any tripod can handle the weight easily. A light travel tripod for a small SLR would be a good choice.

Sometimes you can put the camera on a table or a railing, either by itself or on a table top tripod, which allows more flexibility to compose a shot. Table top tripods are usually very light, so you could slip one in your bag and have it available for self portraits as well. Some C clamps have feet that fold out so they can stand as a table top tripod, but they can be clamped to a railing, sign, fence, back of a chair, etc. This makes them useful as you can get more height, still without a lot of weight as one for a point and shoot or small SLR with a short lens can be made of plastic with an aluminum ball arrangement to ease composition. When using the tripod, employ the self timer so you don't introduce vibration by pressing the shutter button. If you have a remote shutter release, employ that instead.

This is not exhaustive but hopefully it touches on some of the possibilities.

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Permalink Reply by Dianne Wiebe on March 8, 2009 at 1:19pm

That is great info! I never even thought of using the timer on the camera!!

I will be upgrading to a DSLR camera by summertime.....it's a toss up between the Canon or Nikon. I know that I will also want to purchase a fish eye lense right away....any other suggestions?

Thanks for your help, you did give me some great ideas to help with those shots! We live out in the country on 16 acres 1.5 miles from town, so light isn't an issue for night shots. I am also dying to get a shot of the Northern lights we get up here!

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Permalink Reply by CameraClicker on March 8, 2009 at 6:36pm

Canon and Nikon both make great hardware. I firmly believe you should get the camera that feels best in your hands and which you can hold most still.

I don't know if the Northern Lights get brighter the further north you go, they seem to fluctuate and are changing almost constantly. I think you would want a good camera support and fast glass, at least f/2.8 and probably a prime lens at f/1.4 or f/1.8. Your Kodak at the wide angle end of the zoom range is f/2.8, so you could experiment with it to get a feel for the exposure required.

Usually a fish eye lens is one of the last to be purchased because it is a specialty lens and anything more than a few feet away appears very small in the photo. If you purchase an SLR with a C sized sensor (1.6x crop factor for Canon, 1.5x crop factor for Nikon) Sigma makes an excellent 10 - 20 mm lens which is not a fish eye, but gives a very wide view and is quite sharp (Canon has a 10 - 22 mm lens which I have not tried). I think you would use it a lot more than a fish eye, for which the appeal might wear off in a few days. Depending upon what town offers, or perhaps the nearest city, you might try renting a fish eye. The only fish eye, I see Canon lists, is a 15 mm lens designed for a full frame sensor. Nikon offers a DX fish eye lens. You can see a sample photo at their web site.

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