Help with a shot

thecommander

Hi,

I took this shot last year the night before the launch of space shuttle atlantis.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/complexvisuals/4604984409/

Its the shuttle sitting on the pad, lit up by huge xenon lights.

He light beams in the sky a faintly visible to the naked eye but come up really well on camera. The problem as you can see is that the shuttle itself if blown out completely.

I'm thinking of heading back over for another launch in April and would love to nail the shot. Any suggestions on how to get the perfect shot?

It was taken with a 300mm lense, on a Canon 350 from about 12 miles away on a tripod.

Paulw

You might have to take and combine multiple exposures to get the image you want. Not an easy task.

daycent

You would have to bracket your shots and do some form of exposure blending/HDR in post. I'm not sure if you have Live View on the 350D, which could come in handy in this kind of situation....

Basically, you want to expose for the whole scene (like your pic in the link), then expose for the shuttle, and blend these in photoshop.




Edit: what Paul said

thecommander

No live view, or autobracketing. Might connect to my laptop so I wont have to touch camera once set up.

Promac

Try this tutorial for a step-by-step on taking and processing multiple exposures:


http://thejoyoflandscapes.blogspot.com/2010/10/exposure-blending-part-1-why-to-auto.html

thecommander

thanks everyone.

mdebets

Did you try to do a 1 Picture HDR? It's basically that you create 2 copies of the picture, picture 1 to corrected the exposure for the shuttle and picture 2 to correct the exposure for the beams and overlay them.
If you have Lightroom 3, you could also try and brush over the shuttle with the selective brush and reduce the exposure for the shuttle only.

thecommander

mdebets wrote: »

Did you try to do a 1 Picture HDR? It's basically that you create 2 copies of the picture, picture 1 to corrected the exposure for the shuttle and picture 2 to correct the exposure for the beams and overlay them.
If you have Lightroom 3, you could also try and brush over the shuttle with the selective brush and reduce the exposure for the shuttle only.

Its blown out on the raw file. Beyond saving.

daycent

thecommander wrote: »

No live view, or autobracketing. Might connect to my laptop so I wont have to touch camera once set up.

I wouldn't worry too much about that. You should be able to align them handy enough after if there is any movement. I'd recommend shooting in manual. Expose "normally" for the first shot, then increase the shutter speed (a lot) to darken the shot for the second exposure. You'll only be turning one wheel on the camera so it shouldn't move much.

Trial and error for the second exposure should help, keep an eye on the histogram. Or make sure your highlight warning is turned on and experiment until the 'blinkies' on the LCD stop! Just make sure you're adjusting your shutter speed and not aperture.

Should be easy enough to combine exposures after in Photoshop using masks.

5uspect

The 350D can indeed autobracket.

daycent

5uspect wrote: »

The 350D can indeed autobracket.

I'd be surprised if a stop or two either side would do it though. I'd say there's more like 5 or 6 stops in the difference judging by the OP's original photo.

Promac

A couple of stops either side with the bracket plus a few stops either side of that again with RAW files should do the job.

5uspect

daycent wrote: »

I'd be surprised if a stop or two either side would do it though. I'd say there's more like 5 or 6 stops in the difference judging by the OP's original photo.

True, but you'd be surprised by how much dynamic range you can extract from the logarithmic response at the highlight end of a digital sensor.

EDIT: Why not just get a hard grad ND filter?

thecommander

5uspect wrote: »

EDIT: Why not just get a hard grad ND filter?

What will that do for me?

5uspect

thecommander wrote: »

What will that do for me?

It'll reduce the light the camera sees in a particular region. They're typically used in landscape photography to prevent the sky from blowing out. They use them a lot in Top Gear for example.

They're also what everyone used before HDR came around.

So if you put one with a hard gradient on your camera upside down and adjust it's position so that the shuttle is darkened and the beams exposed as normal you may get the desired result.

SetOverSet

I'd shoot two exposures - one exposed for highlights only, then one normal with highlights burnt out and combine them in LR/Enfuse