Need Help...Outdoor Holiday Lighting

[jdfaith]

A friend asked me to photograph his house to capture a pretty elaborate lighting arrangement (he said it gives the Griswald's a serious run for their money).

Would anyone have suggestions regarding photographing the house to best capture the holiday lighting? It's Florida, so weather's not an issue. Nor is equipment (Pentax K10D with a wide assortment of lenses). Thanks!

John

[ShepsMom]

Tripod is a must as you will be shooting in the dark. Low shutter speed with wide open Aperture should do the trick. Make sure you post them here. I will be making my rounds for x-mas lighting displays closer to the holiday. We have one guy who has beautiful set-up for the last xxx years. Music and light all in sync, they even have an organ in the garage to do it with. Quiet impressive!

[JSimonian]

:agree
Except, since you are going to use a tripod, use a narrow f/stop to get more of a star pattern on the lights and since it will be an even longer shutter speed, it should blur any passers by and that kind of thing.

My suggestion is to frame the shot and shoot it both ways. That way you have alternates!

Enjoy the holidays!

[rustic]

Depending on just how bright the lights are, you might want to try shooting both in actual darkness, and in kinda dark twilight, where the lights stand out, but there is still a little bit of ambient light on everything else.


Many of the best "night" shots are actually from twilight....


Post the results!

[pathfinder]

You may find you don't really need a tripod, but just something to stabilize your hand a bit. I used an IS lens....

Try ISO 800 f4.5 1/15th sec 24mm That is what I used for this shot that has been previously posted..

I usually find I need about -2/3 to - 1 1/3 stops of exposure compensation when metering with Evaluative Metering with a Canon 20D

http://Pathfinder.smugmug.com/photos/48702099-M.jpg

[LiquidAir]

As long as his display is sitting still, I'd keep the ISO low and use a tripod, mirror lockup, the delay timer and an aperture around f/8-f/11. There's no point in fighting camera shake if you don't have to. With good technique, multi second exposures can look great. If it is windy or you are shooting a moving display, you'll want as fast a shutter speed as you can tolerate. Using a wide angle lens, a fast aperture and an ISO around 800 (as pathfinder suggests) is the way to go if subject motion is going to be a problem.

As for exposure, the key is to push it as bright as you can while preserving color in the lights. You'll probably run into trouble blowing out the red channel first, so if you have an RGB histogram, use it. Your luminance histogram is near useless when shooting a red heavy scene.

Some other thoughts. Christmas lights are low temperature incandescents. The proper white balance for them will likely be in the 2800K range. If you use one of the WB presets, tungsten is probably the best choice unless the scene also includes elements lit by flourescents. If there are flourescents, I'd WB for them and let the incandescents fall where they may.