We have been asked many times, how do you get the Deep Blue Sky pictures in your night scenes. It is all in the timing. See you next week for the next tip.
Just kidding of course.
It is all in the timing though. Too get the deep blue in the sky with a night scene first you need to take the picture at night. After sunset there is about a half of an hour where it is still bright out. Towards the end of that half hour it starts getting pretty dark out but if you look at the sky you will see that it is still pretty light. What you need to do is wait until the sun goes down below the horizon far enough that it is dark outside but still a hint of light still in the sky. (when I say a hint of light, I mean just a hint. The sky at this time will look dark to your eyes probably.) So now the sun has set and we have waited half an hour. It is looking pretty dark out and now you have about fifteen minutes to get your night time blue sky photo. If you wait more than that there will be no light shining into the sky from the recently set sun to light the sky blue and your sky will turn out black.
You will need a tripod or some thing to set your camera on to compose your image. You will not be able to hand hold the camera for this because of the slow shutter speed you will need.
For this photograph of Tempe Town Lake I used our 5d with a 17-35mm sigma lens @ 17mm. I held the shutter open for two seconds with an f-stop of 9. I had my iso at 400. I could have gone with a higher iso and lower f-stop so I could speed up the shutter but I wanted the lights from ASU stadium (on the far left of the image) and the tall buildings next to it in focus and the bridge as sharp as possible.
If you have a question regarding your camera or photography in general, feel free to ask it here, or shoot us an email!
I can't wait to try this! Hoping to catch a spare minute with the camera in my hand ... sometime soon!
Posted by: Anita | August 25, 2010 at 06:53 AM