Tips for shooting fun fair at night

[petrolhead]

One of the largest fun fairs is at our town this week and I would like to get so good night shots.

What seeting do you suggest for getting lights streaking on big wheel etc

[Thompsunshine]

I want to find out too! And, I think you should post a couple of your photographs after the fair! I wanna see! :-D

[PIXI_666]

bulb setting, tripod, AND EXPERIMENT with your cable release...1 second.....right up to 5 seconds and sometimes even more or less....its a matter of experimentation with night shots - they are very easy ones mastered...
Set your camera to f5.6 on ISO 100, focus to infinity.

Del

[petrolhead]

This is probably a dumb question but is there a special way to focus ti infinity

[StewartR]

I think the most important aspect is to get the timing right. Things like fun
fairs always look better if there's still a little (but not too much!) natural light in the sky. But it's tricky to judge when is exactly right. (I'm sure if I did this all the time - and if I were organised, which I'm not! - then I'd work out the best time by taking meter readings from the sky, but I've never done that.) So my advice would be to start shooting just after the sun goes down, say around 9:30, and be prepared to take the same shot 2 or 3 or 4 times until about 11:00 by which tinme it will be dark.

I'll try to dig out some examples I shot recently to show the difference it makes.

[petrolhead]

Cheers Stewart

[StewartR]

OK, here are a few examples of the effect that the sky has as the evening progresses. I couldn't find any suitable shots of a fun-fair, but I think these illustrate the general effect just as well.

These photos were shot on June 7th in Vancouver. Sunset was at 21:02.

Take 1 - 21:06, 1/4 sec @ f/3.5
f:\Stewart's photos\2006\SIR-D\SIR-D2006-0203s.jpg

Take 2 - 21:41, 4 secs @ f/3.5
F:\Stewart's photos\2006\SIR-D\SIR-D2006-0210s.JPG

Take 3 - 21:51, 6 secs @ f/3.5
F:\Stewart's photos\2006\SIR-D\SIR-D2006-0216s.JPG

Take 4 - 22:01, 8 secs @ f/3.5
F:\Stewart's photos\2006\SIR-D\SIR-D2006-0220s.JPG

Personally I think the 3rd of these is by far the best. But the time interval from the 2nd to the 3rd was only 10 minutes, and from the 3rd to the 4th only 10 minutes again. All the best action really took place from about 45 minutes to an hour after sunset. Vancouver is at pretty much the same latitude as the UK, so you'll probably have about the same amount of twilight as I did that day. (Unless it's overcast - I have no idea how that will affect the fading of the light. Make sure you book a nice day for the fun-fair!)

[StewartR]

Oops! There must be a way of attaching more than one photo. But for the time being, here's Take 2:

F:\Stewart's photos\2006\SIR-D\SIR-D2006-0210s.JPG

EDIT: Ooops again. Better go read the help section...

[StewartR]

Hmmm. How about if I put all four images into one file and try attaching that?

F:\Stewart's photos\2006\Vancouver night collage.JPG

EDIT: OK, I'm stumped. If anybody can advise me how to do this, I'd be very grateful.

[petrolhead]

The reason you can't see them is that they are pointing to your F drive on your PC hehe :)

No problem. They need to be either uploaded onto here or hosted on another site and then the image code would look like this for the hosting on another site

[img]http://www.thedomain.com/thepicture.jpg[(/)img] delete the round brackets

I am about to go and have just relised I forgot which would be the best lens to use:

17-85 f/4-5.6
70-300/f4.5-5.6
300 f/4

Probably too late and I will just have to experiment

[DavidW]

If you are trying to post a JPEG that's less than 800 pixels in the longest dimension, and no more than 100KBytes in size (which are the guidelines for the forum), press Go Advanced, then Manage Attachments. Make sure that the attachment has uploaded and there's not an error at the top of the screen before posting the message.



David

[StewartR]

Ok, here goes again. The JPG is 702x471 and 64kB. The sequence of the shots should be obvious:

Take 1 (21:06) ..... Take 3 (21:51)
.....
Take 2 (21:41) ..... Take 4 (22:01)

EDIT:Thanks DavidW !

[PIXI_666]

Focusining to infinity - turn your focus ring to full focus (to the symbol that looks like a sideways 8)

[DavidW]

Be careful - on many lenses you can focus past infinity (which looks like a sideways 8) - Del got caught out by the forum turning 8) into a smiley. The ability to focus past infinity exists to allow for situations such as temperature affecting the lens, and shooting infra-red (with a suitable filter or modified camera).



David

[PIXI_666]

hahaha oops...yes 8 i mean 8! not smiley face 8) hehe!

[petrolhead]

Had an interesting evening. Supprising how many other keen photographers I bumped into.

I will post a link to the pics in the Critque section

Thanks for the help guys

BTW I ended up using the 17-85 IS f/4-5.6 lens

[petrolhead]

Here are the photos - http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=185429