Sure they are, it's the same deal.

Better expose possibly, like i said, for some there is a nice happy medium. Properly expose, yes you could, again like i said though, strobe(s) and double exposure would be needed.

 

It's really quite simple. You've under exposed these shots by AT LEAST one full stop. The histogram doesn't lie.

Here's the before histogram. Notice that there is not data for the upper 2/5ths?



Here's a histogram of the same picture with the gamma raised to about 2.0 with contrast added. Obviously I can't take the exact picture that you did, but this is close to how you could have taken it. Notice that there is now data extending across the entire histogram?



Here's a before/after. The image quality would be better if the after shot was taken from the camera, but it illustrates that you could have taken a better shot if you'd have manually adjusted instead of letting the camera think for you:




Now if you had said that you were purposely under exposing to convey the night-time mood, I'd have accepted that. However, you're stating that you couldn't have exposed them any more which is clearly not the case.

 

The car is still under-exposed...

I got the same results as you, except i used a combo of levels/shadow-highlight in photoshop to get there.

Also looks to me like he was taking the shots without a tripod.

 

(sigh).

 

I need a tripod bad. I used some milk crates from behind the school I was taking the pics at to steady the camera. Due to the slower shutter speed for night pics it was really difficult to get any shots w/o them.

 

Sure. But the SUBJECT is at least visible. I'm just showing that it could have been exposed BETTER.

If you don't have some sort of image stabilization, you should really have a tripod to get good night shots.

 

I'm anxiously awaiting your experiment results

Lit background, non-lit subject, i want to see how it's done, without photoshop or double exposure.

 

But i like the original pic better. I kind of like the ultra dark pics.. the focus wasn't to be jsut the car.. but i really liked the background even more.

This threads become a very interesting discussion on taking night shots. I'm also interested to see how the experiment turns out. I'll experiment with the histogram function in photoshop, and see if i can figure out how it works.

Like i said in the original post.. these were just quick insomniac pics. The real ones are to come in the future.

Oh, and thanks to everyone for the compliments.

-hS

 

Beautiful! Time to update your sig pic.

 

I think im gonna leave it as is. It reminds me of where it all began.

 

I'll add in my 2 cents about the night pictures: its much harder to get darker cars to show up with low light. White is easy, for example. The first couple pictures still came out cool, even though it is a little hard to see the car.

 

That's cool. I just wanted to point out that they could have been exposed better.

 

Yes, and i def appreciate the info. More knowledge is always great.

Ok, how exactly do you do that?

 

^That pic is sick.

 

i like them pictures!

 

nice pics, bigger and better light maybe

 

Heres a few more i uploaded this morning. The pics came out pretty blurry, so they only look decent when shrunk.



-hS

 

The first one is sick, too bad it's blurry

 

Do what? Set the camera to expose the lights? Just point your camera at the headlight while it's on and then half hold the button down, this will set the exposure, then take the pic any way you'd like and press the button, wala, a pic taken with the exposure set to the light.

Or you can do it the hard way and go manual and point your camera at the light and set it yourself.

 

Thanks mate, it was my sig for a while on the mazda3 forums, it's creepy looking

 

So do you take two pictures then?
Point at the drivers side headlight, hold it down... move the camera to the middle, snap
then
Point at the passengers side headlight, hold it down... move the camera to the middle, snap

??

 

If you want a picture just like that one what you do is stand where you want the picture from, point the camera at your car, half press the shutter, aim at your car and push the rest down.

 

I'll give this a try tonight, and let you know how it goes.
Thanks for the info.

-hS