It's Just Physics!
I was just on my back deck looking at the garden and thinking about how wonderful it looks now that the trees are full with leaves, and wanting to take a photograph of it.
I have never managed to take a picture at night with any success, and I don't believe any average photographer has either.
How hard can the technology be? The mechanics of the eye are fairly well understood, so what's the problem? Where are the cameras that can take pictures with results just like I see them?
What am I missing?
1 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: It's Just Physics!.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.steve-lacey.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-bar.cgi/516
I think's it 's to do with shutter synch. My brother's a photographer and he tries to explain it to me but as you say it's physics. Essentially I think most camers sync the flash with the shutter opening, but for night shots you want the flash synched with the shutter closing; the aperture opens long enough to allow some background to appear, then you get 'fill-in' flash. Another problem is if you taking a photograph of people at night, they ALWAYS move when the flash goes off, and usually you have a second or so more of the shutter being open. Third problem is that it is v. hard to keep camera steady for that amount of time; my bro uses a tripod (or a wall) even for night-time 'snaps'.
Willie
The dynamic range of the human eye is quite incredible. My high school physics teacher claimed there is experimental evidence that proves the human eye is capable of detecting a few tens of photons. Current consumer electronic light detectors come nowhere near as close.
The best you can do for night photography right now is to get a solid tripod, switch the flash off and capture a image using a long exposure. The resulting picture can be very close to what the human eye sees. Anything moving in the scene will of course appear to be blurred, which may or may not be desirable.