Night Landscapes

Link to Luminous Landscape article on night landscape shooting


In my opinion, no natural setting on earth is ever quite as romantic without the stars, moon, and other celestial bodies dancing overhead.  Unfortunately, capturing our favorite night scenes properly can be a real problem, as proper light is to photography as water is to fish.  This article talks about how digital photography has changed that; now, we can see the instant results of our shooting and tinker accordingly.  For someone who would love to get some night shots over the coming months, my eyes perked open with great interest.

Of particular note was the "Rule of 600" that the author discussed.  When one needs to determine the longest possible exposure for any set focal length lens, the quickest method of doing so is to set the focal length as a denominator beneath 600.  The resulting figure will give you a rough estimate as to what your longest exposure should be (i.e. the author was using the Canon D60 with a focal length of 22mm; thus 600/22 = 27.27 repeating, or just under 30 seconds).

In the end, the author concluded that the Canon D60, with its 30-second exposure (the longest possible before the stars begin to streak) can take passable (if not wonderful) night landscapes, and provided an example of Ontario's Lake Muskoka beneath the Big Dipper.  The image was parallel with the type of night landscapes I hope to shoot, and thus I was willing to look closer at Canon's D60 despite its somewhat restrictive price range.