A couple of night photographer friends and extreme light painters are putting on a weekend workshop in the California desert at the Pearsonville Junk Yard on March 7th and 8th so if you’re interested in learning about light painting be sure to check it out. If you’re wondering why I say “extreme” just ask Troy to tell you about some of the abandoned brothel’s in the Nevada desert and you’ll probably think I was watering down my description.

I met Joe and Troy at the Nocturnes Night Photography Conference in 2006 at Mono Lake and I have no doubt this workshop will be a great experience for anyone who attends. Troy Paiva has published two well received books about light painting, Lost America and Night Vision, so if you’re not familiar they’re definitely worth a read.

If you’re interested you can find more information about the workshop on Troy’s web site: http://www.lostamerica.com/workshop.html.

Cedar Flat, Lake Tahoe, California

I don’t really consider this an example of what most people think of when they hear the term “light painting” but I, with the help of my brother who didn’t complain about standing in the heavy snow for a couple hours, did add light from an external source (flashlight) to “light” the falling snow so I suppose it counts.

The exposure above was shot at ISO 3200 using the 5D Mark II and is another example of how being able to reliably use such a high ISO allows some exposures that weren’t possible with my Rebel XT.

Here’s another example from the night before using ISO 400 and a longer exposure…

Pier, Lake Tahoe, California

Although the conditions don’t make for a pleasant shooting experience I really like the results so I’ll be back outside the next time we get a big snow here in Seattle!

520 Interchange, Montlake Neighborhood, Seattle

Night photography in the snow has been a great opportunity to try out the higher ISO ranges of the 5D2. While it is possible to produce smooth, nearly noiseless images using longer exposures, image averaging, noise reduction, etc, I wanted to be able to use shorter exposure times to capture the falling snow. Even moderately long exposures (anything over 1/20 sec) would blur the snow enough to make it look like a mist or fog so I needed to use a combination of high ISO (3200 in this case) and f4.0 (the widest aperture on my lens) to shorten the exposures. Even so the image was slightly underexposed but I didn’t want to extend the exposure time or jump to ISO 6400 (though in hindsight I probably should have used ISO 6400 because an image exposed to the right at ISO 6400 would result in better quality than an underexposed image at ISO 3200 pushed to match the former).

In any case, at 100% there is undoubtedly “noise” - partly a result of zero noise reduction (DPP 3.5) but more likely the result of the exposure leaving the sky relatively underexposed as well as additional post processing (to brighten the sky area while controlling contrast in the lamps) which generally accentuates noise. However, considering the intent and particularly the image itself the noise is hardly distracting and a little graininess actually adds to the moodiness of the scene.

I feel like I’m walking a fine line between two potential interpretations of my comments (you could see one or the other in the 5D2/D700 debates). The one I want to mention directly is that it may appear that I am making excuses for the noise by claiming that it should be expected given the circumstances (even though it should). In fact I am actually very impressed by the results and the upper registers of the ISO range far exceed what my Rebel XT was capable of - it is unlikely this would have been a successful image with the XT because of the additional noise at ISO 1600 in addition to the increased the exposure times (see above).

In any case, I would not hesitate to print this image and I’m pretty sure it would make a beautiful print if done correctly.

A side note - I think it’s odd that the term “noise” has such a negative connotation while “grain” is considered natural and organic despite the fact that in many cases they’re not visibly different. The luminance noise in many of the newer dslrs is much more natural looking and not really an issue for most images even at what used to be considered unusable ISO’s (unless of course you’re using ACR to do RAW processing).