Mice007's blog

Sokat gondolkoztam ezen a lépésen, de több okból végülis úgy döntöttem, hogy a blogon ezentúl magyarul fogok írni, ha van valami említésre méltó.
A legfőbb oka, hogy a bluehoursite-al, fotózással kapcsolatos dolgokat az új drupal rendszer óta helyben tudom publikálni, illetve a facebook csoportban is tudok kisebb híreket postolni.

A blogot lassan át fogom alakítani magyar nyelvűre, illetve pár hasznos dolgot innen át fogok emelni a bluehoursite-ra, szóval kicsit átszervezem a rendszert, ami az elmúlt év tapasztalatait figyelembe véve még sosem ártott a már poros és ütött-kopott dolgoknak.

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I’ve decided to continue my blog in my native language and to post English content only at bluehoursite.com or its facebook group.

So spring is here finally. I can’t wait to visit some nice places and take photos. A lot happened in the past few months…

I made some web2 additions to the bluehoursite.com and it seems my visitors like them. One is the flickr gallery on the main page. This is a filmstrip of some random images from a blue hour group I created in flickr. So if anyone assigns a photo to this group the site will put it on the front page. There are already more than 50 members and around 150 amazing photos!

You can visit the the flick group here.

The other stuff is just a facebook page for the site to spread some news and updates if anything happens around the site.

Yesterday we also launched the new web site of Lavalys (EVEREST). This is a brand new website using drupal with several web2 stuffs like blog, twitter..etc.

So this isn’t a boring spring, thats for sure. I like more and more the new Apple iPad too. I hope I can try one soon. I’m not sure when it will be available here but this looks like a great internet browsing device. Also great to show photos and movies to grandparents

Not just the dog and stuffs but I made a big decision about bluhour.com site. Due the lack of search engine hits I decided to fix a mistake I may made when registered the domain name for it. So today I registered a new domain and now the site is available under: www.bluehoursite.com. Of course I’m keeping the old domain available too. I hope it will help increasing the hits and more and more people will find it using google for example.

Yes! Finally I replaced the bluhour.com website to a brand new one. The look & feel is similar I made a year ago but now it has a nice content management system (drupal) int he background.

What does this means to you? Well a lot!

Now I’ll be able to put articles on the site about digital photography, especially about night photography. I have plans to write some nice How To’s too. Finally I have the platform for this.

The site is currently running as Beta version and I still tweaking the settings and design but I hope it works good for all who used it before.

here is the NEW BLUHOUR.COM, have fun.

A picture of the old site

I’ve opened a discussion forum under bluhour.com about night photography. I hope it will be useful and it can create a little user community around this site and blue hour photography. I think it is a good platform to share ideas, technical problems, and photos with each other.

It is also a great way for beginners to post questions, I’ve already posted a few technical stuff from my blog but also I’ll answer questions there  too.

The forum is available at forum.bluhour.com

Taking the photo is only the first half of the process. If we have enough luck and good weather conditions the photo will be nice but it will also contain a lot of possibilities, especially if the camera supports and we used RAW file format. This feature is available in a few compact cameras but it is exists in most bridge and all DSLR cameras. For blue hour photos it is highly recommended to select this option. I’m using Adobe Lightroom to develop my images but I’ll try to give common hints so it will be possible to use it in all other RAW software too including the programs came with the camera.
Before we start the software it is a must to have your monitor calibrated. There is an easy and cheap way to do this using a calibration image (Click here to verify or calibrate your monitor). Of course this is not perfect but it can be enough for non-professional work. Mac users can calibrate the monitor using the built in calibration software, it is pretty good. As I saw on a screen shot Windows 7 will contain this feature too (finally).

So after you finished with the test screens and you can use your eyes again load the RAW file (or JPG) into your favorite RAW processor or image editor. The most important setting is the image brightness and white balance. To the best results with a RAW file you should fine tune the exposure correction until the sky turns into a dark blue color. If you need to apply more than 1 EV in any directions (-1 if the image was too bright, +1 if it was too dark) then you’re starting to over process your photo and this will result in a lower quality like increased image noise, overexposed city lights, bad colors. In this case next time you should be more careful when setting the on camera exposure correction before taking the photo.

After we found the right image brightness and our sky looks dark enough it is time to play with White balance. For the good results it should be around 4500-5000K. If you want to increase the blue colors in your photo try to reduce the color temperature but don’t forget to check the other colors and light sources. City lights are usually warm lights and produces yellow-orange colors.

If you have a JPG file then most cases you should look for Levels or Curves setting in your photo editing software. You can fine tune the brightness of your image by lowering the brightness of the dark colors.

On the left screen shot you can see the Levels setting for a blue hour photo. The left part of the histogram represents the dark colors of the image. For a blue hour and a night photo it is normal to have a graph like this. I’ve marked this area with red and you can darken your image by moving the small black button to the right. Also if you find the bright colors (like city lights) too dark on your image you should try to adjust the other side of the graph by moving the button – marked with green to the right. Just make sure to make minor adjustments to avoid increased noise and too bright (white) spots.

On the other screen shot you can see the Curves options. This works similar as the levels but you have to adjust a straight diagonal line into a curve to modify the image parameters. Put an anchor point on the lower left part of the line and move it down carefully to get a darker image and put an another anchor point close to the center of the line and move it up to increase the bright parts of the photo.
With these tools you can achieve a really good, dramatic photo.

First I wanted to write down everything about developing a photo in one post but just decided to publish this as the first part of the process to keep the length a bit limited. 

I hope it helped a bit to play with the results and get out the best of the image you took. Any advice or question would be appreciated so I can explain things more detailed if needed.

Finally I had a little time to do some updates on bluhour.com. I received several requests about morning blue hours so I’ve added it. I’m sure I will need to test and fine tune this but I hope it is already accurate.

Another major update is the mobile version of the site. Again, several requests received about this feature too especially to support iPhone. I’m an iPhone owner too so I put this feature on the top of my priority list. You can access the mobile version at mobile.bluhour.com.

Thank you for the lot of positive feedbacks and great ideas!

Many of my visitors asked me to write about the blue hour or night photo shooting. So let’s see:

You need a camera (I’m using digital camera so I’ll focus on this in my guide) a good and strong tripod and of course a good place to take photos. 

The camera

The three most common types are compact, bridge and DSLR cameras. I’m not going into this more detailed but if you’re interested here is an article about this. All bridge and DLSR cameras are capable of blue hour and night shooting.
If you have compact type, you have make sure it is able to take 6-8 sec long exposures (night photography picture mode or with manual controls) and it has some exposure correction capabilities. Last thing is not a must, you can do it in a photo editor later but you’ll lose quality. Also there must be a setting to completely turn off the flash unit, it is not needed.

Today I took some sample photos to show you the difference between a photo at the end of the sunset, a photo during blue hour and a late blue hour (almost completely dark) photo. I also took a photo with phone to show my setup. It is nothing fancy or magic as you can see.

Taking the photo

So when everything is ready and you’re in time then find the correct composition. Always take attention to the whole picture, not just the center. Decide what you want to include in the photo, try to avoid all poles close to you, trees, or bright light sources. These can ruin your photo easily. If you checked the main subject, and all four corners then setup the exposure. The best if you have manual controls so you can set the aperture around f7-f10 and the exposure time around 1-5 seconds with a low ISO (100-200). Use the exposure meter in your camera to find the exact values depending on the actual light level. The right value is between -1EV and -2EV. If you don’t have manual controls just setup exposure correction to -1.5EV and take a test photo to see the results. If you find it too bright then apply -2EV or if it is too dark then -1EV but keep in mind the LCD screen of your camera is not really accurate.

Examples

Below you can find three examples. I took all photos in the same day, the first picture is about 10 minutes before and the third is about 20 minutes after the middle blue hour shot. So as you can see the right timing is a must to catch the best photo, this is why I created bluhour.com. 

In my next post I’ll write about the photo editing to make images really nice and stunning.

Drop me a comment if you liked this post or if you have any questions.

So, it is over and it was great to see a lot of visitors on my site and all the positive feedbacks here and there and also special thanks for the good ideas about the future improvements. I’m going to continue the development and put several fixes and minor updates ASAP to make the site more user friendly especially the location change feature.
Also I have many ideas about the photo contest feature and gallery but this will take a bit longer time to develop. I hope bluhour.com will be a portal soon with much more features than just pointing the right time to take blue hour photos.

Thanks to the Kim Komando Show my little website bluhour.com has been awarded to the Cool Site of the Day! I had the idea about this website several months (maybe a year already, wow) ago and quickly registered the domain then put the whole idea on hold. I’ve started working on this project during fall and finally I’ve put it online in November. I have several ideas “on paper” and I hope I can finish them soon and also I got ideas from my visitors too (thanks) so I’ll introduce a phone version without the flash stuff soon and also working the idea on a photo contest thing so my visitors will be able to share their best photos to other users around the world. 

So thanks again to Kim Komando Show for this great start in 2009 and all of my visitors for using my little site