- This is - Ben and Peter.
- and today we're in - Brussels.
- and this video is going to be about
- Low light photography.
- In 360 - Oh, yeah.
- When you're exposing your images with a 360 camera,
it's not really that different
than if you were exposing with a DSLR.
- No, it isn't, the only issue is time probably,
because you will have to take a lot more time
to make that correct exposure.
- Yes, exactly, this is where you'll have to go
into manual mode of your 360 camera
and take control of parameters like your shutter speed
is the biggest one, as well as ISO.
Most 360 cameras have the basic ability
to go into manual mode and change those two things,
you can't yet change aperture with 360 cameras,
- No. - However, Peter can
with his DSLR. - Yes.
- So I'm going to be shooting
with point and shoot 360 cameras,
Peter will be shooting with his high end DSLR 360 rig.
The most basic way to shoot a 360 photo at night time
is in auto exposure mode, where you just turn the camera on,
I've activated the self timer here,
I'm gonna put it down on the ground,
press the button and pose.
This is a really basic way of doing it,
but because we have such mixed lighting in this environment,
it's not going to give us perfect exposure,
because the camera is essentially
guessing how to expose this image.
I've got to say, this photo actually looks really good,
I would be happy publishing this on Instagram straight away,
but you know what?
I think I can get it even better.
The issue I'm having here is in the highlights,
while it did expose the shadows really nicely,
the highlights are overblown in a lot of the image,
especially where we have bright lights
around this environment,
which is why I'm going to go into HDR mode,
so I can really expose those lights perfectly,
so they're not gonna create big spotlights in my image,
they're going to blend in
and create more of a harmonious, beautiful image.
Wow, that is a whole lot better,
you can see the bright lights behind me
and all around me, you can see them as circles now,
it's not just a blinding flashlight all around,
so HDR mode gave me an excellent exposure
in this mixed lighting situation.
A lot of 360 cameras have HDR mode,
however if yours doesn't,
you may want to try shooting manually
and blending different exposures together
in a HDR software for computer.
When shooting HDR, it's always a good idea to use a tripod,
especially at night time, because it's going to
automatically do say a one or two second exposure
and if the camera moved even this much,
it's going to completely blur the image and ruin your photo.
- Whatever Ben was doing, I will try to replicate
and do it at a much higher resolution
and for that we need a DSLR camera,
a DSLR camera is a little bit more complicated
to shoot 360s with, if we want to expose this environment,
then I'll put the camera in manual mode
and I'll measure the lights first
and whatever the numbers will be, my ISO, my aperture
and my shutter speed, I will fix them.
I always shoot RAW, so no JPEG for me,
it's RAW and the advantage of RAW, instead of JPEG
is that you have much more control
about the final quality of your image,
there's much more things that you can do
like correct shadows or the highlights or whatever.
So what I'm doing right now is measuring the light
and the Pentax is actually a very good one for that,
I've put it ISO 800, 'cause it's fixed
and when I measure the light currently,
then I can see that the camera will need
1.3 seconds as a shutter speed.
When I put it in HDR mode, I put it also in bracketing mode,
that means that I will take a picture
at minus two, zero and plus two EV,
I can combine those images by merging them in Photoshop
or Lightroom or any other software that can handle that
and then you have the perfect exposed image.
It takes a bit longer
than with a regular point and shoot camera, of course.
- A bit longer, Peter? - Just a bit.
- [Ben] How much is this bit?
How many days? - I'm not going to say days,
if you take an image in one second
and you edit it in a Tiny Planet et cetera,
yeah, you could take an image in one minute,
it takes at least an hour for me,
but the quality is completely different, of course.
Alright, to make it really special,
I'm going to use my magic pole
and put it six meters up in the air again,
but because it's low light,
there's something special going on today,
it's these wires, they call it guy wires
and what it does is it stabilizes the pole at the top,
if you don't do that with low light,
the pole will always swing from left to right,
because there's wind, or there's anything going on here
and this will prevent that, it will stabilize the pole.
- So feast your eyes on greatness coming right now!
- There's a huge difference between
a two second shutter speed,
that you need at low light conditions like now
or if you do it during daylight,
then maybe 1000th of a second and that's enough,
so even if the camera is moving, then it doesn't matter,
'cause I don't know how long the exposure will take,
well, I do know, because I set it manually,
but I don't count it.
I touch the pole and I can feel the vibration,
(laughing) it's going to sound funny,
you can feel actually the mirror clicking up and down
and then I know when it's ready.
- [Ben] You feel a vibration on your pole?
- Yeah. - I know that feeling, Peter,
I know that feeling. - It sounds too funny
- I was having a chat with Peter on Facebook
the other day and he showed me
one of the photos he took at nighttime
inside a train station and it was completely empty
and then Peter told me, "You know what?
"There were actually hundreds of people
in this train station
and I used a little magic trick and made them disappear."
So Peter, how did you achieve this magic trick?
- Oh, now I need to explain my trick.
Well, it's pretty simple actually,
when people are moving and passing your lens,
then with a long exposure, they magically disappear,
so the longer the exposure,
the less people you will see in the image
and it's a trick that I used
and that I will try to do over again here in Brussels.
- To illustrate this point,
I'm going to photo bomb Peter's photo,
I'm going to run around
like I've escaped from a mental asylum
and you will see me disappear.
Ooh!
Woo!
- [Peter] Yep, we got it, wanna see it?
- Now that's genius at work.
Alright, we are done at that location,
onto the next one. - Yes!
I've got something special for you.
- Yeah, where are we going?
-We're going to the most famous statue of Belgium.
- Yeah? - Yeah.
- Sounds big and epic. - It is, it is,
- Yeah, yeah. - you're going to love it.
- Alright, let's go, okay. - Yeah.
- Alright, can't wait to...
- Okay, Tiny Planet guy, what do you think?
- I think you're on your own. - Alright.
Let's do this.
- The next cool trick I'm gonna show you how to do
is called a light painting
and this is where we put our camera into manual mode
and we use a handy flashlight
and we paint pictures in the sky.
To do this, you'll need a 360 camera with manual exposure,
where you're able to change the shutter speed
of your camera, it's a really simple idea,
as we did before, we're going to need a slow shutter speed,
to do a light painting, I think you need a minimum
of about five seconds, ideally about 10,
so you have enough time to run around with your flashlight,
our flashlight is like our paintbrush,
we can paint anything we want in the sky,
we can do a pretty pattern, you could do a thunderbolt,
if you wanted or you can write something.
I don't think I've ever gotten a light painting
right on the first attempt,
so you will need a lot of patience to do this effect.
So I've gone into manual mode right here
and it's always a good idea
to keep your ISO as low as possible,
this will avoid your image
being too noisy in the darker areas
and with our shutter speed,
you want to change it to five seconds plus,
I'm going to do a test shot right now at five seconds
and see what the exposure looks like.
If everything is exposed pretty well,
I know that I've chosen the right settings
to do my light painting, so let's give it a go.
So looking at that, it seems a tiny bit overexposed,
you do wanna shoot in a relatively dark environment,
if you want to make the most out of your light painting,
because it means you're gonna
leave your shutter open for longer,
therefore you have more time to paint your picture,
so I'm going to go down to a four second exposure now
and this is my first attempt at painting in the air,
I'm also gonna activate the self timer,
because this is going to give me time
to put my phone down out of shot,
so I can get in position
to start the first bit of the painting.
I'm gonna try writing 360.
It actually turned out okay,
I don't mind the exposure there,
but my handwriting clearly needs work.
So I'm going to try that again,
but I'm going to keep my numbers smaller
and I'm going to write a bit higher in the air,
so the light from the torch conflicts a bit less
with my archway here, three, two, one.
Oh, getting there, getting it, that looks really good,
so I'll try that one more time,
except this time, I'm going to angle the flashlight down,
so the camera has a better view of the light,
it's essentially like doing this
at the moment it's seeing this.
Sometimes it can be a little hard
to get your threes and sixes the right way round,
'cause you have to write everything in reverse.
Yeah, that's not bad, my three is a little bit small,
but I think it's turned out well enough
for you to get an idea of what you can do
with this kind of effect.
This is now where you might wanna get creative
and try all kinds of cool patterns in the sky,
so I'm just gonna do it, I'm gonna wave this thing
around like crazy and just see what happens
and there it is, not very artistic,
but it's given me some ideas for some cool things I can do.
Okay. (laughing)
There we go, we have a goalpost,
that turned out pretty cool.
The key for light paintings
is doing longer exposures than four seconds,
I know just the person to do that.
Peter, what are we doing now?
- Well, we're going to do also a little bit
of light painting, but from a higher distance.
Okay, the DSLR is set up, it's up there,
we're going to do an eight second exposure
and Ben is doing the painting with light, go for it.
- [Ben] Photo bomber!
Photo bomber!
- We're going to do a crazy light painting of Ben,
- We're gonna turn Ben into an angel,
just in case he wasn't one already.
- Two. - He is.
- [Peter] One.
- Hey, that's really good.
- Well, Peter, it's been fun, where can they find you?
- They can still find me on LittlePlanet.be
- You can also find him here
and find me here.
Until next time, keep capturing your world in 360,
get out there, shoot some light paintings,
shoot some long exposures at nighttime,
because there's a whole new world of opportunity
for your 360 photos and tiny planets
And we will see you in the next video!