From the course: Landscape Photography: Wide-Angle Lenses

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Using a wide-angle lens at night

Using a wide-angle lens at night

From the course: Landscape Photography: Wide-Angle Lenses

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Using a wide-angle lens at night

- Wide angle lenses are the preferred lens for shooting night photography, and the number one reason why is called the 500 rule. Let me explain what that is. The stars are moving at night, and any long exposure an pick up star trails, and so the key is how can we make an exposure which really makes the stars appear static, which is naturally how we view the stars. So we have to figure this out, and the way to do it is to take the number 500 and divide it by your focal length. Let's say you have a 24 millimeter lens, which is a wide angle lens. It's on the longer side of wide, but it's still wide. 500 divided by 24 gives you a 21-second exposure. If you go wider, let's say 16 mil, you're around 30 seconds. 14 mil, you're around 35 seconds. So you can see the wider you are, the longer the exposure can be. So if I'm all of a sudden shooting at 50 millimeters, then I'm down to 10 seconds, and the reality is it's so dark out, and we need to get as much light to hit our sensor as possible…

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