Enchanted Forest – Photography tips

Heading along to this at the weekend and wanted to get some good snappys with the SLR

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Any tips on settings etc?

essentially nightime photography of an illuminated forest, so high iso setting?

I will be using my 24-105mm f/4 lens (on crop body) and I usually shoot in AV mode. (apurture priority).

This is the kind of thing I want to replicate.

No help on the photography but my cousin did the lights 🙂

Depending on the camera you might want to avoid super high iso’s as it might produce quite a noisey image. You’ll need to go fully manual or shutter priority. You’ll be dealing with long exposures, (do we still say bulb?) so you’ll want a good sturdy tripod and perhaps a sandbag or something to stabilise it. Exposures would probably be over a second anyway.

Depending on the amount of light/time you shoot you might get away with stabilisng the camera against a tree/fence/rock, or shooting from the shoulder leaning against the same but it won’t be ideal unless you’re camera has very good low light performance (like an A7S).

Use a good tripod that doesn’t wobble, then you won’t have to crank the ISO up and do a longer exposure instead

I’d start with long exposure, good tripod as mentioned above, lock up the mirror and shoot with a self-timer to reduce any shake to a minimum.

I took my Panasonic TZ10, set it to nighttime (incl flash) on a tripod and let it do the rest. Amazed by the results. You will have a great night. Dont’ get hung up on the photos though, as you need time to enjoy the evening. (I got in trouble for taking photos too much when I should have been entertaining the kids)

Tripod and cable release, it’s no good having a sturdy tripod if your hand is making the whole setup wobble around.
Long exposures and set the aperture to whatever you want regarding depth of field.

A quick look at a few from where I went to one of those shows f1.4 ISO 3200 and 1/25 hand held on a full frame body gave results I was happy enough with (from raw).

This kind of thing:

There are lots of people milling around in the dark so a tripod is a lot of hassle.

Another from the year before on what’s now an antique apsc camera (f1.7 iso 1600 1/10 ):

I did have a large print of this on the wall for a while.

I’ve been a bunch of times, with varying degrees of success! You can get away without a tripod if you have a steady hand. I have photos at ISO800 and 1/6s, and the noise isn’t too bad because there’s so much light around. There are also wooden handrails around the loch which you can perch the camera on for longer exposures.

That said, you’ll get better photos with a tripod 😉 Every time I’ve been, the forest/loch has been very sheltered so you don’t need a sturdy tripod or sandbag! Just set the 2s timer on the shutter (or use a remote) and you’ll be fine. I’d say use aperture priority, set ISO 400 (or less), aperture to f5 – 6.3 and you’ll probably get some longish exposures, depending what the camera’s deciding to meter for. If it’s windy, you can drop the aperture and/or bump the ISO to get much faster shutter speeds and avoid blurring of the trees.

Other than that, have fun, and show us your photos when you’re done! I’m going up next week and looking forward to it 🙂

What I found tricky was getting a good stance with tripod as there are so many people flowing around the narrow paths continuously. Ended up taking a few quick shots just using the tripod as a monopod which was good enough for say 1/20th shutter speed.

No flash unless you want to light up some close up trees.

I too would use aperture mode with average exposure metering and moderate ISO.

I think my best tip would be to pay attention to the sky around dusk/sunset this week and use that to figure out the best time to go. I find a bit of light in the sky makes the pictures way more interesting as opposed to totally dark.

And mess about a bit – try painting with the lights. How many perfect pictures does one need? I got some (what I think are) cool pictures by panning/wobbling/twist the camera or rotating the zoom ring with slower shutter speeds.

jemima – Member

I think my best tip would be to pay attention to the sky around dusk/sunset this week and use that to figure out the best time to go. I find a bit of light in the sky makes the pictures way more interesting as opposed to totally dark.

Not been, but scrolling down this thread this is exactly what I was thinking. can you get there before dusk & capture a bit of dark blue in the sky still. It will help to define the edges of the trees, better than relying on the lights alone & will (in my opinion) make the images more interesting.

Also, as suggested don’t just try to get sharp images. Do some stuff like zooming through the exposure, setting a 1s or longer exposure and spinning round.

How about laying on the floor & looking ‘up’ the trunks of the trees into the canopy, rather than just shooting from a standing position?

As requested, some of my snappys.

Highly recommended, my little one loved it. All I could hear from over my shoulders was “oh daddy, wow wow wow!!”, made the trip worthwhile 🙂

Music was great too.

That looks amazing and my lad would love it, shame its too far for a day trip.

Well worth the trip, and lots to do around Pitlochry too.

We stayed in the self catering lodges at Atholl Palace, with full breakfast included.

They messed up our booking on the Saturday night (There was a wedding on and I think someone took a backhander), so we had to move on the 2nd night, but we got a full refund for both nights which was nice 🙂

Grundies World of Christmas?

huh?