Night photos or not?

1

I am still not clear on the desire of Mapillary to include photos taken at night. Should we or should we not? Are we looking for 24/7 world coverage?

2

Moin!

Do it, if the photos are clear and not too blurry.

3

Hi @jimwatana,

We agree with @Amiga4000. Though, the tricky thing with the night photos is that if you don’t have a great camera (the app is not too great for this) the photos will be blurry and there is not too much to see.

Thanks!
Sandra

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4

@Amiga4000 @Sandra. That sounds like a plan. Thanks

5

You can take great night photos, even with a phone that causes slow shutter speed. Actually, even with really expensive cameras and lenses this is a problem. Solution: Put the camera/phone on a tripod. Yes, it takes a lot longer, but some places are beautiful at night.

6

I do plan on using my tripod later. So far, I have just taken a few test sequences. Deleted some but was happy with the overall results. Thanks for the advice.

7

Please post the result in this thread. I would really like to see it.

8

Here is one sequence… http://mapillary.com/map/im/Do8xg8DcP_XgZijqJEd3Gg/photo

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9

I would like a tool to measure height.

10

I made a sequence in a forest yesterday. Under my walk it became darker and darker, sĂĄ the last part of the sequence is actually a night sequence. I used the flashlight to light up the area close to me, and I had a stong ledlight to light up the trail a bit farther away.
I am not totally satisfied with the quality, but I’ll keep testing :smile:
http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/8GuVcQC8SfNrpMTcGeuX3A/photo

11

@Harry, I think it is nice when look at how it is done, e.g. http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/0heuWipkuG62pvZerrHdvg/photo
A flash light does not distribute the light evenly - there is the spot in the center. But using a light that does that (like a strong photography flash) the area closest to you will usually be blown out while the center will be dark (DSLR, raw and HDR is left out here).

In your case I would normally just stop for the day, but some picture is better than no pictures. You can see the path and everything, which is useful to somebody.

I think that the only way to make it better is to put the phone (I assume) on a tripod and take each photo with a very slow shutter speed. Even one of the good battery powered LED panels, with even light distribution, will light the close areas up much more than the far areas. and you should use multiple lights and set them up for each shot to get really good images.

12

I used a casio exilim camera with gps with som possibilities to adjust flash, iso value and some more. The flash only lights upp a few meter. But I had this pocket light with me

And used it to light upp the path a bit ahead. That is the bright spot you see.

My goal was to see if it is possible to make decent night time photos of a dark forest without loosing the feeling of being in the forest att night. But I agree that a tripod would be useful :smile:

Of course I am going to complete the sequence with daylight photos of the same track

13

Moin

Yesterday I had some time to spent on Kassel Train Station Willhelmshöhe, I tried some night shots:
http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/QxW-3XgPH6n7Yj58wkFm4g/photo
went quite well, walk 1-3 m, take a shot, walk, take a shot…

aceini

14

I found a hack to make long exposed photos with a gopro hero 3+

I tried a picture tonight, but I’ll make a real sequence later

GOPR3952.JPG2560Ă—1920 2.27 MB

15

night photos can be very useful to see what a location looks like at night, of course.
while not using a tripod, stopping to take handheld pictures works out somewhat ok : http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/ahiWF04B3UFmj-rlesaDTQ/photo

16

It turns out that my GoPro 3 takes very decent citynight photos with it original settings. I did use a tripod though and took seperate pictures (no timelapse) so I had the time to put down the tripod before I take a picture. But it does feel a bit silly to walkaround with a tripod and take a picture every few meters
Compare these GoPro pictures:
https://www.mapillary.com/map/im/4GLMJzF95PdRm6SCjsBkSw/photo
https://www.mapillary.com/map/im/cPzcCJWXZBhyoTAujWFa3A/photo
with these:
https://www.mapillary.com/map/im/_5zD5lvQ0eYBVh4LErzqvw/photo

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17

So the night photos… chicken and egg situation :smiley:

18

If you feel silly @Harry, then see this guy http://www.hoholtphoto.com/ who does exactly that. He makes time lapses in my town of Aarhus, Denmark. He uses a tripod and moves it just a few inches between frames.

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19

Fantastic timelapses, really impressive, but it sure looks silly when he’s taking time lapses :slight_smile:

20

That does not matter if the result is great. I have looked silly many times, with a camera, and you get used to it :slight_smile:

1 Like