Dusk to Dawn, 2nd Edition, 2nd Edition

6 Processing Night Landscapes

Night photographers operate at the bleeding edge of both lens and sensor technology. Images taken with wide-angle lenses shot wide open are always much darker in the corners than they are in the center, a problem called falloff or vignetting. Images taken at high ISOs are inherently noisy. They also suffer from diminished resolution and decreased dynamic range, the difference in brightness between the darkest detailed shadow and the brightest detailed highlight. The lack of dynamic range means it’s often necessary to shoot two frames at each camera position, one exposed for the sky, the second exposed for the land. Compositing those two images in Photoshop often requires making precise selections, but Photoshop’s ...