Night Photography-Taking Night Shots

Easy Basic Photography

Night Photography-Taking Night Shots

Night photography is an area of photography that many casual photographers never even try. Maybe they
think it might be too difficult or that their equipment won't produce the type of stunning night shots they see
that were taken by professional photographers.

Well neither of those ways of thinking are true. With a little practice, some basic equipment, and a basic
understanding of how camera exposure settings work, anyone can take some pretty good pictures at night.

Equipment for Night Photography: A Digital Single Lens Reflex camera (also known as a DSLR or
Digital SLR camera) is the best choice for taking night pictures. That is because for night photography you
will need to use longer exposure times to get an acceptable image. With a DSLR camera you can manually
control the length of time the camera shutter is open as well as control the camera lens aperture to allow more
or less light into the camera.

If you don't own a Digital SLR camera and might be considering purchasing one, the                         and the
                                    are both good and affordable Digital SLR cameras.

If you are using a Digital Compact Camera for night photography, you can still get some good night shots in
certain situations. However, you wont have as much control over the camera's exposure settings. That is
because just about every setting for exposure in digital compact cameras is automatically set for you.

However, the                                                     digital compact camera has a long shutter feature that allows
you to set the shutter speed between 1 and 15 seconds.

Please check the tutorial, Camera Exposure Basics if you are not familiar with controlling exposure settings in
a camera.

Use a Tripod: You will need a tripod to take night
pictures whether you are using a Digital SLR camera or
a Digital Compact camera. That is because with the
camera shutter being open for longer periods of time,
the slightest bit of camera movement will result in a
blurred picture. If you don't own a tripod, it is a good
idea to invest in a basic tripod. They are not expensive
and the results you get from using a tripod when taking
night pictures will be more than worth the price you pay
for it.

In addition to using a tripod, use the camera's self timer
or use a remote shutter release when taking the picture.
Many photographers don't realize that even when the
camera is on a tripod, there is a chance that some camera shake may occur when your finger presses the
shutter release button. Using the camera's self timer or a remote release will eliminate the possibility of that
happening.

If you must take a night picture and don't have a tripod with you, try stabilizing the camera by placing it on a
steady surface when taking the picture. That will reduce the possibility of camera shake.

Night Photography and Light: Just like in daytime photography, the quality of pictures taken at night will be
dependent upon the type and amount of light available.

Night pictures don't always have to be taken at the darkest time of evening for a good image to be obtained. In
fact, pictures taken right after sundown or prior to sunrise are great because there is just a touch of
ambient light from the sun in the atmosphere, and more detail might be shown in the shadow areas. Moonlit
night shot #4 and the skyline night shot #5 below are good examples of night pictures taken with a little
ambient daylight in the night sky.

On the other hand, pictures taken later in the evening, can sometimes result in a sky that will be much darker,
even close to black. (depending on the camera exposure setting used) Picture #3 shown above is a good
example. The extremely dark sky works well for this picture because the contrasting light and dark areas
emphasize the subject of the picture which is the lighted building.

After sunset or before sunrise, artificial light sources such as street lights, bright signs, window lights, and
reflected light among others will be your main light source.

Be aware that strong artificial lighting in night pictures might cast an overall tint in the image that might be
yellowish, greenish or reddish depending on the type of lighting. Using your cameras' automatic white balance
feature might work well in many situations to avoid unnatural tints. Still, at times, you might have to manually
change your camera's white balance setting to tungsten, cloudy, sunset/sunrise, or whatever setting will give
the most natural color to the image.

The buildings in night shot #6 are illuminated by
strong tungsten type street lights causing a yellowish
tint. The light reflections in the water also have the
same yellowish tint.

Quite often though, as in this case, the artificial
lighting tints can make the image more interesting.
You might even want to purposely allow a different
color cast in your night picture if you are feeling
creative.

Check the White Balance tutorial for more details
on how the white balance feature works in your
camera.

The battle between light and dark: One of the biggest challenges when taking pictures at night is trying to
balance extremes of light and dark in the same scene.

Our eyes are great at properly seeing light and dark areas in a scene. However, digital camera light meters
can be fooled at times by very bright light, or not enough light in a scene and might suggest a camera
exposure setting that will cause the whole scene to be underexposed or overexposed.

In night pictures #7 and #8, street lamps, window lights, and reflected light are the light sources. The street
lamps in both images appear somewhat brighter than if you were at the scene viewing them with your eyes.
Also, the taller buildings in the background of night shot #7 are somewhat underexposed. However, choosing
an exposure setting that would show the brighter lights in each image as dimmer would have made both
overall pictures underexposed.

As for night shot #8, choosing a camera exposure setting that would make the background buildings lighter
would have greatly overexposed the street lamps and the areas of the scene near them.

Since you can't change the lighting in a night scene, sometimes a little a compromise might be in order. That
is, certain areas of the image might have to be a little brighter or darker than you might want them to be.

Exposure Settings for Night Photography: There is no one correct camera exposure setting for night
photography. Just keep in mind the fact that the exposure times will be longer for night photography than the
times used for daylight photography. When taking night pictures, the camera shutter can be open for seconds
instead of fractions of a second.

As a point of reference, the camera exposure values that were used for the images in this tutorial are listed
right below the picture. Hopefully, that will give you a rough idea of the camera settings that might be used for
certain types of night scenes. The ISO settings for all the pictures was ISO 100 except for #7(ISO 800), #13
(ISO 64), and #14 (IISO 400). The camera settings that you might use will be dependent upon the amount and
intensity of the light in the scene you are photographing. The exact exposure values can also vary depending
on the type of camera and lens that is being used.

When using a Digital Compact camera for night photography, try using one of the night scene modes
such as night landscape. A night scene mode will keep the camera shutter open longer so that more light from
the scene can be gathered into the cameras' image sensor. However, when using a Dgital Compact camera,
you might not be able to manually set the length of time the camera shutter will be open. Neither will you be
able to control the size of the aperture being used.

Also, you might try using your compact cameras' Exposure Compensation EV+ EV- feature. This feature will
automatically allow more or less light into the camera depending on how you set it. However, that feature might
not be functional in some compact cameras when a night scene mode is being used.

If you are using a DSLR camera, in addition to the automatic mode, you will have the choice of using full
manual, aperture priority, or shutter priority modes to obtain the correct exposure settings. Neither mode is
always better than the other for night photography. Check the Camera Shooting Modes tutorial for a quick
explanation of the different types of camera shooting modes.

Go ahead, take a shot! The best way to get started taking pictures at night is to take a test shot of the night
scene. You can set your Digital Compact or Digital SLR camera to the automatic mode, or try any
aperture/shutter combination on your Digital SLR that you think might work. After taking the shot, check the
image on your camera's LCD screen and adjust the exposure settings accordingly.

For example, the camera settings that were used for picture #9 created an image in which the lights were
somewhat over exposed. An adjustment to the length of time the camera shutter was open and the result was
a darker image. (picture #10)

Bracket your exposures: So, which image is better? Maybe an in between exposure would have been best.
It is a matter of personal taste. That is why it might be a good idea to bracket your exposures when taking
night shots.

That means taking a picture or two lighter and a picture or two darker than the camera meter suggested
exposure. That way you will have a wider range of images to choose from when deciding which is the best shot.

Sometimes, an image might look slightly different when viewing it in your cameras' LCD screen at night than it
might look on your computer screen at home. That is what happened with the image of the horse and carriage
shown below.

Picture #11 seemed ok when it was quickly viewed on the cameras' LCD screen at the scene, so no
bracketing of the exposures was done. After viewing the picture later on a computer screen, it was decided
that the image was a little too dark.

All hope was not lost because the picture was corrected with an image editing program. (see picture #12)
However, you should try and determine best possible exposure at the scene so you don't have to depend on
image editing programs to bail you out. Also, sometimes images that need extreme correction might lose some
quality during the editing process.

Still, it might be helpful to own an image editing program like                                                   . Another good
basic editing program is                                       . Both work well for most editing situations, but also have a
lot of other useful and/or fun features.

Note: The only images in this tutorial that were adjusted in an image editing program were image #11 for
previously mentioned reason, and image #2. (to correct the color tint) All other images are shown as they
were taken except for cropping.

Light and movement in night photography: When using slower shutter speeds for night photography,
moving objects such as cars will barely be seen in the image if at all. However, the light trails from the
headlights and tail lights of the cars will be visible. See picture # 13.

The key to getting solid light trail lines in the picture is to make sure the shutter is open when the cars enter
the frame and remains open until they leave the frame. If you don't do that, you will still get light trails, but
some of them will be broken like picture #14.

In pictures #13 and #14, the camera shutter speed was 8 seconds. However, the shutter speed you may need
to use may be longer depending on how long it takes for the cars to pass through the frame. In some
situations, a shutter speed of up to 30 seconds or longer might be needed to get a good image. Also, it might
be a good idea to use a small aperture setting to keep the lights from being overexposed when the camera
shutter is open that long.

This same light trail effect can be obtained by using long shutter times when taking picture of moving objects
that are brightly lit. One of the most common uses for this effect is for taking pictures of moving rides at night
in amusement parks.

When taking night pictures and using slower shutter
speeds, people who are moving in the image will appear
blurred or "ghostly like". See picture #15 for an example.
So avoid using slow shutter speeds when there are moving
people or cars in the scene. That is unless it is the effect
you want in your night picture.

Choosing an ISO Setting: Ideally, it is best to take night
pictures using ISO settings between 100 or 400. Using ISO
settings higher than 400 in some cameras may produce
digital camera noise (tiny spots and speckles) in the image.
The noise will be more visible in the darker areas of the image.

However, In some situations, it might be necessary to increase
your cameras' ISO setting. Increasing your cameras' ISO
setting from lets say ISO 100 to ISO 800 will make the cameras'
sensor more sensitive to light. That feature can be pretty useful when there doesn't appear to be enough light
available to produce an acceptable image. Check the tutorial What is ISO? for a few more details on how to
use it.

So go ahead and use ISO 800 or higher if necessary. A little noise will rarely ruin a great shot.

Should you use flash? Turn off your flash when taking night pictures. The light produced by the flash won't
be strong enough to light a wide outside area. An exception would be if your subject is a person or object in
the near foreground that needs stronger lighting than the rest of night scene you are photographing.

Learning how to take pictures at night will require some practice and might be a little hit and miss at times. On
the other hand it will all be worth it when you get that night shot that you can be proud of.

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