After few popular photography inspiration from our blog, time for some basic ideas to shoot during night.
It is most definitely not a walk in the park to take photographs at night especially if one is an amateur photographer. There are a lot of compromises that a photographer is expected to make when taking photos in low light and this makes the whole exercise to be technically demanding. You will be expected to make compromises in ISO settings, shutter speed and even aperture.
It is advisable for beginners and intermediate photographers to understand that using direct flash in pitch black leads to underexposed backgrounds and an overexposed subject that is very scary!
Few Basic Tips on Night Photography
It is important to understand that there are other things to be considered in night photography apart from simply using flash. There is no need to worry if you do not know how to take night photos because this article will provide you with some valuable night photography tips:
1. Choose Your Exposure
The background determines the way your photo will appear and that is why it important to choose how you want it appear. You may want the background to be exposed like the subject or for it to be pitching black. You must be sure of what you want to achieve before touching the camera and tripping the shutter.
The next thing after choosing your background is to select your desired exposure settings. It is advisable to use manual focus because rogue light sources can fool the camera’s metering. It can be a total disaster if the camera metering accepts to be fooled!
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2. Shoot Raw and Post-process
Image Credit: here
You should choose your settings wisely especially if your settings do not favor high contrast because you can end up with something that is not actually black. This is the reason why shooting raw and post-processing is the best option. This helps a great deal when large dark areas are included in your night shots. The shadow noise can be reduced by ensuring that the blacks are clipped a bit.
3. Watch for Flare
Image Credit: here
You can actually end up with some pretty nasty flares because of rogue light sources and longer exposures. Lenses that are prone to flaring should not be used in the presence of rogue lights unless you want a flaring effect. You should avoid shooting near populated areas or shooting long exposures because it can lead to light contamination.
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4. Your Camera should be steady
Image Credit: here
Long exposure requires a good tripod for you to take quality photos. Lack of sharpness and camera shakes lead to the many issues that are normally associated with night exposures. The shake induced by pressing the shutter button should not worry you if the exposure is longer that 1 second. It is advisable to consider using self-timer or remote release if your exposure is between 1sec and 1/15 of a sec.
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5. Use your Flash Properly
Using a flash to fill the scene by itself is not a good idea. A flash can only be used together with ambient light to add attractive lighting. Metering the scene as if you would not use the flash at all is the proper way of using your flash.
You should only consider what you want to do with your flash after choosing ISO, aperture and shutter speed. The shutter speed is irrelevant to the flash exposure even when it comes to illuminating a specific part of the scene or creating the illusion of a larger light source. The best way to get the output that you want is by experimenting with the flash settings.
Photography Contributor: Lisa Ely is a photography blogger and editing expert. She is also part of Inkjet Photo Paper. If you’d like to read about their inkjet photo paper review, head over to their website.
Conclusion: We are happy to welcome our new contributor to this community, Kindly share your thought and comment about this article. Share is caring and it is much appreciated.
I am impressed, I must say. Really rarely do I encounter a blog that’s both educative and entertaining, and let me tell you, you have hit the nail on the head. Your idea is outstanding; the issue is something that not enough people are speaking intelligently about. I am very happy that I stumbled across this in my search for something relating to this.
Remove my image of the ******************** – you blatantly disregarded my copyright notice on the photo itself and I would think that as someone trying to educate others about photography, you would have had more respect for the work of others.
-Joe Ercoli
Hi,
Myself apologize for using your photography in our article or post. We credited as showing support and we did not use for commercial purpose. Your photography are really Good. Once again we sorry to do this work. We do have the respect of other artist. There are some blogs where they don’t even credit with text or link back to the source.
We thought it will be educated for others. We are educated and like to share some inspiration for newbies to learn from photographs like you.
Thank you for polite approach to this.
Thank You
Sri Ganesh.M
Editor
@Joe Ercoli,
It looks that you don’t understand what copyrights means. The blog is not using work without credit the source. You should consider yourself lucky that somebody found your work inspirational and useful for education.
Thank you sir, for your support and hope others know the difference between copyright and sharing is caring !
Good people get hurt easily always. 🙁
I can see it in the comments, with due respect, we provide proper credits to photos that are shared to our blog, owners of inspiring photos must even give thanks to those blogger who featured their work for them attract more audience to their portfolio
Yes, recently this kind of problem exist in abduzeedo blog. From the same community people against the photographer. There was an option to share it. Flickr has the option not to share or download the images for personal work without any attribution. All the images are copyrighted to the respective owners and no one can take the ownership in digital world.
Thank you for the support.
Even a point and Shoot Camera can capture amazing shots. Just you need right amount of light on the object/ or in scenery
I am planing to buy a decent DSLR to take my hobby to next level. Nice write-up ! 😀
That’s great. Try to learn with the default kit lens 18-55mm for better results. Then you can upgrade.