| Taking night shots is not so easy like you may think, well, it depends, if the goal is just to do a simple night photo so with every kind of camera you can do it by using the flash if there are no much lights. Now if you have a reflex camera and you want to do more than a simple night picture, may those following advices serve you. First you will need an additional material called tripod. It will allow stabilizing your camera because taking a photo in a dim condition, a gentle movement can make it blur. In fact, you don’t really need one as long as you will find some solid support like a car, a wall… The advantage of the tripod is that you can level it as you wish so you are not restricted by the options offered by the environment where you are. |
Secondly, find the right place where you want to take an unbelievable picture, it can be in your city, the park of your town, the waterfall of a mountain... or why not, the atmosphere of your home !!!
Once you have everything, you can start. The technique, you are going to use, is called "long exposure" or "long shutter speeds" and it consists to allow more time for the light to collect on the sensor of your reflex camera. In fact, it is all about experimenting in order to find out how long the shutter will need to stay open for the effect you want.
Normally, a camera takes automatically a photo with a shutter speed of about 1/125 of a second. You will have to set this option manually to lower it at about 1/4 for example. Just remind that you have to slow down the speed, take note that a 1/1.1600 sec is a fast shutter speed and 1 sec is a slow shutter speed.
Next, you can configure your aperture, something like f/8. Generally, a large aperture reduces depth of field, blurring objects behind and in front of the main subject and a small aperture increases depth of field, bringing out details in the background and foreground. For example f/22 is a small aperture and f/5 is a large aperture.
You can set your camera in auto focus (AF) mode although, depending of the light, it may not work very well. In this case, you will have also to do it manually. About the ISO, there is no really a rule, some people configure it with 400, others with 1600, it depends totally the effect you want to get, personally I use a low ISO.
Once you have all those conditions, you can press the button to take your picture instantly and see the result, I will recommend to test different configuration until you will get the desired effect because composing the shot, there is no tutorial, all depend of your eye and your perception as photographer.
Now, if you want to control the exposure time, you will have to use the “bulb” mode and calculate the needed time. There are 3 ways to do it:
- the easy one is to use your instinct, a lot of tests have to be done before to get the perfect picture
- the normal one is to use a light meter, you will have to go shopping
- the complicate one is to calculate yourself, it can be done mentally or with a calculator
For the last option, I do this way. I set the desired aperture with the highest ISO 3200 then I point my camera at the target. Next, I move the indicator to the middle and I keep in mind the showing number. To do my shot, I select the desired ISO 200 so to know my exposure time, I multiply the number by 16 (3200/200) then I divide the result by 60 seconds.
For example, I got the number 10 with the indicator so my time is 10x16=160/60=2.6 minutes. It may not be the good equation and you may find better one but at least it is how I do if I don’t want to use my 6th sense.
Like I said above, a simple movement can make your photo blurry even if you have a tripod because by pressing the shot button, you may make a little movement without noticing it, that’s why some people use a remote for night shots. If you don’t want to spend money for that, my advice is to configure the timer although the remote will be very useful and more practical if you will plan to take a lot of photos in a dim light environment.
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