General guideline for night photography

[Reyed Mia (Apprentice, DIU)]

General guideline for night photography

1. Set your camera on Manual (M):

You'll need full control of the Aperture and Shutter speed of your camera for night photography. If you use your camera's Auto settings your photos will either turn out too dark, or with a lot of unwanted movement or ghosting of lights. If you've never used your camera's Manual settings, I encourage you to head out one night and give it a try!

2. Use a shutter speed from 5s-15s.

Longer shutter = My photo is too dark, I need more light. I took the above photo just after sunset and there was still a lot of light, so I only needed a 3.2s exposure to get enough light in my shot. 30 minutes later, I needed to increase my shutter speed to 10 seconds to get the same exposure. If it's totally pitch black, or you want to capture star trails, you may need to use a shutter speed of 30s or more. In this case, switch your camera to Bulb mode. You can trigger when you want your exposure to start and end. I use my iPhone's timer to keep track of time.

3. Keep your ISO as low as possible.

I always shoot on ISO 100 to get the least noise as possible. Since you are using a tripod you don't need to increase your ISO to get a brighter exposure.

4. Set your Aperture for the optimal depth of field that you want.

There are two main aperture settings for night photography.

Shoot with your aperture wide open (f/1.4-f/4 depending on your lens). Wide Aperture = More light. Use this if your subject will benefit from a shallow depth of field for example, a lit fountain in front of a building where you want the fountain to be in focus and the building slightly blurred. You can also use a wide aperture if you don't have a tripod or want to stop any movement in your shot because your shutter speed will be much faster if your aperture is wide. Note: Using a wide aperture will give street lights in your photo a slight halo, so if you don't like the look of this use a higher aperture.

Shoot with a smaller aperture (f/9.0 and higher). Use this if you want everything in focus. It works best to capture landscapes, cityscapes, car tail lights with motion blur, water or star trails. Also, using a smaller aperture will give street lights a "star-like" effect which can yield really cool photos.

5. Catch Focus, even in the pitch black!

Most cameras will have difficulty focusing using auto-focus in dark conditions. Auto-focusing can work at night if you your subject has enough light, like a well-lit bridge or building, but more often than not you'll have to use Manual focus. If you are trying to shoot a dark statue, you can shine a flash light beam on the statue and grab your focus that way or use Live View. To use Live View, simply turn it on, increase your ISO so that you can see your subject more clearly, pick something to focus on, zoom in, manually focus and turn Live View off, reset your ISO settings to 100/200 and you are ready to go. If you don't have Live View, then you can use infinity focus (the ∞ symbol) on the distance indicator of your lens. Place the dot or mark right in between the ∞ and your focus will be infinite. Some lenses aren't tack sharp at infinity focus so make sure you test out your lens before taking any important shots.

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