How to take better photos at night?
December 8th, 2007

     

    If you are starting out to taking photos at night, check to ensure that your digital camera has a special night mode and read your camera manual to study it. This mode will adjust your camera settings, tuning it to low-light conditions of the night and possibly allows you to take better night photos. If you’re not sure about adjusting the exposure times and have no idea what ISO means, a one-touch setting may be all you need. But yes there are problems wit ht e automatic settings and a manual one is desirable.

    One of the tricks to night photography with your digital camera is taking long exposures of a subject. The long exposure time is needed to compensate for the low light; the longer the exposure, the longer your camera absorbs the scarcely available light. When a sunny day with plentiful light may only require a camera shutter to remain open for 1/250th or 1/125th of a second for clear, crisp photos, low-light conditions may require decreased shutter speeds of 1/15th of a second or longer. It may be a good idea to check your digital camera manual for instructions on changing the shutter speed - it is usually the “S” in the “PASM” or “ASM” camera setting modes.

    Long exposures at night can mean one more thing - blurred images due to camera shake. While you should always try to take digital photos at nighttime that avoid the blurred results of a ’camera-shake’ due to long exposures with an unstable digital camera, realize that blur is not always undesirable. Some blurring can be used creatively, such as that created by cars driving on an interstate at nighttime. This effect is best performed if the roadway is next to a lit skyscraper or cityscape. Frame a photo containing the cityscape and roadway, and take an exposure of half a second or longer as necessary (use a tripod!). The skyscrapers should look clear and crisp, and the roadways will turn into streams of light.

    Use a tripod. It is a must.

    If you plan to take digital photos at night, a tripod is very essential. It is extremely hard to hold a camera still for the length of time needed for a good night exposure, and any shaking can result in blurred photos or completely blacked out subjects. It is not as it is in the day time photography.
    With a tripod, you can set your digital camera to use a long exposure time, snap a photo, and not worry about the ‘camera-shake’. However, to remove any chance of camera movement, either purchase and use an external shutter release (if your camera supports such an accessory), or keep the shutter button held down during the entire exposure. Even the simplest motion of releasing the camera shutter button during a photo shoot can cause the camera to shake, rendering a beautiful photo almost worthless with blurriness.

    Avoid Optical Zoom

    If you can, avoid using your digital camera’s optical zoom when taking night photos, especially if you lack access to a tripod or other stabilization device. The higher the optical zoom magnification, the longer the lens has to extend to shoot a photograph. This also causes the digital camera to become especially sensitive to movement. With an extended lens, even on sunny days, the results of ‘camera-shake’ may be evident in blurry photos; at night, this effect is magnified even more.

    Use flash wisely

    While flash may be helpful in taking photos in low light conditions, there comes a point at night that flash may not help much anymore, especially onboard flash.
    Flash requires light to bounce off a subject. If you are shooting dusk or late-night shots over huge expansive distances, such as a beach, cityscape, or mountain range, all flash may do is occasionally show a small annoying burst of light in your picture. If your subject is a long way away, your small flash unit will never reach your subject effectively. An expensive external flash may help some in these instances, but consider using other digital camera features when taking night photos, such as decreasing the shutter speed, increasing the ISO settings, or using a preprogrammed night scene mode.

    Increase your ISO setting during night photography

    A higher ISO setting allows you to take digital photos with quicker exposures at the expense of overall image quality. This can be crucial when taking photos at night without a tripod. To get enough light for a decent photo, you may normally have to keep your digital camera still for 1/15th of a second or longer else blurred photos may result. This is extremely difficult to do if you are holding your camera; even if you brace yourself up against a wall some shake is bound to occur.
    With a higher ISO setting, you could get away in the same situation with perhaps a 1/30th of a second exposure or faster. The higher the ISO number, the faster you can take the photo, but more grain (noise) will be introduced. You should be able to get by with an ISO of 200 with medium and high-end cameras. With a digital SLR, even an ISO of 400 or 800 might introduce just an acceptable level of noise into your photos.

    Shoot more number of photos

    There may be times where you want to take photos in difficult lighting situations and you don’t have a tripod or other stabilizing device handy. In these situations click as many photos of the same subject as possible so that in case you spoil one, there is always a back up.


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